Letter

I pay the guy no mind the first couple times he comes up. Young man, kind of conceited-sounding, typical. He sits toward the back of the bar with a couple acting like they are on a date. But as the night wears on, he becomes a problem. He begins to linger at the bar, chatting up whoever is nearest. He acts in a way that forces us to watch him. But he isn’t the only distraction this night.

My coworker, Emma, always has stories about people who come in. She knows everyone. Who’s with who; who they used to be with; which one is stepping out on their significant other; which ones are trying some sort of open arrangement. It makes the shifts better hearing her stories. I rarely can reciprocate. But tonight’s an exception. H. comes in with her boyfriend and takes a booth as usual. She doesn’t acknowledge my presence. That’s been her way the last few years, but it wasn’t always.

Five years ago, when I moved to Bridgeport, H. and I had a brief fling. She was an arts journalism grad student and interviewed me for a class. That’s how it started. She was half my age, it was as clichéd as all get out. The troubles began when I told my ex about it. She worked where H. went to school. It never crossed my mind it would be a problem. It was a big problem. My ex took my being with H. as a personal affront, like I was doing it to hurt her. The truth was much worse: I didn’t think of her at all when I went home with H.

I broke it off after a month because H. wanted a boyfriend and I wasn’t boyfriend material. It was just nice to be wanted for a change. She didn’t take the breakup well. She started taking Tinder dates to the bar on nights I worked and making a show of making out with them. It was a different guy every time. I was amused and wondered how much of it was for my benefit. If any of it was, H. didn’t know me very well. We live in the same neighborhood so we’d run into each other occasionally. It was usually cordial but awkward. Then, a year or two ago, she started showing up with the same guy: a dorky mustachioed fellow, much younger than the ones she used to go with. He looked to be her age. I was happy she found someone.

I tell Emma all this as we watch H.’s boyfriend tuck his napkin like a bib into his shirt collar like a senior citizen before wolfing down a basket of tater tots. Meanwhile, our problem customer is firing questions at a woman sitting by herself and obviously not looking for company. She politely answers him when he asks what she does for a living (cosmetics rep) and even asks what he does (used to sell suits, now works some office job.) But she barely makes eye contact, doesn’t swivel her barstool his way, and keeps scrolling her cellphone. He talks and talks, forgetting the round of drinks he ordered and was supposed to bring back to his table. The couple back there is practically making babies now, so I don’t entirely blame him for staying away.

He wobbles his way to the bathroom and the girl he’d been talking to immediately bolts out the door. Then he’s back with his friends, with his shirt off. I ask Eber to tell him to put it back on. Apparently he is showing off a new tattoo. Eber reminds him our bar is not clothing-optional.

Next time he comes up for a round he’s having some trouble focusing. I pour the two beers, then instantly regret it. He takes a sip, then spends fifteen to twenty minutes close-talking a guy at the bar with the same persistence he did with the girl. His target humors him the best he can, though he’s obviously uncomfortable. Then the guy wanders away, forgetting his beers. I empty them in the sink.

He’s back half an hour later to order more, but I tell him he’s had enough. He’s confused, but stumbles away without a fight. He sits back down and watches his friends make out. Then returns to ask for beer again, forgetting he’s been cut off. It’s last call now and I make the first of three trips back to where he’s sitting to ask him and his friends to go home. On one of my visits, after I thank them for coming in, he shoots back, “Thanks for what?” I hesitate a second but walk away. When they finally leave, the whole area where they’d been is covered in shredded coasters, M & M’s lodged in the seat cushions, as if they were squirrels or birds scattering materials around a nest.

On my bike ride home after closing the bar, I see him sitting on the sidewalk by an underpass. His phone is by his side, lit up, blaring music. His head lolls back and forth. I almost stop to see if he’s okay, but keep pedaling.

Marie texted Monday that she needed help. She was getting ready to rent out her second apartment upstairs and needed to get rid of a couch. I told her to give me a couple hours. Mondays are usually a late start because I bartend Sunday nights. It was a warm day, so I took the bike out and rode to get some breakfast in McKinley Park.

A few minutes after Marie, Brant texted that I could move into the ground floor of his worker’s cottage a few blocks away from my current place. The prospect of this move has been hanging over me since last July, when I went to see the place on the most humid day of that summer. It was cool down there even with no A/C on, it was a nice open-floor space, and it wasn’t on the third floor, so schlepping a couple dozen boxes books would be a lot less painful. I was sold. But then nothing happened. I’d bug Brant every few weeks but he and his wife were planning major repairs and didn’t want me settled in only to have life disrupted by the clatter of a rebuild. I’ve been off lease at my place for over four years, so there was no great urgency, but as the months passed it started to gnaw at me. So I gave Brant and Rozzie a deadline and within a week they gave me a move-in date. It was like a great weight vanishing. What felt like a holding pattern now had a definite direction. I’ll be in my new place in May. This is what I was thinking about as I pedaled west.

At 31st and Western I caught the bike lane west and stayed on as it bent past the jail and the criminal courts building, then into Douglas Park, further west until I hit Independence Boulevard. I took that north until it turned back into Hamlin and stopped across from Garfield Park at Marie’s. She’d asked me to help design and print some for-rent flyers a few weeks back,sending me some photos I assumed were stock footage. But when I asked if she wanted them replaced, she laughed and said they were pictures of the actual apartment. Now I can confirm she was telling the truth: the place looks more or less like her photos.

We unscrewed the legs from the sofa and pushed it to the back door. I angled it onto its side, then, with some effort, squeezed it out onto the landing. While Marie carried the cushions down to the dumpster, I maneuvered the sofa down the first flight of stairs, then stood it up and pivoted it to point it down the next flight. On the second floor landing I was huffing and puffing. This was too much work for a thing going in the trash, so I asked Marie to make sure the coast was clear down below and tipped the thing over the railing. It landed with a dull thud, seemingly intact. It was the first piece of large furniture I’ve ever thrown off a balcony. It was a load off, not unlike having a move-in date after nearly a year of waiting.

We dragged it out the back gate and positioned it on the edge of the vacant lot that borders the alley behind Marie’s building. It’s strange to see a piece of indoor furniture outdoors like this. Out of context. But in my mind I could see people sitting on the sofa out here, making this lot, where a house once stood, back into a living room. We went back upstairs and I changed a lightbulb in the rental unit that Marie couldn’t reach. We struggled with a curtain which had wobbly screw, to no avail. Then, a woman arrived to look at the place. I went down to Marie’s place to hang out with the dogs while she showed the apartment. She told me she had a good feeling about the woman when she came down a few minutes later.

I won’t have any furniture to throw out my third floor windows, but will have lots of artwork I’d rather not bring to the new place. So if you ever wanted one of my pictures, this is the time. No reasonable offer will be refused. Hell, most unreasonable offers won’t be refused either.

Drop me a line.

—I illustrated an essay about intimacy problems and Toulouse-Lautrec, as well as one about as one about LA and early 20th century composer George Antheil. 

The plan was to drive to Wisconsin on Monday afternoon, but Kelly got sick, so we left a day later. She still wasn’t feeling well when we were leaving, so I drove. I knew it was serious because it takes a lot for her to relinquish the wheel. That woman loves to steer.

We stopped at the supermarket for dinner stuff, then picked up the dogs at Lynda’s. The last time I was up here it was early fall, but when I went into the house it felt so familiar. Not quite home but not not home. The bed upstairs where I sleep has the mattress we picked up from a lady a few towns over. There’s artwork I’ve given Kelly over the years scattered here and there. There are traces of me in this place.

We have our routine. We sit on the couch each working on our own thing, we walk the dogs, run errands, watch movies, drink, eat, talk. There’s few people in the world I love more than Kelly. We’ve been there for one another through a lot.

Last time I was working on the layout of the Soviet book; this time, it was the new one set in bars. As part of the research, I’ve been reading books set in taverns: George Ade’s The Old-Time Saloon, Finlay Peter Dunne’s Mr. Dooley’s Philosophy, but especially Joseph Mitchell’s Up in the Old Hotel. With a gun to my head, I’d say that Mitchell’s book is my favorite book. So rereading it has been a joy. To do so at a dear friend’s house is the cherry on top. 

On Wednesday we went to Evansville, the town Kelly lived in the first time she moved to Wisconsin. While she was with her insurance agent, I sat in a cafe and drew out the window. The place was empty after a couple left, having finished their lunch. The two women behind the counter wore black chef smocks. The place was new and you could tell that it was opened with lots of ambition and dreams. Could it make a go of it in this tiny town? Who knows. It was the day after Mardi Gras so I order the king cake; no prize inside but it was delicious all the same.

After Kelly was done, we drove by her old house because she wanted to see how much further it had sunken into the ground. I’d helped her move into it about twelve years ago. 

Friday we drove to Milwaukee for a Flat Five show. While Kelly and her bandmates were getting ready, I read some more Mitchell. Then I watched the crowd filter in from the merch table Kelly has set up. I like selling records and t-shirts at their shows because it makes me feel useful and gives me a good perch to listen, while spying on the audience. The band has a diehard fan base, but I could tell there were a lot of newbies this night. Most were converted after two or three numbers. One woman told me how grateful she was to hear joyful music at such a dark time in this country. I couldn’t argue.

On the way back to Kelly’s, we tried a couple exits before finding a gas station cheeseburger for my dinner. I would’ve been fine going without; it’s a privilege to help Kelly do her thing.

The painting I painted this visit out the kitchen window is the third in my series of views from Kelly’s house. I’ve now done north, south, and east. Only west remains. I hope that after I’ve done that one, she’ll ask me to come back. I’ll start another series. Maybe something from upstairs. Who knows?

I’d even be willing to sit through another episode of Project Runway. That’s how much I love visiting with the woman who lives in a house by a river in a one-horse town in Wisconsin.

—I reviewed a great new story collection set in the now-demolished Stateway Gardens housing project in Chicago and illustrated a story about the rapture coming to a small Southern town.