Letter

We’re dropping like flies.

Since the bar reopened two-and-a-half months ago, two of us had seizures on the job, one cut his hand badly enough we had to close the kitchen early, another got smashed up on his motorcycle and had to miss two months of work.

Yet we keep going. Everybody wants so badly to believe we’re over the hump with this plague, but we just aren’t. Last Friday the indoor mask mandate went back into effect in Chicago. Up till then, only one guy at the bar wore one consistently. He’d lost his father to Covid and wasn’t near ready to take chances. The rest of us pretend it’s 2019 the best we can.

I cover the Wednesday afternoon shift before the mandate. A guy comes in I know from my neighborhood. I don’t care for him, but he’s taken a shine to me——the real out-there ones have a special radar that homes in on my frequency with alarming regularity. He asks what I’m working on and I show him the new book. He buys it immediately. Says he’ll bring me some stuff to read next time he sees me. I ask the server if she knows him and she nods wearily. She made the mistake of calling him by an old monicker in the bar the other day and got a dirty look in return. The man specializes in dirty looks. I have to know the name. SpitSuck. Not what I know him by, but it fits.

The next morning I feel sick. Cough, runny nose, fever, the works. It’s been about two years since I’ve had so much as a sniffle. I forgot what being ill was all about. Over the next days, I leave the house just once, to ride to CVS for provisions and a Covid test. I’m pretty sure this is just a shitty head cold, but have to rule out the elephant that won’t let us all be. The test comes back negative, so I return to watching lousy TV, drinking tea, eating soup, and trying to sleep.

Sunday morning I’m still feeling weak, though I can tell the sickness is passing. I think about calling off work, but the boss calls first to say that a server had a seizure in the bar the night before. I’m not going to miss a shift over sniffles now.

I bike to the bar, put on my mask, and walk the bike in. There are some signs about masks taped a few places and the afternoon guy and the server are masked, but otherwise not much has changed since Wednesday. The problem with the mask thing in our place for customers is that there’s no way to social-distance, and once you sit, you can take it off. A few try to be conscientious and slip theirs on for walks to the bathroom or photobooth or pinball machine, but most don’t bother. It just isn’t feasible.

SpitSuck comes in and asks for another copy of my book for a buddy serving time for killing somebody while driving drunk. He asks if I’ll sell it at cost. Says his friend has started to write behind bars, now that he has something to write about. Tells me the guy’s name and asks that I inscribe it to him. Then he takes out a paperback, some zines, and a CD. Each is sheathed in plastic individually. He says he doesn’t lend out his stuff much, in order to make me feel like I’m being extended a special privilege. Says he’s sure I’ll burn through them. That the writing is a lot like mine. I thank him and put them away.

I feel lousy but get through the shift fine. It’s a slow one, which helps. After cleaning up, counting out, and killing the lights, I gather my music player, book, and glasses to leave, but notice the stack from SpitSuck’s library. Instead of taking it home, I stash it in the drawer where I keep my own books to sell on bar shifts.

For all I know, it was SpitSuck who gave me the cold Wednesday. I sure as shit don’t want my reading time hijacked by him as well. Even if his guy’s writing is exactly like mine.

The Liver Spot sits near a major intersection. The Point Diner and the Chicago Dispatcher used to be in the next building over. But that building was demolished several years ago. The Blue Light is still around the corner but it’s unrecognizable. It’s for yuppies now. Or preppies or normies or whatever. I don’t know. I haven’t set foot inside in twenty years. The Liver Spot isn’t what it used to be either.

Back when Carey would show up for unscheduled sets——acting like he was the Stones playing the Double Door——to an audience of five or six blasé whiskey drinkers who’d never heard of him, the Liver was decorated with mismatched furniture and horrible thrift-store art. It was like a cabaret in a junkyard. The bartender never knew my name and I loved him for that.

It’s austere, minimal now. The old owner sold when he saw the neighborhood changing. The new guy thinks it’s Jazz at Lincoln Center. It’s a “listening room” now. The seats have sleek lines and are profoundly uncomfortable for anyone weighing over 140 pounds. It’s no longer a place to linger. The good whiskey at rotgut prices is but a wisp of a memory. So it goes.

Carey now announces his appearance on Twitter, Snapchat, and IG Live. He can’t blow his horn, but he’ll spin you a yarn if you let him. He’ll do it even if you ask him not to. He doesn’t listen too good. He has an insatiable need to tell anyone within earshot about what once was. Who he used to be. Who he’ll soon be again.

The new guy’s thinking of dropping the Liver part of the name. Sacrilege to old-timers like me. We used to ask each other,

——Gonna be at the Liver later?

Knowing full well the answer was always yes, even when we said no. The new guy doesn’t want any of the seedy associations for his jazz temple. He puts up with a few of us still coming around out of charity or compromise or goodwill. But there’s no love lost and no one who looks like me will attract the crowd he’s after. Carey’s a legend so he gets carte blanche, whereas I’m a nobody, so tolerating my presence holds little benefit.

The bartender——the 22-year-old son of the singer of a popular band I hate——has Stereolab on low. Carey’s holding court tonight. Telling us about the last time he was on Carson or Conan, some late-night show. He describes in vivid, wrenching detail how he fought to stay upright on the bandstand. The sickness was coursing through him. Sending lightning shocks that blinded him every few seconds. When he could see, it wasn’t the clapping studio audience, but vibrating electric-tinted worms in dayglo rainforests. He kept blowing the standard the censors approved before he hit the stage, but it was practically out-of-body. He’d played the number so many times his conscience was only nominally required. He has his other four listeners on the edge of their seats. Out-of-towners. They’re at the Liver tonight after reading up about it in an airline magazine. They hoped to run into an authentic jazzbo. It’s their lucky night. What they don’t know is that Carey tells his harrowing tale word for word in bars and coffeeshops all over town night after night. I don’t tell them. I don’t want to burst the old blowhard’s balloon.

When he’s done talking, he signs the records they brought, works up what passes for a smile for their selfies. He’s exhausted. I finish the last of my drink and help him out to the car. He stopped driving long before the sickness. The last time he was behind the wheel he drove into someone’s living room. He’s been paying others to cart him about ever since. He likes it. Makes him feel important. I have a rolling deal with the Liver Spot guy to bring Carey over in exchange for a break on the bar tab. Maybe that’s why he tolerates my presence. If I can get the horn player here a time or two a week, it ups his cred a bit, even if these tourists hardly ever order more than a glass of his box wine or a light beer.

(another excerpt here)

She doesn’t seem like the talkative type. She murmurs her order——a Belgian ale——then slips the one headphone she’d pushed back to speak back over her ear. No eye contact or acknowledgment when I set the tulip glass on a coaster before her, except to edge a dollar bill back my way.

Then Poppin’ Fresh (not his given name)——my least favorite coworker——bops through the front door and parks himself right next to her. She shudders when he taps her shoulder, then removes the headphones and smiles at him. Looks like I have the front row seat for yet another Tinder date.

He packs away a couple Lites to every one of her ales, but they seem to be getting along well enough. They duck out to smoke or make out or whatever patrons do outside the bar, away from my eyes. It’s an unusually busy Sunday, so I don’t eavesdrop on them too much. Got my hands full with others. But after an long absence——long enough that I move their half-drunk beers and money aside so others can sit——she returns alone.

It’s not like Poppin’ Fresh to leave three-quarters of a can on the bar, much less a $10 tip for his least favorite coworker, so I know something’s wrong. She tells me they got into a fight and he went home. Now I have to know more.

I get the details in fragments because I’m running around, but it boils down to a disagreement about the ethics of meat consumption. She’s vegan. He says he wouldn’t eat octopus because he’s heard they’re intelligent; she says it makes no difference and that we’re all animals, so it’s a question of all or nothing. I say I’m with her, not because I care about eating or not eating animals, but because she scared Poppin’ Fresh away. She doesn’t know our history of bad blood or seem to care much. She’s just happy to have a sympathetic ear.

Encouraged by my reaction, she elaborates on her theories. I won’t try to reconstruct her thread of thought because, even if I listened with rapt attention rather than catching a bit here and there in between pouring shots and beers, it makes not a lick of sense. Something about invalid children having less value than pigs or cows, how Hitler had some good ideas, and that, as a Black woman and vegan, she doesn’t understand why people are so upset about fascism. It’s real stew of inchoate outrage. There’s something about being angry with her mother for giving birth to her without the means to provide a safe and loving home. It’s a lot, but it’s mostly comedy relief to me on a hectic night.

——I know humans are delicious. I eat my cuticles all the time…I’m a cannibal.

Eber and Emma see me laughing every time I’m near the woman and they’re jealous. They feel left out. I promise to relay the highlights later. My tormented friend from last week comes in, but is completely upstaged by the newcomer. She leaves without picking up our discussion on gender identity. I’m thankful, as there’s only so many issues that I can handle though a single bar shift.

Then it’s closing time, and, of course, she’s the last one in the bar. I thank her for coming in and invite her to come back the following Sunday. She looks at me with sad brown eyes and says,

——I’m a cow.