Stephen Dixon - Garbage

“Here’s to you, Mr. Stovin and junior boy if you’ve been a bad boy too, a good belt to your jaws,” and I toss an empty beer bottle at the bar mirror and both break. With a bat I smash the mirror to bits, few slivers of it getting in my hand and wrist but nothing great and hurl all the stools around till they split apart and turn over the tables and kick the legs loose and slash the chairs against the bar counter till I’ve nothing left but chair backs in my hands and rip the prints off the walls and tear the frames from the glass and break both of those too and pop the light globes and bulbs with a broom but keep one on in the rear and front and smash every glass, pitcher, mug, jar, dish and plate in the place, heaving whole stacks and shelves of them to the floor and slinging them against walls and across the room. I tip over the refrigerator and with a carving fork puncture its condenser tubes, pull the grill loose but put on back in working order because the gas starts to leak and I don’t want the bar to explode, pull down the liquor cabinets that have been up for fifty years and with a table leg punch their smoked and etched glass in and drink while I’m doing all this and when the whole bar’s wrecked or just about and I’m sweating faucets and exhausted I go outside with a few empty bottles and throw them through the window and door. I want to set fire to the inside but there are four floors upstairs, three just manufacturing lofts with no people in them this hour but top’s a live-in serious artist and her cats.

But that’s enough destruction and I leave the lights on and door open when I walk out. Some people are in front watching and a couple in a car have doubleparked outside the bar to watch too. Ones on the sidewalk step aside when I walk by though I say “Excuse me … Pardon,” to every other one of them because I don’t want to seem dangerous or so insane where they’d be scared of me.

Second I step off the curb they run into the bar including the woman from the doubleparked car to I suppose look for things to drink and take and maybe break more. Phone’s ringing from the booth across the street when I’m walking past, I bet for me but for what? I watch it ring, then quickly turn around to try and catch someone from one of the doorways or windows near my bar spying on me, then run to the middle of the street to look at the windows and doorways in the buildings behind the phonebooth. They’re all closed and dark on both sides of the street and nobody’s in the doorways. I run to the ringing booth, lift the receiver and say “Hello, hello?” but no one answers though the phone isn’t dead. “Come on, someone’s there,” when I hear with the receiver still at my ear a police siren from somewhere not far off. Gets nearer and I hang up and a police car tears down the street and stops in front of the bar. Double-parked car drives off with its trunk open and no passenger. People run out of the bar emptyhanded and some with a number of things. Two men carry out the entire cooking grill, woman with a five-gallon jar of mustard I didn’t know was still there, man with a single dinner plate and several table legs but that’s all he has.

“Drop all that,” the policeman shouts getting out of his car, but they zigzag around him or like the men with the grill walk fast as they can the other way. “I said to drop everything you stole, folks, and I’ll let you get on your way,” when nobody’s in sight anymore except the men with the grill. He goes in the bar. I start back to it to warn him about the gas leak from the grill’s pipes, then think he’ll smell and know what to do with it and there’s a sign on the building’s doorway saying A.I.R. on fifth floor, and head for a nearby diner I know from when I had early morning bar work to do that opens at six.

When I walk in the counterman says “Morning,” and puts a cup of black coffee in front of me though I didn’t even make a sign for it.

“Thanks,” and give my order of cereal, eggs, sausages and toast.

Place is full of workers with those paper printers’ caps on their heads from the newspaper plant around here. Phone rings while the counterman’s pushing my toast down again because I told him I like it a little burnt and he answers it, says “I’ll see,” looks around and says to me “You’re the only one I don’t recognize — you Shaney Fleet?”

“What I do now?”

“Nothing I know and make it fast. This isn’t your personal answering service and my wife’s home sick.”

I go with my coffee to the end of the counter near the door and say into the phone “Don’t tell me, let me guess.”

“You didn’t have to go as far as you did.”

“Doesn’t sound like my old pals Turner or Pete, so who is it? Stovin the man himself? The rolypoly ball of smelly cheese?”

“He’d never have anything to do with calling you directly and certainly not till daybreak if you were someone big. But he was very mad about yesterday. Not only was that a brand new suit never once cleaned, but I shouldn’t be saying this to you—”

“Sure you should. He knows your every word.”

“He knows I’m calling, but not to reveal all the little facts. You humiliated him something terrible in front of his men and those women and that’s what really made him so mad.”

“You one of those two dressier men?”

“That’s not neither here nor there but I’m not.”

“It’s not and you can tell him I’m truly sorry, but is this why you called? To tell me he’s mad? That’s nothing news. He’s also crazy and a big stiff and sonofabitch too.”

“You know, I’m very close to him and you’re angry, so I’ll forget what you said and just say—”

“You his son then?”

“No, Junior’s not around. Has his own personal problems. But I’ll just say that if I could hear it in your voice that you are truly sorry, that’d be good for you for me to report back. But you’re not. Because you have no sympathy for anyone, that’s why.”

“Oh please.”

“It’s true. No sympathy for Mr. Stovin and what the poor guy has to go through. You don’t know how hard he works and his health because of it and what kind of hours and seven days a week and upkeep and payroll to meet. He hasn’t time for fools coming in ruining his clothes and garbaging his place. If you did know all that and what worries he has — work and Junior on down to his two youngest kids’ top college allowances and his mother-in-law’s terminal illness right now and his wife’s depression over it and because of hers, his, you wouldn’t have been so sloppy and rebellious to him, isn’t that true?”

“I would’ve taken it into consideration as they say if he’d’ve taken my situation the same way.”

“What did you lose? Nothing. Lousy apartment? You’re better off. A parrot? Quack quack. So you got your head cracked. So you deserved it chasing and busting the bestfriend’s head of your fellow inmate. And what expenses you have? You’re a single man, always been, with no gambling derangement or women and only an occasional cheap whore. If you developed a drinking problem lately, what better business to be in for it? That bar, even with the extra garbage expenses, would have been way more than you needed for life.”

“Hey, will you?” the counterman says setting down my hot cereal where I sat. “Hang up and eat. You’re tying up the only phone and when another customer comes in, your stool’s taking his place.”

“Give me a little longer — And phoneman, I’m sure you have no name but how’d you know I was here? I’m taking it so casually that you did, but I’m in a diner where nobody should be knowing me and you got me tagged minute after I walk in, just time enough to dial me. Wait, don’t go away — Keep my cereal warm,” to the counterman. “This call’s important, so whatever you do don’t hang up. I’ll pay for the wait and seat space and whatever else you think you deserve,” and run outside. Just as I get there I see fifty feet away a man running toward the corner. “Don’t worry,” I yell, “I’m not going to run and jump you. Couldn’t anyway. Even with your coat on and I’m coatless you’re much too fast, so come on back and let’s shake.” He runs around the corner. I go back in, say to the counterman “Thanks a lot,” and into the receiver “Still there?”