"Ed! Ha ha! There you are!"
"And there you are, Wally! You old son of a bitch, I haven’t seen you in a dog’s age!"
We clutched, pounded each other’s backs like drums. Stares from the crowd had us surrounded. We were invading space, killing quiet time, with our camaraderie. And weren’t we just awful? were the mutters: hair ragged, fingernails long, and our suits -- Sunday best, I assure you -- looking like we’d slept in them. And so we had, but they could all go to Hell.
"Garcon! Garcon! Service, s’il vous plait!
I roared. Ed still pronounced the "c" like a "k."
Can a waiter ooze to a table? This one did, with a bow powered on hydraulics and a smile and voice like used motor oil. "Good evening, gentlemen. I am Henri, your waiter for this evening. Our special tonight is --"
"Steaks!" Ed and I shouted. Hair of the Dog!
"Our special tonight is --"
"Baked potatoes! All the way!" I looked at Ed. "What’s it gonna do, kill us?" It was too much. We were carrying on like Moses in the desert, and the poor waiter was fit to be Job. To Hell with him, too, was the consensus. This was our night of nights, and they didn’t come with any regularity like the tide, no sir.
Our salads came with buttered bread, and we washed it down with iced tea. We filled the restaurant with our talk. Ah, but wasn’t it good to see one another again? Of course! The years had been kind considering, all seven to be exact. And how much things had changed! The list went on. Ed was animated, which is a strange way to put it considering our situation. But his bald head was glowing red with blood, and moist, like the good old days when our lives consisted of work and family and our play of cognac and stogies. All in excess? Perhaps, but doesn’t that make you just a bit envious? We’d laughed for forty years, and we were still laughing now. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
"Current events," Ed said. "Current events, current events, current events!"
My mind fell in with his. "The Yankees."
"The Yankees," he agreed.
"Doin’ it again."
"And again."
"The names change, but a champion’s always the same. Baseball means something when the Yankees are big."
"They’re American."
"Kids don’t understand that. They’d cheer the Blue Jays if they were hot."
"Kids. Wonder how mine are doing right now."
"Forget it, Wally. They’re grown. They’ve got kids of their own, and you’re not a part of it. Forget it."
I forgot it. Henry, Henri -- Hank! -- or whatever you’d call him brought the steaks and the potatoes loaded for bear. "Bloody as hell," that’s how we ate them. I attacked mine with an urgency that went back to caveman days. Back then it was eat it before it ate you, and that half-raw thing was resting firmly in my stomach before it even had a chance to moo. Ed -- forget Ms. Manners! -- cut his up before going on the attack. He ate like a surgeon. Each bite was planned and optimized for pleasure. Ed had enjoyed every bite of food he’d ever taken, and he could make another person enjoy it, too, just by watching him.
Hank was slow in the refill department so we had to give him hell.
"We must be in the ‘no service’ section, Wall."
"Place is like a ghost town."
"Is that a tumbleweed I see?"
Hank was there with a squish. "Gentlemen, please. I have other customers..."
"Is the President here?"
"No."
"Somebody paying with gold?"
"We accept gold cards, yes..."
"Now look, you," I said leveling a fork like Lancelot on a full-out charge. "Our money is as good here as anyone else’s. We eat, you serve. We drink, you refill, and I’m here to tell you we drink like fishes. That’s just so you know. You serve your other customers, but don’t let us fall by the wayside just because you don’t like our style. We pay your wage, sonny, so when you’re serving your pate’ with crackers you keep your eye on our tea glasses. Move that nose you keep stuck in the air, and you’ll be able to see better! And if you see us getting dangerously low -- jump!"
"Well I never --"
"Try it some time. It just might take some of the starch outta your shorts."
Hank slithered back to his hole, and we chuckled.
"The help these days."
"Never good," I argued. "Not even in our day. You gonna eat that?"
"It’s gristle."
"What’s the matter?"
Ed grinned. "Right," he said, and shoveled it into his mouth and chewed.
We ate. We talked. We followed the meal with a sweet liquer served by a sour Hank, and then we talked some more.
"How’s the wife?" I asked, getting a slight head from the drink.
"The same. She no longer visits me except on Veteran’s Day. To think that day of all days, and I never served."
"Maybe that’s how she wants to remember you: a fighter."
"Plenty of fight left in me," Ed boasted with a puff to his chest. "If not much light."
"The old fight?"
"The good fight. Better than old."
I felt a similar burning in my veins. That was the fight all right. The lust, maybe. Yes, the lust for living, the anger at it being cut short. I looked around the restaurant, felt myself connected to the chair connected to the Earth connected to all things in Creation. I sat there, bursting with need and energy in its dark fullness. There was so much out there still left to devour. These people around us... I looked at my neighbors hiding behind hands and rubber trees and waiters’ behinds. They were whispering quiet, snippy gossip about people when they should have been languishing about talking on things and ideas. Bastards. Wasteful, all of them.
"To the good fight," I said, and raised my glass.
"To the good fight."
Clink.
Hank, who’d been slow on service, was quick with the check. "Who will be paying?" he asked with a grin of someone eager to be rid of us.
We reached for our wallets and stopped suddenly. Ed crooked his mouth; my eyes bugged.
"You?" I asked.
"Nope. You?"
I shook my head. "Hank, it seems we’ve left our wallets elsewhere."
Can a snake smile? "Ah, that is too bad, gentlemen," he said, but what he was really saying was, "Victory is mine!"
He escorted us to the kitchen where the dishwater waited.
If life gives you lemons, set up shop and sell lemonade for ten percent over cost. We made the best of the dishwashing, and each time Hank brought us a new pile was cause for celebration. We cheered and joked until we could clean no more, and after an hour of fun and games Hank threw us out the backdoor.
The door slammed shut so loud it almost ruined my punchline.
"And so the goat says to Jesus, ‘Hey, I thought you were driving!’" We roared, and Ed fell, knocking over a stack of milk crates with a staggering guffaw.
"What a night!" he exclaimed.
"Still a night."
"True. What else to do?"
I shrugged. "Plenty, just nothing that involves money."
We got half a block before the city’s atmosphere got us singing. It seemed natural that we’d find a corner well-lit and mostly empty, and indeed we did, the perfect place for a couple of midnight ramblers. We stood at the corner, and we sang. We did Motown, do-wop, showtunes, and even a little rock ‘n roll with a few dance steps thrown in. You name it, we sang it. We even did "Hey, Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" with laughs in between verses just to spite our predicament. And people did spare a few, by the way. They must have thought we were performers or just senile old men who couldn’t carry a tune if it had handles. But under that street lamp’s glow we must have struck some chord with them, for soon we had bus fare for a trip to the park.
There we ran from streetlight to streetlight. Ran, I tell you, because arthritis no longer hurt us. We did "Singin’ in the Rain" sans the rain, and we ignored the looks of the unfortunate few who were casting about the park after dark. The place was dangerous, yes, but who cares? Muggers and thieves attack people who’re scared anyhow, who slouch and try to hide from the darkness. We met it with open arms and took it in, and we did belong. We belonged more than anyone in the world. To hell with muggers and thieves, and to hell with people who were too scared to live in the open after the sun went down.
I held my arms wide and took it all in. "I’m filled to bursting, Ed."
"Me, too, Wally. Bursting. I wish I had the money for a cigar, though."
"It’ll rot your brain," I joked.
"Too late."
We plopped down onto a bench for a breather. A cop car rolled up a moment later, fully intent on killing a good time. The thing about cops these days, they love their cars. They love ‘em so much they rarely leave them.
"Hey, guys!" the officer yelled through his half-rolled window. "Why don’t you two step over here and talk to me."
We obliged. "What can we do for you, officer?" Ed asked.
"Whoa! You’re some old ones, ain’tcha? Just checking to see who was out here this late. Don’t you have some place to be?"
"Nowhere special," I said.
"Where’s home?"
"Not far from here."
"Where?"
I told him.
"You been drinking?"
"A glass of cherry something or other after dinner, but that’s it," Ed replied.
"So what’re you two doing out here?"
I smiled. "Living."
"Enjoying life while it still lets us," Ed added. "It’s a beautiful night for it. We’re just a couple of lollygaggers, sir. The world’s left us behind, but we’re still just sticking around. Too much to see, to much to do, to give it up."
"You like life that much, huh?"
I spoke up. "I read a book once about a fella who loved life so much he decided to keep on living. That’s sort of like us. Maybe we’re already dead, but we just can’t seem to stop."
"A healthy way to see old age, I guess."
"You guess?" I replied. I breathed in deep. "Smell that night air, son. Breathe it in. Doesn’t it smell wonderful?"
The officer breathed in and smirked. "Smells pretty bad to me, dad. Rotten."
"Ah," I said, "but that’s what you choose to smell. Go home tonight, officer, and wake your wife out of bed. Make love to her fierce, then tender. Tell her you love her, and take her out for coffee and doughnuts in the morning. Go see a show. Travel on vacations. See Paris. Rome. Instanbul and Hong Kong before they fall in some mad war. Take walks in the snow, play in the rain. Watch the Yankees play ball, for God’s sake, even if you’re an Astros fan. Go bicycling and fishing. Camp in the woods. Do these things, officer, then come back here to this very spot and breathe. It will smell like cotton candy to you."
He left us alone after that. Crazy old coots, he probably thought, but at least we’d tried. Dawn was starting to pinken the sky when we felt the time was right to say goodbye.
"Wall, it’s been real."
"Yes, Ed. Yes, it has."
We shook hands.
"I don’t want to go."
"I know."
"It’s so cold there."
"But it’s warm here now."
"Yes, and that’s not fair."
"No it’s not."
"I miss you, Wally. It might be okay with you, but without... "
A tear slid down my cheek. "It would be, Ed, but if life gives you lemons..."
"I know, I know. I just wish it would last longer. I want another day, another night, too. But we aren’t getting that, are we?"
I shook my head. "I think this is it. It’s got to last us, I suppose."
"I love you, old friend."
"I love you, too, my best friend."
We hugged under the pines as dawn broke.
Bio:L. Joseph Shosty is the author of a short story collection, "Hoodwinks on a Crumbling Fence," and over 30 short stories, essays, and poems both in print and on the web, his most recent appearances being in Jackhammer, Spacerat, and The Blue Review. He currently writes a monthly column, "A Disease Called Sisyphus," for The Wandering Troll Fantasy Webzine.
E-mail: AvramGhul@aol.com
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