Kristopher Jansma - Why We Came to the City

“Rats to the economy,” William said. “I hope we all end up on breadlines.” George was already half inside the bodega. He emerged in a moment with three cans of Red Bull, which tasted to Jacob like an emulsion of toothpaste and motor oil but provided a jolt sufficient to make them feel like college freshmen once again. This shit’s going to give us all cancer , he nearly said, but realized it wouldn’t have been funny even under other circumstances.

They began at a quiet Greek place called Smyrna, more or less because it was the nearest visible restaurant with a bar in front. William’s AmEx had soon procured them a round of cocktails involving metaxa and brandy, plus an order of braised baby octopuses to share. Jacob grew listless as William and George actually did become deeply engaged in a conversation about the capital gains tax, SEP accounts, and something to do with paying for Sara’s contact lenses with pretax dollars. Boring. Jacob gulped at the brandy concoction but only felt further lost inside the brown fog of his own head. Oliver, Irene, Rabbi Kantrowitz, the scent of his father’s corn-riddled feet — everything he had intended to obliterate came crowding in.

The bartender, a hipster kid in a peasant vest whose mustache and goatee were devilishly curly, brought them all a round of complimentary ouzo shots. They downed them all in one, with a cry of Opa! at the bartender’s gleeful count. Jacob felt the kid’s eyes lingering on him afterward, and so when he excused himself to the closet-size restroom a minute or two later, he wasn’t entirely surprised when the kid followed him in.

“Won’t your friends miss you?” he asked mischievously. The single hanging light in the bathroom was dim against the deep, violet wallpaper but cast handsome shadows over his face.

“Those two?” Jacob said. “They’re not my friends. The Asian guy’s actually a Shaolin monk. Don’t let the suit fool you.”

“And the other one?” the bartender giggled, as he closed his eyes and eased close enough to graze his mustache against the bridge of Jacob’s nose.

“He’s my priest,” Jacob said, breathing in deeply, letting the smell of his cologne fill his nostrils… something vaguely like currant jam that lifted away the smells of the restroom, and the memory of worse smells: of his father’s feet, of Thomas’s puke.

“I was guessing you were Jewish,” he said, opening one eye as if to check.

“I’m a rabbi, actually,” Jacob said. “We walk into bars looking for a punchline.”

He pressed his lips to Jacob’s. The brown fog began to clear as Jacob turned his eyes up to the ceiling and arched his back. Something started up in his guts like a four-stroke engine, throbbing, waiting.

“My name’s Jeff,” the bartender murmured.

“Nice to meet you, Jeff.”

“This is where you tell me your name,” he breathed.

“I–I—” Jacob tried. He tried to say his name, or maybe he did; he was past knowing or caring. With eyes clamped shut, he felt the quickening of his heart and let its echo mix with his own breathing to fill his ears. He felt Jeff’s hands move down over his chest and then lower. As the sensations rose up his spine, he tried to intercept them at the base of his skull, to convince himself that they weren’t being induced by the hands and lips of a total stranger but by someone else.

What came instead was the long-lost memory of a boy named Isaac. Jacob’s first kiss, during swim class at school. Jacob was uncomfortable enough at this but then, unwilled, the image changed in his mind to that of George, and feeling loathsome enough already, he finally settled on the one person he knew he could keep in mind: Oliver. How awful, he thought, to cheat on your boyfriend and then imagine you’re with him. He shuddered, half at Jeff’s touch and half at his own mental use of the word boyfriend . And it wasn’t cheating, was it, when just a few hours ago they’d been discussing the openness of their arrangement?

Jacob began to imagine what might be happening if Sara hadn’t called. If George could have held his shit together a little better. He wouldn’t be there, in the violet restroom of a Greek restaurant with hipster-bartender Jeff, but home. Well, Oliver’s home… which by now felt more like home to Jacob than his own. They’d be in the cradling softness of the cracked leather divan, smelling the faint perfume of the laundry Oliver had carefully laid out on all the windowsills to dry throughout the day. Oliver didn’t trust dryers and preferred to do the washing by hand, as he’d done at school. Up on the wall, the blowup of an old French magazine cover of a gentleman in a silk top hat, rakishly low on his head. Jacob tried to hear the music in Oliver’s study. He’d have on something familiar. The Eighth Symphony… just loud enough to mask the sound of an Animal Channel special on the elm bark beetle, which had introduced Dutch elm disease to North America. Not the beetle’s fault really, but a fungus it carried. Jacob had liked the name of the fungus— Ophiostoma ulmi. Ophiostoma ulmi. Ophiostoma—

It all came swiftly to an end. Jacob swayed, low, and felt everything ebbing away. Jeff moved his head away to one side, and Jacob felt cold. La petite mort , Jacob remembered every time. The little death . What better way to describe it?

When he got back to the table, George and William had moved on from IRAs to the topic of Irene, barely noticing his absence. Jacob quickly got their bill from the other bartender — Jeff was no longer anywhere to be seen — and slid it to William, who signed it and pocketed the receipt wordlessly, while George detailed the trip to Shelter Island and the discovery of Irene’s second tumor. He paused just long enough to bequeath a tall beige umbrella to a shaggy-haired gentleman next to him, and by the time they’d gotten back out onto Twelfth Street, the current surgeries had been outlined, and William was looking green-gilled. They ambled along the sidewalk, past the Strand and down Fourth Avenue, looking for a bar called Queen Elizabeth’s that William had heard about.

Not finding it, they ended up in a Brazilian restaurant, mostly because George had to pee again, and in the meantime Jacob and William had two caipirinhas apiece and made pleasant small talk. Then, in exchange for a scarlet umbrella, their server told them where to find Queen Elizabeth’s, through an unmarked door in the back of an Indian restaurant named Shantih. They had a few drinks there, which all seemed to involve egg-white foam, and after that Jacob couldn’t remember much. A sports bar. Some New Zealanders. George handing out umbrellas like party favors. They had called Sara at some point, to check in. No news. Was George okay? she asked. Depended on what she meant by okay. Don’t be cute. Can’t help it. So she’d be sleeping in a hospital chair all night while they gallivanted around the city? He’d offered to send George back there, and she’d hung up.

Jacob remembered mostly feeling as if his feet were stuck with tar to the sidewalk, although at other times as if he were drifting like a loose barge through Greenwich Village. And he remembered thinking he’d never been happier in his life. He’d long forgotten whatever beef he’d had with William, and whatever worries he’d felt for George. He’d obliterated the name Oliver from his mind and thought he had no father on this earth. Who Irene was or where, or what might be being pumped into her or carved out of her — all were questions he’d forgotten how to pose. That which was Jacob was coming apart.

His last, hazy memory was of standing out on the sidewalk, staring in confusion at the flooded street. He remembered George asking, “Hey, when did they put a river through here?” as Jacob had felt a sopping wetness in his socks. Passing cars were throwing up black waves in confusion.