Michael Thomas - Man Gone Down

“Come on, we’re letting all the weather in.”

Squeaky, pretty — I feel like patting her on the head. I take the door instead. She smiles, wide. No braces for this girl: Her upper left incisor juts out. It must constantly poke her inner lip. I look at the tables to keep from staring at her mouth — one row of birch-ply squares screwed onto simple black tubes with four long feet. They’re pushed against a long, tall, blue vinyl banquette. She starts for the counter. I follow.

“Sit,” she says, pointing at the first table. I obey. I stuff my bags under the table and sit on the bench. The tingling that started in my fingers is now more like the presence of a strong pulse, and in between beats they go numb, but not that heavy feeling of frozen or sleeping digits, more like fingers that don’t exist. I hold my hands up and tell my fingers to move. They obey, but now they seem with each motion to wave in and out of existence like reeds in a breeze under moonlight, defying sight each time they bend away.

She comes back.

“You look a little sleepy. Are you hungry, too?”

I try my best not to look at her tooth. “I don’t think so.”

“Really,” she squeaks. She slides a cream-colored card onto the table. It has indigo writing on it. “You’re a big guy,” she points at my tool bag. “You need something to keep you going.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.” I’ve disappointed her. It hurts — the way she closes her mouth, presses her lip against that snaggletooth. “Perhaps in a bit,” I say, but it doesn’t get her smiling again.

“I’ll leave this here.” She pats the menu, whips her ponytail, and heads for the back.

I flex my hands. They seem to want to drift in and out of this realm. I crack my knuckles. The sound phases in and out, too.

Ponytail has left me alone out front. I look to where she disappeared, through a swinging door with no window behind a counter — more like a half-wall topped by butcher block — that has baskets and plates of baked goods. I am hungry. I hear my stomach complain from the place where my knuckle pop vanished. I wonder if there’s a scone in one of those baskets, or a pie on one of those plates. I wonder if ponytail makes sandwiches. I want peanut butter and raspberry jam on wheat, and chocolate milk — no, ginger ale and very salty potato chips. I start to doubt the ponytail girl — her friendliness. She must be a jaded New Yorker — to be so two-faced. But she has left me alone, with the baked goods, with the cash box that I’m sure is hidden behind that little wall. I scan the room for a camera, but I don’t find one. The café is a blend of old and new: white limestone tiles, white wainscoting, blue-and-white-striped wall linen, but the big window with its aluminum mullions points to something else. There’s so much light in the little space — east facing, street level in the early afternoon. The brightness makes me rethink what it is to be old, to be of the old. There are simple pewter sconces — empty — and up in each corner, small speakers. Now I hear the music, a song fading out that had probably been quite loud — strings, falsetto—“. . Just my ’Magination . .” I don’t know how I missed that one. I snap at myself, look out the window to Second Avenue, at the people walking by — students, artists, kids pretending to be homeless punks, a few suits in downtown casual disguise; they all seem underdressed for this chill. Summer’s gone. Don’t ya know it?

Someone picks out chords on a tinny harpsichord, bass kick drum and medium-ride cymbals. Pause. Bass grace note. “I’ll Be There.”

I sit back on the banquette, watch the tireless stream of people and cars go by. I feel the espresso wearing off — so quick it was, so mild — and sleep. I close my eyes, lay my hands on the table and feel them pulse and fade. It spreads, up my arms, down — my back and legs pulse and fade and disappear. I hear Michael’s voice coming from that vacant space.

I’m gone, too. Into that space where everything has been fading. I don’t want to go. I snap my head up, open my eyes as wide as they’ll go, but my vision seems to fade. Michael’s baby-pitched voice, adolescent earnest and manish boy hurt that came too soon. Fuck — that song. I used to hear it in my head while I waited leaning on the windowsill three stories up on visitation Sundays. Lila’s inscrutable hiss. I don’t know if she was cursing him or mocking me, waiting for him to show. He wouldn’t call, either. He wouldn’t mention his absence unless I brought it up when I did see him. “Car wouldn’t cooperate. I got tied up in all sorts of things.”

Something in that space, or the space itself, moves — peels itself away — the darkness of the void. Becomes a shape, slouching in the emptiness. The darkness keeps collecting around it, growing the form — a black blob nowhere.

“I knew you were sleepy.”

I snap up and bang the table, mumbling. “I’m up.”

“Why don’t you go home?”

“No. No.” I try to enunciate, but it comes out as a panicky mumble.

“Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you for so long.”

“Quite all right.”

She lets that little tooth peek out, not a smile, but some relief for her lip. She catches me staring but doesn’t seem to mind.

“Coffee?”

“Oh, yes. Thank you.”

“Are you hungry yet?”

I look down at the menu, but it doesn’t register. “Do you have a scone?”

“I think we might. Let me check. But I definitely have coffee.”

She spins away again. The older Jackson boys back up their brother’s ad-libbing. “ . .la la la, lala la la . .” I try my best to straighten, to be alert, and almost knock over the water glass she snuck onto the table.

She comes back with my coffee and scone, carrying them on a molded orange tray. She serves them formally, lip pulled tight over that tooth. She’s taller than I thought. Her voice diminished her stature, but she is very thin, hardly a curve to her. I want to draw her, capture how that little bit of her lip is forced out, the struggle evident in the rest of her face — trying to hide, ignore, or bear the discomfort. The lights pulse once, inside and out — a collective surge. I’m awake again, with hardly a memory of sleep.

“Can I get you anything else?”

“I’m sorry, do you have paper?”

“Let me check.” She lowers the tray to her side and half skips to the counter. She comes back quickly, shaking her head.

“This is ridiculous,” she places a stack of napkins on the table. “But it’s paper.”

“Thank you,” I nod and pat the pile. She stays, waiting for something I’m not sure of. I look up. “Thank you.” She nods back and grins, though not enough to bare the tooth. She does her hair snap, spins, and disappears through the swinging door.

I take the Sharpie out of my bag and a napkin off the pile. I’m ready. I put the pen to the page and leave it. The point of black ink deepens and expands in the shape of a rough sphere. I lift the pen, circle the sphere, make a few dots out along the edges of the napkin. I get a new one but keep the pen away, creating similar shapes in the air just above it. I write:

Thursday is the cruelest day: scheming; needing; bleeding. You plan your weekend conquests — a shadow projection of the rest of your days — failures. Thursday afternoon we limp to bars after work. Happy — seemingly easy and free. Then Friday breath and bile from protracted happy hours; more drinking perhaps or perhaps sleep. And you know, in your own mind, the dreams of weekend empire are all lies.

I ball up that napkin, stuff it in my bag, and go back to tracing shapes above the page until finally, something else comes: