Jay Fox - THE WALLS

The oglers in the restaurant are less surreptitious now. She's on the verge of those angry tears. I'm still trying to whisper. “I'm not trying to tell you what to do.” I look to either side as though I am about to cross a street. “I just don't want you to tell me that you're being honest because you just failed to mention portions of the truth.”

There's a long pause at the table. The waiter furtively glances towards the two of us with somber eyes; genderless nonagenarians trade vapid glances like breathing ossuaries; younger families try to ignore to us, even if the parents cannot help but think of the one before they met the One who sits on the other side of the table; the bartender makes a joke, which sends two older gentlemen into hysterics. One of them slams his hands upon the bar top with a resonating clap , and then yells something in French.

“You're such a child sometimes,” she finally says.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You know exactly what it means.”

“You know what I think? I think you came here looking to pick a fight with me. You've been relentless since we met up. You keep projecting all of these negative sentiments onto me, and, honestly, I don't even feel like we're participating in the same conversation.”

“Fuck this,” she says. She stands, begins for the door, and then looks back to me. “Call me if you ever decide to grow up.”

She shouts this, but stops abruptly before opening the door. She is awaiting rebuttal. Those who have been trying to ignore the two of us now have their excuse to examine us like tableaux in a natural history museum (“Modern Man with Stubborn Grimace” and “Modern Woman Being Total Cunt”), and await my response. They are unable to ignore the embodiment of unremitting fury (maybe even volcanism would be fitting), which casts its influence over the restaurant as though a candle at the entrance of a tomb. Those seated nearby whisper to themselves. Their eyes alternate between the two of us and sometimes to spouses or others who happen to be enjoying the vocalized mélange of love, hate, and spite. Josephine Baker wraps up a song about her two loves, which leaves the restaurant cast in uneasy silence. The waiter would be smoking a cigarette if it weren't for the ordinance against it. The busboys chuckle to themselves and nudge one another in the ribs.

She exits.

She fucked around behind your back. Probably with some milquetoast pseudo-intellectual, like that little pussy who actually said, 'I consider myself a feminist', at the one party we went to up in Cambridge. Is that the type of guy she wants now? The type that plays the part of the doormat in order to stare up a skirt? Perhaps. But that's not what bothers me. What bothers me is that she considered it empowering. And it was, too. It was empowering for her as a self-absorbed hedonist. She rationalized it, of course. Maybe universalized it, rather. It became a means of empowerment for all women. It's a strange syllogism, but that's always been her type of twisted logic: If it's good for me, it must be good for the cause. It's kind of like supply-side feminism, the same fucked up reasoning that will eventually bring make Thatcherism look like socialism. Fuck her. It was enough to know that she had fucked guys before me. It was enough to know that “That was amazing” and “No one's ever fucked me like that” and all of the moans and “Holy shit”s and “Oh my God”s were responses to sex regardless of the person with whom she found herself in bed or in the bathroom at some shitty bar or at some fucking frat party or God knows where else she decided that someone had said something witty or intelligent enough to let them fondle and kiss and bite and penetrate and verb and verb and verb and verb that body with its bounty of curves and her glistening with sweat in the glow of a computer monitor as she dug her nails into flesh and…agh, that fucking whore!

The waiter soon approaches. “Sir,” he begins in a whisper, “I do believe it would be best for you to promptly leave the premises. Would you like your meal to go, or shall we discard it?”

“Can you cancel it?”

“This is not a buffet, sir. You will pay for everything that you have ordered, not simply what you have decided to eat. Now, would you prefer to pay the full check, or would you rather I call the police?”

“The check will be fine.”

I finish the rest of my wine in a single gulp, pour another glass, and take that one down, too. I wonder how much all of this will cost. The waiter soon provides an answer: $200. And then there's the tip. Do you tip a waiter if he throws you out of the restaurant? A meditation on the subject will have to wait. He's standing over me like a buzzard. I pull out my ATM card, place it in the book, close the book, hand it to him. I finish the wine as I await his return.

“There is a problem with the card [, sir].”

“Excuse me?”

“You do not have enough to pay the entirety of the check (, sir(rah)).”

People are staring at me. Maybe they never stopped. It's just more pronounced now. It's not simply an uncomfortable feeling for me; it's more a form of torture. They quietly criticize everything about me, laugh at my expense, feel no sympathy as the argument, by virtue of my gender, should have been resolved by my surrender. Pride, they believe. Pride. For this reason my ego must stand with a blindfold and a cigarette awaiting the inevitable.

“I only have fifty dollars on me,” I respond.

“How did you intend to pay for the meal, may I ask?”

“Well…she was supposed to pay for it.”

“That option is no longer available.”

No fucking way!

“I understand that, but—”

“But what? There is a one hundred and fifty dollar balance; and yet you have no means by which you can provide the necessary funds.”

“I can work it off.”

“You can work it off?”

“Yeah. I'll clean dishes or the bathrooms. I can prep vegetables. I used to work in a kitchen a few years ago.” He does not seem all that moved. “Isn't this what they do in the movies?”

He glares down to me, but no longer with the gelid scorn that I was receiving earlier. He pities me — that much is clear. At the same time, that one hundred and fifty bucks has to come from somewhere, and it certainly isn't going to be from his pocket.

“Let me see if something can be arranged.”

The heat on the train platform is oppressive, humid, like the suffocating muff of Anopopei. The denizens have faces adorned with a fine misting of sweat that gleans in the fluorescent lighting. Those who have been waiting the longest have shirts that have become ocellated at the smalls of their backs. A woman waiting for the uptown train is dancing irregularly in order to suppress the need to urinate. A man in Conservative fatigues tries to make a call on his cell phone, fails, and then tries again. He paraphrases Murphy's Law to a cute girl of maybe sixteen. She smiles absently, and moves away. He tries to call again. To my left a woman stands in the grip of panic because she is alone. “Shit,” yells the man on the opposing platform. To my right are a group of boisterous black teenagers. Their voices carry throughout the subway tunnels, and their very presence seems to hold quietude in contempt. It would be kind of amusing if they weren't so proud of their ignorance. They talk about the woman to my left as though she cannot hear them. Of me they say nothing. I am a shade.

A breeze is afforded to us all by an uptown express, which roars and squeals into the station. Even as the brakes scream holocaust, you can make out the nearby black kids — and they are black, too; black to the point of shadows — who all agree that white people smell like lemons or wet dog. I smell myself. The train slowly trudges through the station; it doesn't stop because we are the locals, the people you see with looks of chagrin as you pass by and wonder to yourself, Why the hell is this train slowing down; we don't even stop here .