Martin Seay - The Mirror Thief

It’s a long room, lit from above, with an aisle up the middle and small octagonal tables along the sides. The whitewashed walls are painted with words and phrases in jagged black letters, and elsewhere hung with stretched canvases: splashed-over, squiggled-on. A narrow counter topped by a copper espresso machine juts partway across the far end; an old stove, a buzzing refrigerator, and a bespectacled man in a coffee-stained T-shirt slouch behind it. The hipsters from the boardwalk are scattered through the room: musicians in the back, blond girl against the left wall, giving him a heavy-lidded stare. Nobody else seems to notice him. Coils of cigarette smoke rise from every place at every table. The milky air seems gradually to solidify into the white globe lamps that hang from the ceiling.

A drumkit is set up in front of the counter. A young man in bluejeans and a sweater stands in front of it, facing the tables, reading aloud from a folded-over notebook. He clutches a pencil in his right hand, as if he’s just written the words he speaks. I see the holy city through your eyes, Herman Melville , guy says. This new moonlight is your moonlight, Herman Melville, and my feet always find your cadences .

Poetry, Stanley thinks. Then he wonders why he thinks this. It’s nothing like the language in The Mirror Thief , and apart from a few lines he used to hear the 42nd Street grifters quote to rope in Columbia kids, The Mirror Thief is the only poetry he knows. So how come he’s so quick to peg this stuff as verse, and not just as some hipster talking?

The guy in the sweater goes on for a while — ranting and jiving about Buddha and Zoroaster, Sputnik and General Motors — and Stanley tunes out, scans the room. The tables are three-quarters full; people are still filing in, shouldering by to find seats. Stanley squints through the smoke like he’s blindfolded with waxpaper. At a table by the drumkit he spots an older man in hornrims and a Donegal cap; he’s maybe sixty, twice the age of anyone else in the room. He’s listening to the poet, nodding along. A fierce-looking character with a black beard and thinning hair sits to his right. The chair across from him is empty.

Stanley nudges Claudio. Wait here, he says. I’ll be back.

The path to the empty seat is blocked by the guy reading, so Stanley steps around him, crossing in front of the drums. The poet looks up from his notebook, shoots Stanley a baffled glance, stumbles to find his place again. Stanley glides into the empty chair. The bearded man glares at him, bunches his heavy eyebrows, and looks away.

Stanley leans across the table toward the older guy. Excuse me, mister, he whispers.

Shhhhh, the older guy says, putting a finger to his lips. Tut tut.

The poet has hit his stride again; he’s shouting something about towers and pyramids, about a new Renaissance, about Atlantis rising from the Pacific. People in the crowd cheer and shout go go go , but it sounds phony to Stanley, rehearsed. He taps his heel on the smooth concrete floor as the guy builds to his big finish and the hipsters all snap their fingers in applause. Then he leans across the table again. Excuse me, he says.

The old guy gets in a few more slow snaps before turning to Stanley and arching an imperious eyebrow. Young man, he says. How may I help you?

Are you Adrian Welles?

The eyebrow sinks, and the guy’s face knots in irritation. The bearded man stifles a laugh, looks at the ceiling. My dear young friend, the old guy says. I am Lawrence Lipton.

He says it like Stanley’s supposed to recognize the name right away. Over Stanley’s shoulder, somebody’s lurking: the poet, wanting his chair back. Stanley gives the old guy a thin smile. Okay, jack, he says. Do you know Adrian Welles?

Lipton stares at him for a second, doing an affected slow-burn, then raps twice on the white formica and pushes himself away from the table. I know everyone , he growls. He looks past Stanley and calls to the poet. Here, John, he says. Take my seat. I need to have a word with the musicians.

Stanley’s rising to intercept him when the bearded man gently but firmly takes his arm. Wait up a minute, he says. Adrian Welles comes in here sometimes. He comes to hear the jazz canto.

Is he here tonight?

Not yet.

What’s the jazz canto?

Lipton, circling the table, comes to a stop in front of the drumkit. He turns and spins in a slow circle, spreading his arms like a stage magician or a gameshow host. His open hands seem to indicate the room, the scene, the entire waterfront. This! he says. This is the jazz canto!

The bearded man holds out a thick, square hand to Stanley. I’m Stuart, he says.

Stanley, Stanley says.

So what do you want with Adrian Welles, man? Are you, like, his long-lost son or something? Here to claim your legacy?

I read his book, Stanley says. I want to meet him.

He published a book?

Across the table, the poet is lowering himself into Lipton’s seat. Who published a book? he says.

Adrian Welles.

Never heard of him.

He lives in the neighborhood, Stuart says. Larry knows him. He read some work for us right after the café opened. You’ve seen him around. Seems square at first, but if you butter him up a little, he’ll really beat his chops. Oh, Stanley, this is John.

The poet warily offers him a hand. Stanley looks over just long enough to take it.

You dig Welles, huh? Stuart is saying. Who else do you like?

I don’t understand your question, Stanley says.

Poets, man. Who else do you read?

Stanley looks down at the tabletop. It’s dappled all over with candle-wax, chipped around its edges, blistered by cigarettes in a few spots. He looks up again and shrugs.

Stuart strokes his beard, watching the smoke swirl past the light globes overhead. I like Welles all right, he says. I think he’s sharp. But I gotta say, man, his verse is strictly off the cob. I mean, I dig T. S. Eliot just fine. The Waste Land is crazy. But it’s just reactionary, man, to keep chasing the old possum’s tail. All these old farts — Patchen, Rexroth, Adrian Welles, Curtis Zahn, shit, even Larry sometimes — they all got their boots on, sure. Their heads are in the right place. But they’re screwed up under the ribs, man, and they don’t even know it.

Near the center of the table, partly obscured by the base of a thick red candle, a lozenge of formica has been cut away to expose the woodpulp beneath. Someone has glued a three-cent RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN AMERICA stamp in the cleared area and inked a ring of symbols around it: stars, moons, crosses, ankhs, sigils. They all seem familiar, but most of them Stanley can’t quite place.

Their kind of poetry, Stuart says, it’s like cool jazz, dig? Same situation. Cats get so good at articulating the problem that they forget to look for the solution. And the whole scene just turns into a death trip. Poets today, we gotta pick up where Eliot left off, with what the thunder said. Shantih shantih shantih , man.

John jerks a thumb toward the entrance. Speaking of death trips, he says, look who just walked in.

Stuart pans toward the door. Stanley tracks his gaze. A small blackhaired woman stands there, wearing a lost and sleepy expression. A man with a beaked nose and a simian brow looms behind her, his hand on her neck. The man’s skin is a uniform gray, the color of boiled meat; tiny eyes flash in his otherwise lifeless face. The girl is slim, wide-hipped, broad-shouldered — pretty, though she won’t be for long. Even through the haze Stanley can make them both as junkies. Together they look like a ventriloquist act.

That’s not him, Stanley says. Is it?

Welles? Stuart laughs. No, man. That’s, like, the opposite of Welles.