Last Bender

7.1 It didn’t take long for me to settle into the afternoon shift at Pain et Poisson. The two heavy rushes were at breakfast and lunch, and a diligent, pigtailed waitress worked them both. On a good day she could make 80 bucks in tips. I filled in the afternoon and evening hole, a long, [...]

6.4 There was no point in trying to sleep. It was like living in a bowling alley. I stumbled out of bed and barely looked at the few human remnants of the night before, coasting back and forth as I left. I looked around at the empty street, still deep in shadow and cold. Everything [...]

6.3 Simon and Tammy walked right by us. They stopped a few feet down the sidewalk and backed up. “Hey,” they said. “Hey,” we said. They each had a six-pack of beer under their arms. They looked at each other, we moved up and apart and they sat down. “Help yourself to the beer,” Simon [...]

6.2 There were a couple of fifty-year-old men at the end of the bar and some guys in their late twenties at a table drinking a pitcher and shouting. “I’ll have a frosty schooner of your finest, barkeep,” Sally said when the bored, haggard, middle-aged man wiped up some beer spill from the place next [...]

6. We walked into Washington Square at around 11, having not said a word in many blocks. Drummers drummed, dealers dealt from dark benches, people were hanging out, roller skating by, getting drunk on wine, throwing their asses around. A glob of glue and glitter had adhered to Sally’s cheekbone and was sparkling in the [...]

5.3 Sally, Christopher, Lydia and Joseph retired quickly behind the curtain leaving me and a few others from the party in charge of the house. I decided to bow out of things and left the greeting of people to Joseph’s IA‘PS pals. I sat at the table farthest from the stage reading Hillman’s The Dream [...]

5.2 So I moved back to the loft and soon the production was underway. All night long I struggled to sleep through Joseph’s composition of the musical score. He was also responsible for the sound, and had gone about the task of taping Ubistic storms at sea, cannonade, horse gallops etc., with great deliberation and [...]

5. Saul King came into the store. I was ready to stretch out a bit and get a cup of coffee and something to eat. I keep some rice cakes under the register, and have an electric kettle and tea bags in the back, as well as a water bubbler, just in case. Imagine dying [...]

4.2 I drank a glass of water and ran downstairs, startling Luis, the super’s cousin, who was about six-foot-four and weighed less than two hundred pounds. The angularity of his body reminded me of my father’s. He was smoking a joint with a guy and watching the crap game on the stoop next door. Luis [...]

4.1 Saturdays are slow unless it rains, and there are different regulars. A lot of weekend warriors of course. Fathers dragging their teenaged children down the Negro streets at dawn. A guy with grey hair and a look of pained happiness came in with two daughters, young teens, or, more execrably, tweens. As they adjusted [...]