My Life Among the Apes (17 page)

BEATRICE JAMS THE RECEIVER INTO its cradle. She emerges from the back room, reaches around Edison to slide open the back of the counter, plunges in her hand, pulls out a jumbo brownie square, and bites ferociously. “He might as well be sticking knives in me, it would hurt just the same. Look at me — I can’t stop eating. Last week I gained a pound and a half. It isn’t fair. He doesn’t eat like this.”

“Perhaps you’d better not,” Edison says. He reaches out to take the brownie from her as if it were a loaded gun, but a growl from deep in her throat makes him draw back.

“Has anyone ever had a good New Year’s Eve?” she says, mouth full again. “Not just fake good, pretending to have the time of your life. This morning in the car I heard a guy on the radio hoping that everyone’s New Year’s wish came true. I laughed so hard I almost rear-ended the Saab in front of me. What is my wish? What do I want? Do I want to be with Marcus or never see him again? Suddenly the New Year became a big, monstrous thing, like a mouth wide open that I was driving straight into. Move out of my way.”

Her groping hand pulls out a butter tart. “Maybe I’ll try to phone again. He’s had a few minutes to cool down. Anyway, I can’t make it worse.”

The half-eaten brownie in one raised hand and the butter tart in the other, she shoehorns past him. In the late afternoon the café is empty and he can see the early trickle of people on the way home. Alfonso appears, carrying the ladder he uses to change the bulbs that flicker in the “antique” lampposts between the benches. He always comes in about now for his second espresso. Edison begins filling the filter basket with grounds.

“So,” Alfonso says, motioning with a tilt of his head. “How is the boss today?”

“Lots of phone calls.” Edison places the cup, saucer, sugar cube, and small spoon on the counter.

“Don’t tell me, man trouble again.” He takes his rumpled paper out of his back pocket and looks down the list of soccer scores. “I think that women, they go nuts on New Year’s. Like suddenly they can see all the faults of their men with x-ray glasses. Let’s face it, not so many of us can stand up to a close look, you know what I mean? My wife and me, we stay home tonight. After the kids go out, she makes a nice meal and we drink one of my own bottles of wine. Then we go to bed. It’s a promise we made way back. We make love on New Year’s whether we feel like it or not. That way we know it’s at least once a year, eh? And after, if I can’t sleep, I go to the basement and work with my lathe. This is what makes a marriage last.”

Alfonso tips his cup, wipes his mouth with an oversized handkerchief, and nods his thanks. Passing through the doorway, he comes upon the Hand Woman and moves aside to let her pass.
Like a fortune teller or seer, she moves like some mad Cassandra bearing news no one wants to hear
. Not seeing Beatrice about, she sits at her regular table. Edison heaps a bowl with pre-cut fruit salad, giving off a slight odor of preservative, and places it before her. The Hand Woman clutches the spoon and raises a ball of honeydew to her mouth. She too has a smell, a potent combination of earth and old wine. Her hair is braid-like, her chin marked by a scaly rash. He remembers the leather glove that his mother left behind and, pulling it from his back pocket, holds it out to her.

“Perhaps you c-c-can use this?”

The Hand Woman takes it from him, sniffing suspiciously and then rubbing it against her cheek. She fishes up the end of her shawl and places it against a gap between a woolen mitt and a ski glove. “A good fit,” she says, nodding. It is the first time he has heard her surprisingly girlish voice. From somewhere among her folds she pulls out a needle and thread and gets to work.

Back behind the counter, Edison takes advantage of the quiet to eat a sandwich. As he often does at such a moment, he permits himself the pleasure of imagining how the café might be.
If only it were a true refuge of the spirit, a window upon the passing human scene; a place where patrons might read, speak to one another, sit in public anonymity, poetic reverie, or deep melancholy. Where they could ponder, draw, work out elaborate algebraic equations, write novels or letters. A café welcoming to rich, poor, the thinker on the verge of a breakthrough, the sexually disappointed …

His reverie is interrupted by the appearance of an aggressively groomed young man: hair slicked and combed back from the shallow forehead, one understated earring loop, silk tie, and red suspenders, but no jacket. “Hang on a minute,” he says into his cellphone. And to Edison: “You ought to install a fax. Then I could send our order down and not have to wait. We’re doing a presentation. Sure, the food was my call, but who knew they’d eat so much?”

Edison suppresses a grimace and takes the list from the man. He begins filling a shallow box with Danishes and cups of coffee. The man pockets his change, tucks the phone under his ear, and picks up the box. “Yeah, I’m on my way up. Start the overheads.”

Edison tries to slip back into his thoughts. He is just warming up with
chess boards
and
international newspapers on wooden dowels
when he hears a scream.

He looks up to the sight of flying Danishes and fountains of coffee spiralling in the air. Evidently the Hand Woman had monumentally risen from her chair and the young man in suspenders had run straight into her. Now the young man dances about swearing, pulling his steaming shirt from his skin. Edison is already scooping up towels when Beatrice barrels past from the back room. She grabs the Hand Woman by the shoulders. “Vermin! Slut! Get out!” Leaning over the counter, she grabs two fistfuls of change from the register and hurls them. Quarters, nickels, dimes pelt the Hand Woman, ricochet off the glass walls, spin about the floor.

Hunched over to protect herself, the Hand Woman shuffles down the corridor.

The young man says, “I’m a dead man. They’ve been looking for a noose just like this to hang around my neck.”

AT TEN MINUTES TO SIX the shoe store closes its door, followed by the dental office, tobacco shop, hair salon, and tie stand. The stream towards the subway surges one last time and then slowly lessens. Edison dampens a rag and begins to wipe down the tables and chairs. In a moment Beatrice will emerge to clean out the till and warn him to lock up properly.

I’ve read too many books. Who knows what people want? A job is a job, that’s all
.

He gives up trying to remove a coffee stain on a table, something he would never have done before, and slouches back to the counter to lean there and do absolutely nothing. But Beatrice springs from the back room, startling him with her whoop of joy. “We’re going, we’re going! Marcus got tickets to the construction workers’ ball. He had to pay a fortune and he did it for me. He must adore me, otherwise he wouldn’t have. I feel faint. My God, what time is it? I’ve got to go home and peel my face. Just leave everything and close up, all right? You can go any time.”

If he went home now his mother and father would make him help decorate for the party. “I’m n-not in any rush,” he says. “I might clean up a b-bit.”

“Whatever,” Beatrice mumbles, buttoning her coat. “But I’m not paying you for the time.”

“You have a great night, Beatrice.”

“God, I hope so. Maybe the New Year will find me a way out of this subterranean dump. I could sell it. You seem to like it here. Wouldn’t be interested in taking over the lease, would you? Stupid question I guess, on the salary I pay you. Just think, in two hours I’ll be on the dance floor!” She reaches up to kiss Edison on the cheek. “You have a great New Year’s. And close up soon. There ain’t going to be any business. You spend too long in this joint as it is.”

Beatrice is right about business. The doors of the underground mall are kept open for the subway entrance and now, when anyone passes, Edison can see a flash of satin or a black trouser cuff beneath the hem of a winter coat. He only has to summon the energy to close up and make his way home, but a weariness has come over him and he wants only to lean his head on the counter and close his eyes. There is no more thumping music, just the whirring of an overhead fan. A couple, arm-in-arm, notice the lights on and peer in curiously as they go by.
They feel pity for me, I see it in their smiles. I give them someone to look down on
.

Edison begins wiping out the microwave.

At half past eight he undoes the top button of his white shirt and turns off the espresso machine. He is putting a chair up on its table when a tap on the glass makes him look up. Mr. Lapidarius, holding his salesman’s case in one hand and his fedora in the other. His bald head half in shadow.

“Of course you are closing,” he said, coming round to the entrance.

“No,” Edison says, putting the chair back again. He flicks the switch on the espresso machine, catching his reflection which reminds him to redo the top button of his shirt. Mr. Lapidarius eases into the chair, sighs deeply, and places his hat on the table. “A most discouraging day. Perhaps you can make me something a little special.”

“How ab-b-bout an espresso mocha con panne?”

“Con panne?”

“Whipped cream.”

“Sounds just like what the doctor ordered.”

“Coming right up.”

“A shame you don’t have a radio. We could listen to some dance music appropriate to the evening. I was rather a good dancer in my youth. I remember doing the tango once with the wife of the second assistant to the ambassador from Brazil. Ah well, that is a long time ago. Memories, my friend, they save us and persecute us.”

Edison uses a tall glass, working diligently at the machine, piling a turret of whipped cream on top. He carries the drink on a tray along with the only long spoon in the café. Mr. Lapidarius takes an experimental taste and delivers the verdict with a grateful smile. “This is balm for the soul. There was a time when people took pride in their work as you do. But now? Does anyone know how to enjoy himself? The lexicographers will have to remove the word ‘gaiety’ from the dictionary. Do you know how many confetti cannons I sold? Three. There is no more room for the exquisitely frivolous moment. Tomorrow I will spend the first day of the New Year consulting an atlas for a new destination. I have enthusiasm for nothing more. Perhaps you would care to sit down for a while?”

“I’m s-s-sorry,” Edison says. “But now I’m the only one on duty.”

“I understand.”

PERHAPS THE SALESMAN HAS FALLEN asleep, or is just resting; in any case, he doesn’t move from his chair, not even to uncross his arms. As long as he is there, Edison feels obliged to stay open, and makes sure not to disturb him as the hands of the oversized clock pass nine-thirty, ten.

He hears a woman’s clicking heels before he sees her in the passageway. Edison raises his eyebrows; it is the Wasp, who every morning fights her way to the counter without speaking a word. Now her face looks more gaunt, even jaundiced, the mouth drawn further downwards, as she hesitates at the entrance and looks first at the salesman and then the waiter. Instead of the tightly belted skirt, she wears a bare-shouldered dress with a spiral of glittering sequins. Her stockings, too, shimmer as she darts to the table farthest from Mr. Lapidarius, perching on a chair as if it were unclean or might collapse. Edison waits a beat before making his solemn approach.

“Do you have any liquor?” She does not look up.

“I am s-sorry, Madame. This is not a bar.”

“Damn.”

“We do, however, have a bottle of c-cognac which the proprietess sometimes adds to her own coffee.”

“Bring me one like that.” She gives him a dark glare.

“Very good.”

A healthy person would avoid such a look, or even return it in kind. But Edison only draws it in, as if to extract some poison from the woman.
Someone not a true waiter might be injured by those glaring eyes. But my profession demands an acceptance of such psychological displacements. Who or what has made her so miserable I cannot know, but that I should serve as a stand-in is a fate to which I uncomplainingly submit. Hate me and feel better
.

Edison himself feels a little light-headed, perhaps from the sound of his newly stirred inner voice or the mere aroma of the cognac. He puts the cup down on her table by a folded napkin. Immediately the Wasp takes a long swallow; she makes an appreciative sound, like the sigh of one descending into a hot bath. But Edison has no time to linger, for he hears a sort of flapping of enormous wings and turns to see the Hand Woman fluttering her shawl in the doorway. Perhaps fearing that Beatrice is about, she displays herself peacock-fashion. Seeing only Edison, she lets the shawl fall to her shoulders again and, smiling, takes her regular seat. Then she waggles her fingers at him.

Edison stares; she has never called him over before. An instant later he stands dutifully by her side. “May I help you?”

“What’s the drink called with the foam on top.”

“Cappuccino.”

“No, I mean whipped cream.”

“That’s a Viennese coffee.”

She looks up at him and he notices a few wiry hairs growing from her nostrils and chin.
But her eyes, her hazel eyes, must have been beautiful when she was young. At least to somebody.

“I’d like to try one of those.”

“With p-pleasure.”

He hunts under the sink for another real glass, washes it, and makes the coffee. By the time he sets it down on her table the whipped cream is beginning to melt into pale swirls in the coffee below. She picks up the glass with both hands, nails blackened, and puts it to her mouth. When she put it down again a spot of whipped cream clings to her nose.

“Do you like it?”

She ruminates on the question, making a chewing motion with her mouth. “Well,” she says finally, “it doesn’t disappoint.”

OUTSIDE, EDISON IMAGINES, THE DARK of night is changing: growing deeper. But here, in this little underworld, beneath the weight of sixty-three storeys it is always the same, as if time does not exist. Edison’s two patrons sit in their chairs as if in an airport waiting lounge, their flights eternally delayed.
What a shame I can’t do more for them. Ah, fool. Know your limitations. A waiter provides solace; he can’t heal
.

Someone deliberately clears his throat behind Edison. He sees three men in dark coats, bunched in the doorway as if holding on to one another. They are dressed identically — Edison can see dark trouser cuffs and patent leather shoes — but otherwise are in no way alike. As Edison approaches, the gangly one says, “Open, are you?”

“Yes, w-we are.”

“That’s lucky. You wouldn’t happen to know of a private office party around here? Name of Mecklinger.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“That’s a shame. We must have got the wrong floor. Or building. Or name.”

“Or year,” says the short one.

“Whatever the reason, it puts us at rather loose ends. We were counting on the hors d’oeuvres,” says the rotund one.

“I can make you s-s-sandwiches,” Edison says.

“That would do very well.” Only as the three file in does Edison see the battered instrument cases that had been hid den behind them. At the table they remove their coats, revealing bow ties and tails. Edison is already working on their double-decker sandwiches, and when he returns the trio fall upon them ravenously.