Michael Seidlinger: The Strangest

“You’re so strange,” says Veronica.

I hear that.

I say what I said before.

I don’t care.

“You’ve always cared before — you just don’t like showing any feeling. But you and I are the same. I just know you better.”

I look at her and she looks at me.

The shift begins when the first customer walks in.

The shift ends and with it everything that had happened during those hours seemed to be marked in a logbook, a record, and closed, set aside. I had already removed myself from the store. I had already begun my commute home.

Veronica’s voice over the car parking lot in a shout:

“Call me when you get home!”

It makes me go over whether or not I remembered to take my phone charger with me. I feel around in my pocket. My index finger taps one of the metal prongs. I look down at my phone.

I have gotten used to walking in a straight line.

I no longer need to look when I walk.

A lot of the time my effort is placed on trying not to think about the occurrences. Those thoughts, always seek more thoughts. And it goes nowhere. Thinking such thoughts just makes it so you can’t do anything but think and think some more. Can’t do anything but think, and that’s not a good way to spend an hour or afternoon.

It’s not a good way to spend the time I have left before work in the morning. This is routine.

I stop at the bodega but I only walk in if I need something.

I don’t need anything.

I make a second stop — Hard Times Café.

Like the fridge at work, the booth in the far corner of the café is where I walk, and it is where I sit. And it is where the café is emptiest, all 37 customers congregating in booths closer to the bar or the bar itself.

I set my phone down in front of me.

Meurks must catch up.

Someone sets a beer in front of me.

They know what I like and that I don’t talk to them.

If I am paying for the beer, for the food, for the time spent at this booth, much like when I use a taxicab, I get to choose the configuration.

I get to set how we socialize, or not.

As frequent customer, I know Hard Times and Hard Times knows me.

We occupy the hour and that is all that is needed.

The bar on Mondays feels so much like the bars on Sundays; there’s this sense that people are trying to buy back some of the hours they lost. They are looking for a second wind. They want to find something new, a change; or some look for everything that used to be. They look for the same.

They look to enjoy something for even one moment before it resets and starts again. And I guess the feeling I’m trying to type out here, the seemingly obvious of any post-workday bar setting, or social setting, is that everyone seeks some way to relax, some way to hush the worries, the stress, the anguish that proliferates rampantly around the work week, making the weekend that much more a pressure to do something opportune, something to make up for all that was sacrificed to make a living.

Social creatures are people sipping lagers.

Today I can type well using the phone.

Some days, I have noticed, are more troublesome.

I can feel the effects of the alcohol after my second beer.

I have 2.5 beers left before I will leave.

Mondays are beer days. Tuesdays are sober days. Wednesdays are liquor days. Thursdays are caffeine days. Fridays are days without Hard Times, where I make a trip around the next corner and see glimpses of the end of the week.

Expecting my third beer, I find something new.

I wasn’t expecting this.

A man sits down across from me. I don’t look up from the phone.

I clear my throat but I don’t speak.

He doesn’t say anything until I glance up at him. He nods, that’s a grin I think. Is it genuine?

Without looking I type but delete what comes to mind but doesn’t register because now we are both looking at each other and if I look away that might imply that I’m lesser, that I am not the one that occupies this booth— personal space is something to be valued; why would a person sit where you don’t want them to sit? Why do I feel this way? I shouldn’t be nervous. It’s in my right to say, without any hesitation, “Excuse me, but I was here first.” From work, use what Zachary the employee said 14 times: “Excuse me, may I help you?” to every loiterer, everyone that really wasn’t a customer and I should be able to say that but I don’t say that … I don’t say that because this has never happened before. When you fail to manage the social situation, what do you do? Starting to get worried because he isn’t saying anything and —delete.

His name is Christopher. Christopher Rios. He says that he just wanted to say “hi” since he always sees me sitting in the booth alone.

“Yeah man, I’m just another regular. Feeling good due to some damn good bourbon.” He adds, “Special on shots of brown liquor — whiskey, scotch, bourbon — tonight, if that’s your thing.”

He breaks eye contact and looks at my empty glass.

“Beer man I see. I respect that.”

He likes to talk but his talking doesn’t fade. I hear every word.

More he talks the more I forget about my phone. Screen goes black, standby, and I don’t like it when I can’t see the screen lit up.

But Christopher is talking.

“Call me Rios. Everyone does.”

I must have called him Christopher.

This is where I would type something. But I don’t.

“So what’s your name, bro?”

That’s a grin. I think it’s genuine.

“Zachary.”

“Right on, right on.” He looks at the bar, at all the activity. I continue to look at him.

He leans back in the booth, slouching a little; he has one arm stretched across the top of the booth, other resting on the table, an inch or two away from my glass.

I look at the phone. Dark screen.

“Yo Zack, this place is a real dump huh? You agree?”

I am put on the spot.

I think about what to say and whether or not I should agree.

I agree.

He approves.

I feel the tension in my shoulders releasing. I exhale, having failed to notice that I held my breath.

I say, “Cool.”

“Yeah, it’s ‘cool.’”

This is where I would type something. I don’t.

Two more lines and this becomes a conversation.

“So what do you do, Zack my man?”

I tell him, “I work at Elite Aesthetics.”

“The place at the megamall?”

I nod once. Not twice, once.

“Right on, right on — all those crazy gadgets and stuff. You guys actually sell a lot of that stuff?”

This has become a conversation.

I think about what I can say here:

I can say — Yes, we do very well.

I can say — Sometimes, but, then slip in something I remember Jeffrey saying about how “sales could be better.”

I can say — Yeah, I guess.

I choose the last option.

He just looks at me.

I find myself saying, “I’m just an employee.”

That makes him laugh. When he laughs, he throws his hands up in the air and hits his palm once on the table.

“Good shit, haha,” Rios says.

I think I’m smiling. I look down at my phone. I see my reflection on the darkened screen. That is a grin, a smile. It is genuine. When I try to figure out where this fits with everything I’ve done at least once, I come up empty. This is not Zachary the employee. This is not Zachary walking down the street.

This is Zachary. Then I get confused.

“Can I ask you another question?”

All I can think about now is — don’t say anything stupid.