Christopher Sorrentino - Trance

… In Cuba the phones are free!

pausing ever so slightly before emphasizing, with the slightest throaty soupçon of Latin inflection, “ All of them!” Yolanda was charmed, thrilled, delighted — but Teko had reverted to form and started issuing ukases the moment he walked through the door. He’d worn her out at last.

Yolanda proposed, casually, to Teko that they rent a second safe house. She explained that she had come to see that it would be very difficultto continue, politicallyor militarily, withoutfirst sorting out gender and authority issues. After all, no black peoplehad turned up at their door to assume leadershipof the group, and Joan, who’d refused to play follow the leader to Sacramento and was living in San Francisco, refusedto formally join them; so by default it was the womenof the SLA who comprised its most inherently oppressedmembers — not a minority classper se, she knew, but as a potential revolutionary classthe most promising. Experientially, the women were leaders, deserving of a spot at the vanguard of revolutionary change. She thought it would be a good idea to establish a separate women’s collectivewithin the SLA to address the pertinent issues.

Teko mimed turning his pockets out.

So the Bakery. Yolanda has thrown herself into the job, typing up notes, making sketches, reconnoitering the area, staying focused on the little Sacramento hideaway she imagines. Can it be that revolution has become a means, an excuse, for her to further herself? If the goal of achieving revolution, and its goals, justify and affirm her sacrifices, then it follows that her own personal fulfillment can serve the revolution. She’s convinced herself of that much.

“I won’t,” replies Yolanda. She moves as slowly as she can through the intersection, the pickup behind, honking furiously, swerving in successive vain attempts to find a path around the smaller vehicle. The guy just blows and blows his horn.

Startled pedestrians raise their heads, hunting for the commotion. Their general look says, This doesn’t happen on the quiet, well-tended streets of Sacramento.

ERNEST SPREAD HIS HANDS wide, palms up. Below them, on the bar, and centered between them was the twenty-dollar bill he had placed there, a good-faith gesture, a fresh bill distinct from the small pile of change from which the bartender had been drawing to replenish Ernest’s bourbon and water, all of which, implicitly, was now the bartender’s personal property.

No soap. “You’ve had enough, bud. You’re not going to give me a hard time now, are you?”

Slowly Ernest picked up the twenty and put it back in his wallet. He rose carefully to go to the men’s room, trying to look dignified and poised as he sauntered to the rear of the saloon. They thought this was drunk? This wasn’t drunk. This was nothing. He could show them drunk.

Heated by a stout riser, the tiny WC was warm after the drafty barroom. Ernest settled on the toilet and all at once felt sleepy. Next thing he knew, someone was rapping on the door.

“Don’t pass out in my men’s room, bud. Come on now, I don’t want to have to come in there after you.”

Ernest knew this didn’t require a verbal response. He reached above him and pulled the chain dangling from the tank, felt the breeze on his ass, and then stood, wet his hands, rubbed the sleepers out of his eyes, and emerged. The bartender was back behind the bar. Two of six patrons who’d been scattered throughout the place had departed. His cigarettes and Zippo were where he’d left them. The pile of change remained untouched. Ernest took his coat from the rack near the door and shrugged himself into it, eyes on the high ceiling, the elegant woodwork climbing toward it, the stained glass over the archway that led into what had once been a rear dining room. Gilded Age refinement, on a miniature scale. Plenty of places like this remaining in Scranton, abandoned to their ruin once all the money had taken a powder. Ghosts. The bartender wore a flannel shirt and drew Pabst and Schmidt’s from the taps, working-class beers for his working-class clientele. Ernest imagined that not all that long ago the man walking the duckboards would have been in an evening jacket, with bow tie. Not that this was a bad guy. He had a feeling for bartenders. He decided to give it one more shot.

“Hear the one about the drunk sleeping with his head on the bar? Bartender comes up, goes, ‘Buddy, you gotta get lost. You can’t sleep here, and you’ve had enough to drink.’ So the drunk sits up, thinks for a minute, then says, ‘Well, how about a haircut?’”

The bartender laughed, polishing the space in front of him with a rag.

“Come on, one for the road? It’s cold as a witch’s tit.”

“Not that cold.”

Ernest winked at him. “You don’t help me out, I’ll be sober when I see my wife.”

The bartender took a shot glass and filled it to the line with bourbon. “Champ, drink this up and then go home. OK?” He rapped twice on the bar with his knuckles. “Good luck. But then that’s it. Gabeesh?”

Ernest’s eyes filled with tears. A guinea bartender felt bad for him. A guinea bartender bought him a drink. A guinea bartender laughed at the expense of his nonexistent wife. For a moment he felt the familiarity of competing impulses, an admixture in this case of sentimental gratitude and murderous violence toward someone who dared condescend to him. For a moment he felt confusion. He hefted the shot glass, unsure whether he was going to throw the whiskey at the man or drink it down. In the end he drank it. No need to prove anything to this wop. He’d been cut off by better bartenders in better bars. He walked out. In a gesture of cavalier magnanimity, he left the change, three or four dollars, on the bar.

He thought maybe he ought to go see Lily. She would be up now, washing her hair to get the smoke out of it, listening to music or watching the late late show. The thought of her, of her little apartment with coffee perking in an old Silex maker on the kitchen table, made him happy. But when he pulled up across from Lily’s apartment building, no lights showed in her windows. He sat in the car for a few minutes, waiting, and then got out, taking a scrap of rag with him. In the front door was centered a small window of scuffed and scratched Plexiglas. Ernest wrapped the rag around his fist, double, and then punched out the little square of plastic, which clattered on the tiled vestibule floor. He reached through and let himself inside. The postman had tossed the day’s mail on the floor, and Ernest stooped and went through it. Nothing of note. He walked into the hallway and up two flights of stairs and then approached the door of her rear apartment, pausing there. The building was silent, except for the buzz of the overhead fluorescent and the hiss of steam pipes. He leaned his face against the door and pressed his ear to it, listening intently. Nothing. He knocked softly, then louder, then pressed his ear to the door again. No noise escaped the apartment. He wished he’d thought of phoning, but a surprise seemed like such a nice idea. So who got a surprise?

Live alone. Die alone. And, incidentally, wait around for a broad alone.

He went and sat at the head of the stairs and lit a cigarette. Who the fuck was this bitch anyway? He considered this lucidly. He knew he ought to feel tired, but instead he felt buoyant. He felt like talking. He felt like fucking Lily. He felt like drinking some more and driving around and then sitting in some brightly lit place eating his eggs at four in the a.m. He felt like going out to the cemetery and lying across the graves, pretending to be dead. He felt like throwing rocks through the windows of an abandoned warehouse. He felt like emptying a few clips at the range. He felt like going to a playground and flipping the swings, so that they wound themselves on their chains around the top of the swing set. He felt like standing on a rooftop, sailing 45 rpm singles away into the night, one after another. His knuckles began to ache. He reached between the banister rails and dropped the cigarette, hearing the infinitesimal sound it made as it landed in the ground-floor hallway. Then he lit another one.