CLOSING NIGHT: Saturday, November 25
So my blonde ex-girlfriend
has just pulled a Georgia and awakened her husband at 2 in the morning because
there’s something crucial she needs to get off her chest. “What is it now?”
says the husband groggily. “I’m sorry, I still love Matthew. I’ll be leaving in
the morning.” And I should be happy, right? I should be delirious, right? I
mean, this is the woman who when I touch her skin makes me feel like a kid
eating chocolate for the first time –- all I want to do is hang on to her and
never let go. So I’m ecstatic, right?
ME: (Wrong!) Oh God, does that mean she’s going to
move in with me now? She can’t move in with me, I’m living in a bedroom the
size of a postage stamp, for Chrissakes. She better not expect to stay here.
And she needs ten hours of sleep a night, which means I’m not going to get any
writing time at all if we’re sleeping together. What do you mean “if”, Matthew.
It’s a done deal. She’s leaving the guy. And he’s one of my best friends, so now
HE’S never gonna speak to me again. I can’t believe she’s doing this to me!
And that’s when I wake up
from my post-lunch nap and think to myself, dude? You have no business even
thinking about a social life with crap like that rattling around your subconscious.
And if Gayle (the blonde ex-girlfriend) ever hears about this, she is going to
do the biggest spit-take laugh in the history of laughter.
So with that picture in my
head, and that dream wagging its finger at me like Mrs. MacDonald (my first
grade teacher), I shower, put on jeans and a light blue shirt (to highlight my
eyes), throw on a spring jacket (because the temperature is, like me, stuck in
the fifties when it should be 35), and head into town for my last night ever at
the historic Naughty Pine.
Dave is at the door with
Sarah, catching up on all the downstairs fun he missed, while Sarah looks like she ran a
5K race trying and failing to catch up with some sleep.
SARAH: I was such a mess. I had to tell Richie I was too
tired to do the books last night.
Excerpt from
THE NAUGHTY PINE DICTIONARY
Too tired to do the books, euphemism. 1. I was so smashed I couldn’t count to two. 2. I
was so totaled they had to pour me onto the floor, mop me up with a sponge,
staple my address to it and hand it off to a cab driver. 3. Sarah isn’t here,
Mrs. Torrance.
At the downstairs bar,
Jeff and JP have decided to dress like a couple of sailors in a Jean Genet
novel. This blatant act of Tweedledummery does not sit well with Richie, who
wants everyone to show respect tonight, as if the last night of the Pine is a
cross between an Italian family getting together for Easter and a coma patient
on life support. He’s probably afraid that everyone is going to give away the
store before last call, which means that there will be no store left to give
away at tomorrow’s closing party. And like every Saturday night, he’s probably
also expecting a mob of people who are always going to be showing up in the
next twenty minutes, but who never do because they’re trolling through Alphabet
City or the Lower East Side, which is where they’ve been hanging out since the
smoking ban.
86 Farita
When I get upstairs,
Kenny’s wife Farita is sitting at the corner with their daughter Farah and
another guy who I’ve seen countless times up here since the christening and
cannot remember his name or his relationship to Kenny. (Brother? Cousin?
Friend?) I say hello and slide onto a stool and I feel that tension weight that
tells me I’ve just walked in on a couple who were arguing thirty seconds ago
and are now pretending that everything is Just Fine because you don’t argue in
front of strangers, especially ones who drink and write in notebooks a lot.
Having grown up in a household where anger tainted the air like the smell from
a grease fire, it doesn’t take more then five seconds before my emotional nose
is twitching faster than Samantha’s on Bewitched. (I wonder if little Farah can
sense this.) (Stupid question. Little kids can always sense it. They may
not have the words, and they may not know the language, but a knot in the
stomach is still a knot in the stomach, no matter how you tie it.)
I order the rib eye, which
is one of the specials. It comes up when I’m barely denting my salad; not as
thick as the shell steak but done perfectly. I scarf it down with my first
Guinness and a glass of water, and by the time I’m done there are two guys and
a girl who’s either French or Spanish on my left talking about a gallery show,
and Farita has decided all of a sudden to leave.
FARITA: Let’s go.
KENNY: (WTF?) You’re going?
FARITA: We’re going. Say goodbye to Daddy.
Kenny’s
(friend/cousin/brother) walks them out and comes back five minutes later.
KENNY’S
FRIEND/COUSIN/BROTHER: She’s like
on the verge, y’know.
Her place is taken by two
cute girls who get very dray-matic when Kenny tells them this is the last night
ever.
TWO CUTE
GIRLS: Oh no! This place is so
popular!
KENNY: (to me) Then how come this is the first I’ve ever
seen you up here in, oh, four years of Saturdays? (Laughs maniacally.)
I start making notes for the play, the last set of notes I will ever write in the upstairs bar. I had
been hoping to write a Pine-related play up here in the last couple of months, but I
wound up getting four separate ideas for Pine-related plays and one fantastic
idea for a Pine-related novel, so I tabled all of them
and started working on a sure-fire romantic comedy idea. Which, because it
involves love, is almost impossible for me to write.
MATTHEW’S
THERAPIST: And why would that be,
Matthew?
MATTHEW: Shut up, he explained.
At 7:06, DJ calls. She’s
home and not feeling well; “Gastrointestinal problems,” she says, which is a
euphemism for something I probably don’t want to hear described in detail. She
apologizes to me, to Kenny and to Dave, but she will not be coming in tonight.
“But I’ll be there tomorrow,” she says with assurance.
I hang up with her just as
Kenny gets a call from Sarah complaining of leakage spilling from the upstairs
taps into the downstairs bar area.
KENNY: (I hate doing this) I love doing this.
Kenny lifts up a trap door
to reveal the crawlspace which is just behind the taps, and clambers down into
it. Out of respect, I don’t take a picture. Elijah steps behind the bar to
cover while Kenny checks for tap leaks. “Where’s the sour mix?” he asks as he
starts making a margarita, and I point to a bottle on the rack by the bar.
“They should pay you,” he says. They already do; it’s called free beer.
86 that crowd Richie was expecting
It’s war-movie quiet up
here tonight.
SCENE: Two soldiers in a foxhole
FIRST
PRIVATE: It’s quiet.
SECOND
PRIVATE: Too quiet.
KENNY: You guys want another round?
FIRST
& SECOND PRIVATE: Sure.
There’s a hushed,
dismaying vibe in the air, like whatever expectations we all have for a
blow-out party (like, say, the last night before the smoking ban took effect,
which was a total bash) are all going to be denied. It reminds me of one of
those ancient Greek participles that you insert in a sentence because you
expect a negative answer, the Attic equivalent of saying “So it’s not going to
be an incredible party night up here, is it?” Maybe it’s me, but the knowledge
that this is the Pine’s last night is like knowing that Prairie Home Companion
ended up being Altman’s last film. It gives even the most casual remark a
spooky resonance.
And speaking of ghosts . . .
8 PM. Donna and Tom are up
at the bar, and while they’re talking to Kenny (“We thought you weren’t coming
to the closing party tomorrow. The only reason we’re here is because we thought
you weren’t coming tomorrow.”), a dark-haired guy comes up from downstairs,
sidles up to the bar with a coffee mug, gives us all a look like we just
stiffed him on a $300 check, and then goes back downstairs again. He looks
vaguely familiar, but I don’t place him until Kenny says “They let him back in
here?” It’s the infamous asshole Paul. Elijah: “He came in yesterday, I served him one
and he left.” When I go downstairs a little later to say hello to the staff,
he’s sitting at the bar staring at everyone with Rasputin eyes.
PAUL: Who will be my next victim?
POTENTIAL
VICTIM: Tell you what -- meet me
here next Wednesday.
PAUL: (oblivious) It’s a date.
As I write about Paul’s
appearance in my notebook, Donna looks over and smiles. “I love that you write
everything by hand first. Do you ever just type?” “No, I type after I write
it.” “And you write cursive, too. I love cursive. I have an old-fashioned mind.
An eight-track mind.” “Me too.” “Ka-chunk. It’s the ka-chunk when it switches
over. I always hear that ka-chunk.” And don’t ask me how, but from talking
about eight-tracks we start talking about socialized medicine.
DONNA: What do people in Cuba do when they have a stomach
pain?
ME: I don’t know—see a Castro-enterologist?
This is when a howling mob
of pun-hating peasants brandishing rakes and pitchforks and torches drives me
downstairs, where I’m just in time to see Alexandra enter with her family from
the show she did tonight. She introduces me to her folks and her siblings, and
then heads upstairs. JP pours me a Guinness on the house and I mingle with the
downstairs staff for a few sips.
Glynnis gives me the latest regular gossip.
GLYNNIS:
Hampton and his wife are moving to Nashville tomorrow.
ME:
Whoa.
GLYNNIS:
For good.
ME:
WHOA. Say, does she have an actual name?
GLYNNIS:
Not that I know of.
ME: I
get it—like Honey in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
GLYNNIS:
Wait—Honey’s a nickname, not a name?
ME:
Yeah, didn’t you know that?
86 brain cells
SARAH:
I need some peanuts. I’m hoping to grow back some brain cells.
ME:
They grow back just fine.
SARAH:
Great!
KENNY:
Uh, Matt? No they don’t.
ME: I
know, I figure if she believes it, she’s a goner.
Kenny brings a “coffee”
down to Dave at the door, with more than just caffeine in it, because Kenny is
a Good Bartender. There’s really no need for a doorman tonight; Richie has once
again over-estimated the crowd, which means that Dave is getting paid to take a
night-long cigarette break while drinking whatever mixes well with coffee.
He’ll bitch about it later, but when the Pine closes and he gets another
bar/restaurant job? You know he’ll be repeating the words “I never knew how
good I had it.”
86 Tom
8:54. My tally so far:
four pints, one tequila, 2 Jamesons. I have no idea what Tom’s total is, but
it’s got to be more than mine, because he is so out-of-it smashed that he is
actually lighting a cigarette in the bar.
KENNY: (laughing as he speaks) Ma-a-a-an! What do you
think you’re doing?
(Universal
laughter as Tom sheepishly stubs out his cigarette.)
KENNY: (still laughing) Man, at least wait until we’re
closed up here. Which oughtta be in about 30 minutes.
ME: Not with Richie downstairs.
KENNY: You got that right. (Laughs)
Donna heads downstairs,
and Tom follows her a minute later, or at least he tries to. He’s leaning
forward at such an angle to the vertical that he looks like Buster Keaton
leaning against that tornado in Steamboat Bill Jr. Then he sways and leans
backwards at exactly the same impossible angle, and I flash on all the doomed
passengers of the Titanic trying to keep their balance as the liner starts
tilting upright.
ME: You all right, Tom?
TOM: I’m mad.
He bounces off the server
area, caroms off me, and does a straight bank-shot stumble through the door and
downstairs. I wait for the crash which means he’s lost his balance, but it
never comes, so either he’s fallen very very quietly, or he can do stairs drunk
a lot better than I can. Or the Professor, rest his soul, is making sure that what happened to him never happens to anyone else. The Professor. I ask Kenny to share a shot with me, and we toast the Prof. Then we have another one and toast Tom.
KENNY:
I can’t believe he’s still standing.
ME:
He’s so drunk that if he fell on his face, it would take two days for the pain
to wade through the alcohol and register in his nervous system.
86 The Upstairs Naughty Pine
9:15. Sarah comes up and
breaks Kenny. “I need food,” she says, “what shall I eat?” “Call for that
ribeye, girl,” is my reply. She does, and wolfs it down. She talks about how
chilly it is up here tonight, and not thirty seconds later, Ainslee from
Reservoir raises the temperature of the joint twenty degrees by walking through
the door. She has Samantha Seaton's luck with cameras. Every picture I take of
her makes her look twenty pounds heavier than she is in real life, because
digital cameras are not flattering to real-world curves. In real life she's
like a walking pillow. In pictures she looks like the Pillsbury Dough Girl. I
buy her a drink, and she starts talking about her dog, and how this vet she's
been taking him to for stomach problems keeps prescribing medication for him
that makes him sicker. And to top it all off, he’s in Long Island, so she has
to take the LIRR out there, with him in a cage.
AINSLEE:
And I’ll tell ya—the conductors on the incoming trains are assholes, but the
one on the outgoing train was great.
ME:
Wow! This is the first story you've ever told that doesn't include violent sex!
AINSLEE:
So yeah, I'm done with that vet. Basically I want to fuck him up the ass with a
red-hot crowbar.
ME:
Never mind.
Patrick shows up just as
Kenny is coming back behind the bar. I introduce him to everyone, and he orders
the rib-eye and a Sam Adams. “It's my first time here,” he says. “And your
last,” Kenny replies. “Yeah,” I say, “it’s like somebody air-dropping you onto
the Titanic twenty minutes before it hits the iceberg. We are all going down
with the ship.”
We do a couple of shots
and when Patrick’s eating, I head downstairs to see who's here. Randi waves to me
from the back. British Mike is sitting at the bar near the door, looking
lonely. I go over, clap him on the shoulder, and buy him his next round. "It's
been a pleasure, sir," he says, and there's a finality to that which we both recognize, because we know that we will never see each other again again past tomorrow's closing party. The downstairs is full
of people like that, a human trail mix of regulars and randoms. I work the room, saying hi to the people I
know and giving the staff hugs. The words “End of an era” are repeated over and
over again so much that for the rest of the night, I toast everyone by saying
“Ear of an endah.” None of the comic book crew are here. None of the smokers. None of the Weekly Haiku Contest players. None of the Last Chance Saloon Gang. They have all moved on. Or they don't know. I
envision parallel lines of movement suddenly branching off at right angles,
like lifeboats racing away from a crippled ocean liner. And where am I? In the grand ballroom, with the party people.
As of 10:30, the upstairs
is closing at 11. I have two shots in ten minutes, and sit with Alexandra and her
brother Sam and her sister Emily while Patrick is trading sex stories with
Ainslee. They'd make a great couple, I think, as they both laugh lewdly at
something Ainslee just said. Or maybe not. They're too much alike. Too much
alike gets you double the weight, instead of balance. Similarities always tip
the scale over; what you need are differences to keep the scales balanced. Like
the emotional version of a healthy diet.
The friends that Alexandra
called all show up at 10:45, and take over the corral. There are eight of them,
five male, three female, though it takes me a good ninety seconds to count them
accurately, because (1) they are all moving around so fast I can't keep up with
them and because (b) whiskey and tequila.
At 10:50 the stereo shorts
out with an ear-shattering RORP just as The Clash starts playing. Kenny
apologizes to the thinning crowd and tells them that if they want music, they
can go downstairs and listen to the jukebox before it gets unplugged for the
night.
KENNY:
I’d like to thank y’all for coming out on this slow-ass Saturday night. London
IS calling.
At 10:55, Dan comes up,
and he and Elijah go upstairs to the roof for a smoke. I come up with them. The
last time I was here was with Randi, less than a month ago. It seems like
years. It's certainly been that long in drinking time; I've put away about six
months worth of alcohol in less than five weeks. They ask me where I'm going to
go. I say, “Probably to hell.”
86 Matthew
When I get back down,
Krish is sitting with Amanda, because their shifts from the Knickerbocker are
over, but their shift here is just starting. I introduce them to Patrick, and
Amanda shows her age by getting all girly and dewy when he kisses her cheek. I
explain to Patrick how I know Krish (fellow actor in staged readings) and Krish
how I know Patrick (old day job co-worker), and while Amanda monopolizes
Patrick, Krish and I talk theatre and movies. Which is the most sensible thing
going on at this bar tonight, because out of the corner of my eyes, I can see
Ainslee hurling herself up against every male in the place and licking them from neck to forehead. I start taking incredibly embarrassing pictures (which I
will do for the rest of the night), and then I feel a tap on my shoulder and
turn around. It’s Randi; she’s done for the night and is now a free agent. I
introduce her to Patrick.
PATRICK:
My friends call me Trick.
RANDI:
My friends call me collect.
PATRICK:
Patrick Becket.
RANDI:
(extending a hand) Randi Beth Landis.
PATRICK:
Nice assonance.
One of the hallmarks of
the UFO experience is time dilation—time slowing down to a water-dripping crawl—which
(since time and space are conjoined twins) means that whatever powers a flying
saucer manipulates gravity, because that’s what slows down time—immense forces
of gravity. The same effect takes place in the UEO experience (Unidentified
Emotional Object). When two people meet who have destiny or chemistry on their
side, time slows down for them as the gravity of their encounter, the weight of
what they will experience, stops them cold—and yes, it’s all future weight, but
because Time is relative, there’s no such thing as past or future except as we
experience it. As it experiences us? It can go either way. Or either weigh. But
it all centers on that moment of meeting. There may be shadows to come, but
they will be defined by this brightness; there may be pain to come, but it will
always be measured against this pleasure; there may be loss to come, but it
will never equal the gain of this gift; there may be betrayal to come, but it
will always take second place to this promise.
As the two of them talk, I
see the Devil behind the bar. He motions me over.
I lean over the bar. He smells of sulfur and penny candy. I look him in the eye, which is bloodshot and piercing, and with my next words, I fulfill a lifelong dream. "Shot of Jameson," I say. "And leave the bottle."
THE DEVIL: Let's go.
ME: Why not?
I lean over the bar. He smells of sulfur and penny candy. I look him in the eye, which is bloodshot and piercing, and with my next words, I fulfill a lifelong dream. "Shot of Jameson," I say. "And leave the bottle."
He does, and though I will not leave the Naughty Pine till after 4AM, that's the
last thing I remember all night long.
Alcohol: Guinness (8 + ?) Jameson (7 + 1 bottle + ?) Patron (4 + ?)
Song of the night - 1
Song of the night - 2
Copyright 2016 Matthew J Wells
Epilogue
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