Stephen Dixon - Fall and Rise

“Please, my change,” I say. “I need it for my phone call.”

“What’d you say to her about me?” he says.

“I’m sorry. The roller skates. But I told her it was a joke and nothing and my fault. It was nothing, Miss, nothing.”

“Don’t tell me — I know what it was. And if you’re not that keen on me,” she says to him, “and have to keep making these vicious cracks about me here, then I don’t care if you’re our best customer ever and also the chief muck-a-shit of New York. I’ll have to demand that you leave and never come back while I’m tending bar and you can run to my boss and cry about it to him all you please.”

“I will,” he says. “I’ll have you fired and get him to put a girl behind the bar who at the very least, if she has to manually drop ice cubes into the drinks, cleans her fingers once a week.”

“You drip. Get the hell out of here now.”

“I’ll go when I’m good and ready, sister, and not a second before.” He finishes his drink. “I’ll take a refill if you don’t mind.”

“Henry,” she yells.

“Then whatever comes out of this thing then,” and he reaches over the counter for what I think’s called a soda gun and squirts water or tonic or soda water into the sink and then into his glass.

I grab my two dollars off the bar, get my raincoat and start for the door.

“Thanks a lot, fella,” the man says, holding his glass up to me in a toast. “I’ll do the same for you with my fat ratting mouth any damn day you want and then worm out when it gets most ticklish too.”

“Any trouble up front, gorgeous?” Henry says when I open the door.

‘Half of it’s on the way out now.”

I turn around. Henry’s tall and burly but not mean looking and is holding a roll of toilet paper and package of paper towels and a broom. “Look,” I say, “let’s settle this amicably. Because I’m the cause or indirectly so of this big absurd whatever you want to call it harmless to-do and I can’t just leave knowing this man might get his head bashed in over it.”

“I think, if intellectual wisdom’s to be king, that you be better to leave now,” Henry says. “No harm shall come to no one at the bar I’ll here say.”

“But if you think you’ve a good grievance against him or she does and he doesn’t want to go, call a cop. At least that way you’re assured nobody will get hurt.”

“As you said, so I say — no man shall, long as the gentle Hen’s here.”

“We don’t want cops when it’s not necessary,” she says. “They’re hard at it with a lot worse than him and don’t like coming in on things we can easily fix ourselves. Now close the door behind you. It’s getting cold and the landlord’s a cheapo with the rent. But if you want to do the most good, take with you your creepy friend.”

“Thank you,” the man says to me, his hand cupped behind his ear. “I didn’t catch all you said, but you spoke up, that was grand, and from now on I can handle myself dandy.”

“Don’t handle anything. They don’t want you here. I’m not wanted also — that’s also clear — but not wanted not as much as you, if I got those nots right, and there’s nothing to be learned or gained or anything from talking back to bartenders and so on. So be smart and pay up and leave with me and we’ll have a drink or coffee down the street so long as it’s not a tough dumpy joint and talk about why there’s no sense talking and fighting back at bars and being big men and strong and all that hooey and stuff and pride and so on and knocking heads and losing teeth and standing on your own two feet and later blacking out after making great fatuous points, though maybe there I obviously speak for myself.”

“Fine, if I agreed. But I don’t because this is a public place licensed for such and no discrimination of any kind, so not somewhere you can be tossed out of indiscriminately. It’s also like home to me or become one I’ve been coming here so long, something pretty Marjorie’s going to learn from her boss Mr. Witcom very soon.”

“Then you might end up getting hurt,” I say and Marjorie says to him “I’ll learn, all right, will I ever learn,” and Henry says “What in the good name are you all mouthing on so much for? The Hen’s got work.”

“If I am then I am,” the man says to me, “because I don’t pretend to be a tough strong man like these two here.”

“Uh-oh,” I say looking up and Marjorie says to him “You calling me a man again?” and Henry says “Now will someone please tell the Hen what he just said to make that man say that about him? Someone. Please. The Hen’s open-minded. So tell him.”

“Oh, did I say that?” the man says to her and smiles for a few seconds and drinks from his glass.

She grabs the glass from him, a lot of what’s in it spills on the bar and their clothes, and throws the rest of it in his face. He stands, takes out a wallet, slaps some bills on the bar, kicks his stool, it’s wobbling on two of its four legs when he kicks at it again and misses but it still falls, grabs his hat and coat off a peg while Henry picks up the stool and slides it back to the bar and Marjorie raises a chair leg she got from somewhere and bangs it against something metal like a cabinet or sink and yells “Get out of here before you get your ears nailed — I’m not fooling with you, get out, get out!” and bangs the metal again and he rushes through the door I didn’t know I was still holding open and outside puts on his hat and coat.

“Don’t go if you don’t have to,” she says to me. “But if you do, I hope no hard feelings to the bar.”

“No really and I only came in for a single coffee or beer,” foot keeping the door open as I put on my coat and think never again in this place even with the pianist playing and a friend.

“Hey,” Henry says, “the Hen’s got a terrific idea with business booming this great.”

“We can’t,” she says. “There’s still the lady in the gentlemen’s can and what if Witty—” but I’ve let the door go and step outside.

Rain’s stopped. That I saw from the door. But sky seems clear, even a bit of moon to be seen, and feels ten to fifteen degrees warmer than when I went in, almost too much for this coat, unbuttoning it. The man’s wiping his face with a bunch of napkins. “I don’t know — how’d all that happen so fast?” I say. Looks at me, shakes his head commiseratively: more my fault than his; in fact it’s all your fault his pointing finger says, throws the napkins into the street and heads downtown. Napkins quickly picked up by the wind and hover a few feet over the street before four drop and one soars three flights more till I can’t see it anymore. There it is — no, just a pigeon if my fading vision’s not mistaken, and I take out my eyeglasses case. “You — catch it!” Wind also must have blown his hat off because here he is hatless chasing one down the sidewalk toward me. I jump to my right, glasses sliding out of the case same time I stop the hat with my foot, pick it up and my glasses and brush it off where I stepped on it and hand it to him. I hold the glasses up. “Oh no.” One of the lenses seems scratched. I smear a little spit on the lens, wipe it dry and put the glasses on. “Oh nuts. It’ll cost a fortune to get fixed.”

“Why? They don’t look cracked.”

“One of the lenses got scratched through both bifocal parts.”

“So? They buff it down in a jiff and say give me five bucks.”

“When was that? Shit. Instinct — didn’t think. Should’ve known they’d fall out. But if I’d stopped to think I wouldn’t have been able to stop your hat from rolling past.”

He turns the hat around in his hands, scratches the dirt off the brim, puts the hat on. “Lose this honey and a lot more than five bucks. Two new pairs of your glasses I could buy with it and a thorough eye exam, so you have my gratitude for a change and what else? My regrets for your spectacles and monetary loss.”