Jay Fox - THE WALLS

6.1

I receive a call from Tomas as the F train swims in the sunlight pouring down upon the Fourth Avenue station. His words are difficult to discern, as a portion of the car has been commandeered by a punk militia heavily armed with loaded egos and trigger-happy tongues, but I eventually make out his location. He is at a bar on the south side of Atlantic. It's close to the B.Q.E. It will not be my first visit to the place, so I know the route I must travel in order to get there. The train drips back below ground before I am off the phone.

The main dinner rush has not yet begun, but there are more than a few couples strolling down Smith Street menu-shopping, their eyes fixated not simply on the menus, but on the atmosphere and the clientèle past the framed document with its list of epithets for dishes and drinks with histories no less arcane and complicated than the histories of nations. Above these restaurants and the myriad boutique clothing stores that line the blocks are bald facades with bricks the colors of peach pits and blood orange flesh. The sky is a monochrome canvas of cobalt, a Rothko of sorts as it is neither blank nor unimposing in its simplicity. The air in the southern distance pulses above the concrete in a steady lento. This phenomenon is a common feature in those films where the protagonist is forced to wander along a desert highway under a fierce sun glaring down at the world like a sadistic anchorite. The symbolism is blatant. The light is imperious. Light is truth. The truth is imperious. The character bears the weight of the truth alone, anguished and awaiting mercy or peripety from the gods.

The street traffic is dominated by young professionals just returning from work or young professionals out walking their dogs in business casual. Teenagers stroll down the block with skateboards and nowhere in particular to go. A group of recent law school graduates speak of the BAR exam with trepidation out front of a bar on Dean. I almost run into someone as I get to Atlantic. We do that kind of juke move to one another, a kind of hesitant stumble, stop, and then laugh. His hand directs me to the left. A French bulldog looks to me once I reach the corner, its carnation tongue madly flapping like a conch upon a wave. Her owner looks to me from behind thick-framed glasses, smiles, and then crosses the street.

Tomas is all the way in the back of the bar with Aberdeen and several people with whom the two probably went to college. There are two chandeliers, which are dreadfully out of place, as the majority of the furniture clearly spent some time on the street before being picked up by the owner. It is a concert of miscellany. The bartender requests my ID. He doesn't examine it all that diligently, as he is busy listing off a series of seemingly random words, which turn out to be the names of bands with whom his partner in dialog is not even remotely familiar. He finishes after saying the words “Etcetera, Etcetera, Etcetera,” though it is not clear whether this is to reference an ellipsis or yet another band.

“Look, man, I just don't have the time to digest that much music.”

This receives a quick scoff and an utterance out of the onomatopoeic lexicon.

“It takes time to absorb an album.”

“But there's so much good shit out there.”

“I'm sure there is, man, but you can't fully appreciate an album by simply running through the tracks one or two times. You have to really concentrate. Look at Transatlanticism— or, better yet, Pet Sounds . I find something new every time I listen to either of those albums. That's what makes them great albums. That's what makes great music. Note that I'm saying music here. The artistic aspect of punk is in its performance, its visceral and emotive elements; the actual music the band produces is ancillary. Punk is the antithesis of a band like Yes.”

Before the bartender gives his response, he hands me back my ID. Then he throws out the one thing musicians love hearing from people who believe a pair of headphones entitles one to be a music critic: “Yes?” Sigh. “I just don’t get them.” Art hangs on the wall: collages of newsprint spattered with oil paint and obscure objects (toothbrush, lighter, pack of chewing gum, unopened condom). A very subtle artist has written the words “Plagiarism is art” on one of the canvases — this, of course, begging the question that will determine whether or not the piece operates on an even more pretentious level: Is this is an unreferenced and, hence, stolen quote? The whole scene wavers in dimmed light, which compliments the soporific quality of the late-afternoon sun lazily floating in. Most tables have buckets filled with ice and beer, and each one of them sweats like the walls of a tropical cave. Conversations generate a swelling and pulsing cacophony that is crowded as opposed to unpleasant, kind of like an orchestra tuning before a concert. A small group of black women explode with laughter. A live rendition of “Cross-Eyed and Painless” provides the rhythm section. The bartender is all disdain and crossed arms.

There are perhaps twenty people in the place. Tomas finds little trouble in getting to the front of the bar before I have the opportunity to receive or pay for the beer. “Good to fucking see you, man.” He smiles. “How did the search go today?”

“This is getting to be ridiculous. Today,” I begin as the bartender returns with a bottle of High Life, “—Thanks — today was spent wandering aimlessly around the nineteenth century.”

“What? Where the fuck were you—”

As he attempts to think of a punch line, I respond with,

“Boro Park.”

His smile fades. “Can I get another PBR?”.

Aberdeen appears at our side. “Can I interest either of you in a cigarette?”

“Not drunk enough,” Tomas replies.

“That sounds fucking lovely.”

We're out front within a few moments. Tomas has taken my beer back to the table. “I thought you rolled your own,” I say as Aberdeen pulls a pack of Luckies from his breast pocket.

“I do normally. I guess I was feeling lazy today.” Caesura . “I take it things aren't going too well for you.”

“You could say that. It's a veritable labyrinth of bullshit and bad leads out there. And, no, I still haven't been to Bellevue yet to question that Bates guy.” He tilts his head. “Look, I just can't accept it.”

He shrugs as he flicks the bottom of the pack, which coughs up two unfiltered cigarettes. “What's the story with him anyway?”

“Who?”

“Bates.”

“Random lunatic. That's what Sean says, anyway. According to him, the guy was found in a stall covered in his own shit — that's where the whole connection comes from.”

“Where?”

“What do you mean, where?”

“Well, like, where was he found?”

“In the City.”

“Where in the city?”

“A bathroom in Columbus Park.”

“That's in Brooklyn Heights, right?”

“No, the one in Manhattan by Worth Street.”

“Worth and what.”

“Mulberry, I think. It used to be part of the Five Points — you know, the neighborhood in Gangs of New York . Now it's a kind of limbo for retired Chinese people. They just aimlessly wander around, sit on the benches, feed the pigeons — you know, retired.”

“I see.” He pauses as he lights his cigarette. He holds up the lighter to me. I nod as the tip catches. “Why did he do it?”

“Bates?” He nods. “I don't know. Sean's account is fairly spartan. Apparently he just bolted out of the Earth Room — which was where he was working—, ran through SoHo like a madman, and ended up naked in a bathroom with shit smeared all over himself.”

“And the wall.”

“Of course. And he just kept saying 'Shit is life' and 'Only the living can shit'. Apparently.”