Colson Whitehead - Apex Hides the Hurt

They say you can get used to losing a toe. And he had to agree, it was not up there on the list of truly terrible injuries. Of course his socks looked funny to him. Balance-wise, the toe is not that essential and it had been brought to his attention that his limp was psychosomatic. But there he was limping.

. . . . . . . .

He lingered in the bar after the mayor and the magnate left. They hadn’t yet agreed to his stipulations so he wasn’t officially on the job, and this comforted him. He lingered over his beer. For a time, cobwebby foam in thin tendrils along the inside of the pint glass was entertainment enough. No one else came in. At one point he heard sounds from the registration area, luggage wheels losing the silence of carpet as they hit the wooden floor, and elevator doors opening and closing. Then silence again.

Wednesday, he thought. Two days. He forced himself to admit that he was a bit relieved. It was the first assignment he’d taken since his misfortune and he didn’t know how things would play out once he started working again. He had this suspicion that all he had inside himself now were Frankenstein names, lumbering creatures stitched together from glottal stops and sibilants, angry unspellable misfits suitable only for the monstrous. Names that were now kin.

The bartender ran his cloth across nonexistent stains on glasses, lipstick that had not remained and specks that had not lingered. A streak of gray started at his forehead and fanned out into his Afro in a curly wedge, an ancient and hardwired pattern, in his genes. He watched the man wipe glass, hold up glass to the light to consider his handiwork. The day the bartender discovered that white spray in the mirror, as he was about to perform the daily trimming of his muttonchops, he knew he had become his grandfather, that he was truly his father’s son beyond what the surname said. It was hard not to notice that the bartender had some old-school muttonchops, real daguerreotype shit, something to aspire to. He went up for a refill and the bartender spoke for the first time since Regina and Lucky had left. The bartender said, “You come down here to clean up this mess?”

“I’m here to check things out and lend a hand if I can,” he answered. He sat down on one of the stools.

“What kind of business do you do?”

“Consulting.”

“ Con-sulting ,” the bartender repeated, as if his customer had added some new perversity to the catalog of known and dependable perversities.

“I’m a nomenclature consultant. I name things, like—”

“Hell kind of job is that?” The bartender put both his palms down on the bar. He looked like he was preparing to vault over it and throttle him.

He fell into his standard explanation without thinking. Just like old times. “I name things like new detergents and medicines and stuff like that so that they sound catchy,” he said. “You have some kind of pill to put people to sleep or make them less depressed so they can accept the world. Well you need a reassuring name that will make them believe in the pill. Or you have a new diaper. Now who would want to buy a brand of diaper called Barnacle ? No one would buy that. So I think up good names for things.”

“People pay you for that shit?”

He was at a loss. He’d kept up a good front for Regina and Lucky, but he couldn’t muster the necessary reserves at that moment. His foot throbbed in phantom pain.

Muttonchops looked him over. Finally, the bartender said, “This is my home.”

“Oh, I know that, people live here. They called me in for a helping hand,” he said. Already this job was different. Time was, you christened something, broke the bottle across the bow, and gave a little good-luck wave as it drifted away. You never saw the passengers. But there were always disgruntled passengers out there, like Muttonchops. It was simple mathematics.

To be challenged like this, in this strange town. Might as well have his boss hovering over him, inspecting his every notion. And he was long past having any use for bosses, even before his misfortune. It was unpleasant. De-escalate, de-escalate , he told himself. A sign behind the bar offered, TRY A REFRESHING WINTHROP COCKTAIL — SPECIAL OF THE HOUSE. He pointed. “Uh, what’s that taste like?”

The bartender gave him a look and started toward the bottles.

“Quiet in here tonight.”

The man behind the bar huffed and said, “People are getting in tomorrow for the conference,” then paused for a moment to glare at his customer as his hands tipped in jiggers. The bartender grabbed bottles of stuff he’d never heard of. The labels were yellowed and peeling, the script on them saloon-ready: the kind of stuff they break on the bar at the start of the brawl in Westerns.

“What’s the conference?”

“More people coming in to talk to Lucky about business opportunities. He’s always bringing people in here,” Muttonchops said. “They’re all over the place now.” Inside the cocktail shaker some sort of process was happening. “That’s what I thought you were here for, until I heard you talking to them.”

“Time of prosperity.”

Muttonchops snorted. “That’s what Regina says. That’s what Lucky says.” The bartender dropped a cherry into the yellow drink. The red reminded him of the time he broke open an egg and saw something inside that might have lived. “Winthrop Cocktail,” the bartender said.

“What do you say?”

“I say, I say I’ve worked here ever since I was a boy. Used to have a shoeshine over in the men’s and that’s where I got my start. Like my father and his father. And then they moved out here, behind this bar. They were bartenders behind this very bar and now I’m here, too. My family goes back to the first settlers.”

“Wow.” He took a sip.

“This was a colored town once,” he said. “Founded by free black men and women, did you know that?”

“No.” One look at the faces on the walls of the room told him that it must have been a long time ago. Minor and major Wigglesworths, and all points in between. “I read something about barbed wire,” he said.

“ Barbed wire . That was later. No. This here was founded by free black men. They came from Georgia and set up here and built themselves a new life. It was after that Old Man Winthrop came here with his factory and put it on the map. He came here after.”

He wondered what was in the drink. He’d only had a few sips and his head was already heavy, his neck a little rubbery. He wanted to blame it on jet lag, but he’d only traveled one time zone over. No, he was suffering his usual case of ST. Standard Torpor. This was more human contact than he’d had in months. And also, he had to concede, the Winthrops really had their magic potions down pat.

“You know how old this hotel is?” the bartender asked. In a moment the man’s face had softened. He could no longer say that Muttonchops looked angry, but he couldn’t name the man’s new expression either. “One hundred and thirty-two years old,” the bartender said. “Other places out on the street there, they close. You see them close and some new store opens up in their place. Some of the old-timers, they’ve had that store for years. They can use the money and retire. Wouldn’t sell out for all the money in the world a few years ago but they look up and down the block and they can see what’s coming. So it’s changing. But this place isn’t going anywhere.”

“What do you mean?” For a second he thought the bartender was referring to the hotel, but of course there was something more.

Muttonchops shifted on his feet. “Regina’s a good woman. I voted for her. I’ll vote for her again. Our families, we’re intertwined. But what they’re trying to do. This is Winthrop. Always will be Winthrop. Shit around here never changes. You can change the name but you can’t change the place. It stays the same.”