Report From Engine Co. 82 - Dennis Smith [49]
Benny and I were talking about the day’s fires when our attention was redirected by a loud slam. The door of the ladies room at the rear of the place snapped shut. A young girl, about twenty, walked past the men at the table, and approached us. She was not bad looking. She was built nicely, but her mouth was shaped in a peculiarly repugnant way, which implied that her favorite words were “Go screw yourself!”
She walked directly to me, as if she had planned the move. “You’re sittin' on my stool,” she said.
I looked down the bar, empty but for Benny and me. The bartender’s nose was between the pages of the newspaper, and the men at the table were talking amongst themselves. I didn’t know what this girl was up to, but I had drunk enough beer not to care. “Listen sweetheart,” I said, “there are twenty empty stools in the place, but this particular one is yours, right?”
“That’s right,” she answered, moving her body so that one shoulder was lower than the other.
“C’mon, give me a break,” I said to her with a forced disinterest, and looked away.
“That’s my stool, and I want it,” she said.
“Well, you’re not going to get it,” I said.
She turned in a huff, and walked to where the men were sitting. She said a few words to them. All four men got up. Three took their drinks to the middle of the bar. The fourth walked to my side. He smiled slightly, but in that ironic way that told me that he knew more about something than I. And God was he big. Bigger even than Charlie McCartty. “I can vouch for the girl,” he said. “She was sitting right there.”
“Look,” I said, wishing that Charlie was with us, and Billy-o, and Herbert, “it’s really not that important. If the girl wants the stool so bad I’ll give it to her.” The girl smiled, and approached us. Benny moved to the stool at the corner of the bar. I moved over one. The girl sat, still smiling.
“Ya know, you’re a real snotty guy,” he said to me, both hands on the bar. It was going to be hard to avoid a confrontation. I remember laughing inwardly at that understatement.
I tried to ignore him. “We’re in trouble,” I said to Benny.
“I can see that,” he replied. “I really don’t wanta leave my teeth laying on the floor here, but I don’t think we’ll have much choice.”
The man spoke again. “I think I’m gonna break your ass just for laughs. Just as soon as you make the wrong move.” The three others, poised and confident, chuckled. The bartender put the paper down, and became interested.
I looked at Benny as he played pensively with a book of matches. “Listen Ben,” I said, “you don’t have to get involved in this, but I’m going to have to make a move.”
“I’ll be right behind you. Say no more.”
Just then the front door opened. A small-framed man walked in. “Benny Carroll,” he sings. “How are you? Haven’t seen ya in years.”
“Hey,” Benny forgot his name. “How are ya? What are you doing here?”
“I own the place. Bought it about six months ago.” The bartender walked up to the front end of the bar, and listened to the order. “Buy my friend, and his friend, a drink!”
It was over. The God of my grammar school days watches over me. He who lived in the tabernacle on Fifty-fifth Street and First Avenue protects me still. I am safe in fires, sober and frightened, and in bars, drunk and unafraid. My enemy took the girl by her elbow to the table in the rear, making room for our redeemer, the lost friend—the owner.
Yes, life seems to make recurrent statements. I don’t fully understand karma, the three gunas, or the Blessed Trinity, but I know they exist. They operate differently, but their meaning is the same. They control. They lead me up a winding staircase, assuming that with each step I’ll be able to see farther. But I never do. The horizon is the same, and I can only compare it with what I saw at lower steps. It has no profound implications. I only know that I would have been lucky to leave that bar naked—or at all.
Yes, time, if studied, is cyclical. Only at death does it become linear.