Michael Rizza - Cartilage and Skin

“Welcome back, monkey-boy.” He shook his head in feigned disappointment. “My bad luck charm.”

The girls were gone. They’d taken the cigarettes but left the drinks.

“We shouldn’t have lied,” I said. “What a stupid lie.”

“Oh, that was beautiful. But it was my fault. I can’t blame you.”

He started to compare us to baseball players, saying, “If you bat.300 in the big leagues, you’re a fucking professional. That means most of the time, you’re going to fail. It’s the law of averages.”

As I stood beside the table, looking down at him and listening, I fought an urge to slap his happy, cherubic face. I imagined him saying something ludicrous or crude to Bruni and Ann to scare them off. In his drunkenness, his boyish charm must have cracked, revealing beneath that superficial veneer, the bone and pulp of his naked and grotesque desire.

“What did you say?” I asked abruptly.

“Nothing at all.” He pointed his finger at me again. “What, ho?”

Despite Stephen’s age and his ability to grow a beard, he wasn’t too different from the stupid, rutting high school boys of my youth — whose casual behavior, conspicuous sexuality, and easy friendships provided a vivid contrast to my social ineptitude, frustrated lusts, and sense of alienation. I suddenly realized that Stephen reminded me of a melon-headed boy whose cheerful jesting often used to incite me to rage. I felt the old beat of my adolescent heart. Somehow Stephen managed to stir up some distant association in my memory and inadvertently to finger and poke at the dormant emotions of my slow, painful pubescence. Despite my agitation, he didn’t seem to notice. He was too amused.

“Sit down. Sit down, Mr. Parker,” he said and started to lean across the table, as if he intended to whisper to me again. Captivated by the sudden use of my name, I sat down and listened to him tell his story. As he recreated the scene, I was able to picture him inclining his round head close to Ann and saying that because she was so pretty, she was able to do him a favor: She could coax the waiter into explaining how Walter had insulted his mother. Stephen hadn’t actually been as interested in the waiter’s gripe as he’d been in finding a way to slip in a compliment to Ann. As a side note, he advised me that it was sometimes smart to present your lust casually as a foregone conclusion, rather than to fawn and blatantly announce that the girl “turns you on.” He then imitated a dim-witted farm boy who began and ended his profession of lust with the word “shucks.” I resented Stephen’s assumption that, regardless of my superiority of age and education, I was someone who needed sexual advice from him. The more he spoke and prolonged his story, the more anxiously I wanted to hear how the soft young Slavic woman with the wet fingers would play a role. Instead, Stephen emphasized the effects of his flirtation upon Ann. The particulars of the waiter’s grievance, however, must have genuinely interested Bruni because in the end, she was the one who had flagged the wiry, greasy, tattooed thing to the table. Because Stephen was calling me Mister, and not Doctor, I now had a timeframe; if the waiter remembered me as Mr. Parker, then he must have been a child when I insulted his mother. Listening to how the two girls had beguiled the story out of the waiter, I felt a sudden pang of terror. All at once, I knew exactly what doctor’s office it had been and why I had overlooked it, mistaking it for a dentist’s or optometrist’s. With a little sneer, I had always refused to give my therapist the reverential title of doctor. The forgotten episode came back to me now. Perhaps somewhere in the waiting room, among the maroon cushioned sofa, the potted plants, and the magazines on the coffee table — while the room seemed to pulsate because, turn by turn, each slow-spinning blade of a ceiling fan passed over a recessed light; while the music piped in from some other room sounded less like easy listening than like the sustained moans of an afflicted soul; and while a pale, lanky man sat waiting and consuming himself with the idea that the whole universe was cleanly divided into categories of me and not me — a young, quiet boy must have sat dead still in his seat. At first, I used to arrive to therapy early, primarily because of the bus schedule. A woman was always in session with the doctor prior to me. She seemed to be a picture of decorum — a polished woman who went to the beauty salon at least once a week — but sometimes through the closed door I could hear her screaming. After a while, I purposely began to come early, just to listen to whatever I could. I would lean forward in my seat and strain my ears to hear. I imagined that she was weak and that her mind was a tattered rag. Even though she always emerged from the office composed and erect, and walked past me with complete indifference, I lusted for her fiercely. I created little fantasies. I longed to be her therapist, so I could draw out her secret tremors and poke my fingers around in her wounds. In the end, I never said a word to her, and in the pitch of my excitement, I never fully realized that she might have been a mother whose young son silently waited in the same room with me. Twice a week, he must have watched me writhing in my seat over his luscious mother. The poor traumatized child. I’d imprinted myself so darkly upon his mind that perhaps over the span of time I was the secret cause of at least some of his tattoos, a nest of black coils and barbs etched upon his skin.

More or less, this was the story that the girls had used their feminine graces to get out of the waiter. Add to this the idea that I’d made a career out of analyzing corpses, and then it was no wonder that the girls had picked up their cigarettes, shunned the drinks, and politely fled.

“They said, ‘See you next Tuesday.’” Stephen laughed. “They weren’t too keen on you cursing in front of a kid. But it’s my fault. You didn’t want to tell the story, but I had the girls ask him anyhow.”

I didn’t remember cursing or even saying anything at all; but then again, I didn’t remember any kid either.

“See you next Tuesday?” I asked.

“You’ve got a foul mouth, Walter.”

Because Stephen appeared as happy as before, I began to appreciate that not only did I fail to revolt him; I was entertaining in a quirky way. His theory of the law of averages, as well as his conviction of persevering in the quest for women, somehow cleared me of blame. We talked for a little longer. I was conscious that he refrained from asking me about my therapy. In return, I didn’t mention Miriam. If he wanted me to know her response to his plan, he would have told me. I sensed that he didn’t like hurting her feelings.

“I warned them that you’re a crazy fuck,” he said.

When I was leaving, he told me to send him a postcard from Yalta.

Back outside, hunched under my umbrella as the rain sounded loud upon the pavement and the parked cars, I didn’t regret that Stephen and I had ended up as culprits in a petty crime after all: We had put our heads together and conspired not to tip the waiter. I undoubtedly ruined my option of ever returning to this particular bar, not because of the fear of stepping into an awkward and embarrassing scene with the tattooed boy, but because of the fear of sabotage. Even if I avoided ordering any food that he could spit on, and even if I cautiously stuck to beverages, I still ran the risk of the slighted waiter stealthily dipping his greasy, wiry penis into my beer. I would have been naïve not to know that such acts of revenge — which were exactly this puerile, furtive, and perverse — were as ubiquitous as disgruntled teenage boys working in kitchens and cleaning dirty plates off dirty tables. They were angry at the world, and whosoever wanted to substitute mashed potatoes for french fries or complained the meat was a bit undercooked or asked if the air conditioning could be turned down just a smidgen, was not only accountable for the miserable world but also susceptible to consuming unknowingly all manner of mucus and grime.