Michael Thomas - Man Gone Down

“I worked at a bar once, when they first exported it.”

We’re back to feeling good again.

“When did you do that?” asks Maggie.

“When I first moved here. When I was a kid.”

Maggie smiles, not at all bothered that I know how young she is, almost relieved that I’ve recognized the age gap. Perhaps it makes me seem less predatory, more fraternal. She isn’t elegant and beautiful like Diana. She doesn’t seem at home in the little cocktail dress with her hair down. She should be in shorts, at a burger joint, after playing soft-ball in Central Park. She, in fact, doesn’t look as though she should be in this city at all. Her straight hair should be in a ponytail or under the hat of a team she actually roots for. She leans in, eager for more speech. Her dress falls away from her and above her left breast is a tiny, black cross. I suppose if I needed to, I could make her look like Sally — just without the freckles. She smoothes her dress against her flat chest and waits for me to speak.

“What do you do, Maggie?”

She snaps up straight, gestures at Diana. “We’re law students.”

“They have internships at the firm,” adds Marco. I smile. They all smile back. It buys me some time. I try to picture myself, twelve years ago, preparing for life: plucking guitars in the East Village, reciting poems in Chelsea lofts. Even though I know it’s wrong for her to be here, there’s something reassuring about Maggie — her unjaded enthusiasm. I like the wiry girl in the black dress. Diana is another case, though. After the laugh she has gone quiet, but not from shyness. She seems aloof and calculating. And her martini seems to be shutting her up rather than relaxing her — reinforcing her superiority. Booze does that sometimes, make you high and mighty, saucy and silent, while you avoid what is really happening — you’re scared, black, and young and you believe you can’t afford to make a mistake.

Sometimes dinners come down to being merely exercises — accumulating experiences and killing time, until the food arrives, until it’s time to go: filling the time unerringly, without spoiling appetites or hurting feelings. Without playing the fool. To be able to say “I did this” or “I saw them.” Diana stares out over the dining room. I direct the next question at her.

“Do you know each other from school?”

“No, we don’t. We met this summer.” She finally speaks. Her voice is deep and soft and clear. Her mouth, like Claire’s, hardly moves.

“I’m at NYU,” peeps Maggie. I turn to her, nod, and then go back to Diana.

“And you?”

“Harvard.”

“Really. What brings you to New York?”

“I’m from New York,” she answers with a hint of condescension. She turns slightly to Marco, “And the opportunity to work at Jancy.”

“I’m from Boston,” I pat the table. I don’t like my tone — too syrupy, but I’m not sure how to speak. I don’t want to match hers. I don’t want to turn this into another competition, but I don’t know what she wants to hear. I stick with the syrup.

“Do you like being there?”

“No, not particularly.”

I nod.

“No offense.”

“None taken.”

Marco jumps in. “Didn’t you go to Harvard?” The girls turn to me with involuntary curiosity. Diana’s face relaxes for a moment. She feels this and tightens it again. I want to kick Marco, but then I wonder what he knows. There’s very little he does know about me — so I think. I don’t know what Claire, in a weak, confessional moment has put out there in the channels — the gossip that came to him as fact. Whatever the case, he has always been gracious to me and remembered, as much as I’d like to forget it, my birthday. I suppose over the last few years of analyzing starting pitchers and raising discreet eyebrows at cocktail parties Marco has seen the both of us as outsiders. He knows he is. He doesn’t apologize, nor does he deny it. Marco’s an outsider and everybody knows it — even he. What they don’t know is how and why. He’s not one of the men in the storefront social clubs, which, though dwindling, still exist. He’s not a grumpy landlord’s son, nor the corner merchant. He’s not a gangster or a steamy lover. What I know is that he appeared one day in a second-grade classroom in a dead mill town north of Boston and he didn’t speak a word of English. His father roamed the north shore for day work. His mother stitched shoes. He became a millionaire by thirty.

“Yes, I did,” I respond, nodding too earnestly as if to warn them of what’s to follow.

“What house?”

“Adams.”

“What year?”

“I left.”

No one wants to ask the question—“What happened?” So they are silent for a moment. Maggie’s face goes sad, concerned. I don’t like it this way.

“I moved here. I wanted to try something new.”

“Acting?” Maggie’s up again.

“Music.”

“Are you a musician?” I can see her picturing me at Lincoln Center, in my tux, tuning up in the horn section. It seems a shame to mar the image.

“No.” They’re puzzled, but Marco seems to be enjoying himself, the budding story — if you can call it that. To me a list of events, well detailed or not, has never been one.

“I chickened out. I was playing around the city, working construction, too. I went back to school.”

“Where?” asks Maggie.

“Hunter. It’s a city school.” Maggie stays spunky. Diana nods to herself as though she’s figured something out.

“How was that?”

The food comes. My steak, though plated beautifully, looks inedible — a dense slab of flesh. I’m not hungry and my gas pains have stopped. In fact, it seems that my stomach has disappeared.

Marco stops his fork at his mouth.

“Do we need wine?”

The girls refuse. I wait for everyone to begin and then I cut off a piece. I chew and swallow. The meat seems to free fall, as though I’m throatless, returning to its original shape as it does. It finally hits bottom. My stomach comes alive, rigid and unhappy.

“So what do you do?” asks Diana, no longer so formal. I’m not sure why. Perhaps the food and drink have started working. Perhaps she, because I can’t match her resume, is no longer threatened. Perhaps she likes me. Maggie seems very interested, not in my response, but in Diana’s response to me. She’s lost her smile, chewing slowly. Marco is consumed by his food.

“You teach, right?” More of Marco’s faulty intelligence, but it’s okay. I start nodding, not to her question but to some internal beat I can’t seem to refuse. Her syntax is slipping. Her jaw muscles relax. She puts her fork down and spreads her long fingers on the white tablecloth. Her hands are fine and ringless. She gently pushes her palms into the linen. Her calm makes Maggie change — drop the rosy-cheeked smile. They’re not so young anymore. They both exhale and seem to, right there in their seats, become women.

Marco hears the silence and stops. We all exhale together and look to one another. I feel tired and it seems okay to show it. I cover my face with my hands, rub my palms into my eyes as though I’m just waking up. When I take them off my face, Maggie and Marco are eating again. Diana watches me. Everyone has a new face, born from a tacit agreement that the old bald white guy isn’t here: The Irish Catholic girl doesn’t have to pretend to be a WASP; the black girl doesn’t have to out-WASP her. And Marco can stop trying to guess at who’s mocking him — all manner of thing well.

I’m still nodding. And it must seem to her a profound response — that I’m contemplating my years, my road to here. Perhaps I am, but I can’t tell. The nod becomes a slow rocking. She joins me, rocking. Poor Diana, trapped in oak-paneled rooms and towers of glass and steel, never an error in diction, tone, or pronunciation, but never arrogant, never haughty. Poor Diana, some twenty-first century princess. For her sake, I lie.