Hatched (11 page)

“Jameson, please.” This seemed like a safe choice. He had once had a Jameson with a girl he’d met casually on the street in Akron, Ohio, when he’d helped her move a dresser from her apartment into a little, blue Toyota pickup truck that she’d borrowed from a friend. To thank him, she had offered him money, which he had declined in favor of a drink. Actually, he was only kidding about the drink, but she took him up on it, and brought him to a bar on the corner of the street, where she offered to pay for anything he wanted.

“Whiskey,” he’d said, and the bartender in that local place immediately offered, “Jameson?”

“Yes.”

So here he was, doing it again, like a Pavlov dog.

“Why not? It had worked the first time,” he thought. The difference here, however, was that on the previous occasion the Jameson was paid for by somebody else, and this time he had to pay for it all by himself. That girl had been cute, but she had left immediately after paying, in cash, for the drink, and he, for some stupid reason, never pursued her. He had, however, thought of her many times since. He obviously should have followed her that day, or at least engaged in some kind of follow-up to her generous gift. What would have happened had he invited her to have another one with him? Why didn’t he? He vaguely remembered that he’d masturbated the morning he’d met her, twice in fact, once in the shower and once in front of the sink, looking out the window at his neighbor who was hanging her laundry out to dry on the line. He didn’t think that his neighbor was that attractive, but there was something about her doing the laundry near him that had produced not only a nice hard on, but a quantity of cum that required two paper towels. So maybe that was why he didn’t ask her to join him. If he ever had to justify that decision, he’d decided that he would have to lie.

“Jameson . . . on the rocks?” Any liquor lasts longer if it has ice in it, he thought.

“Yes, sir.”

“Please,” he replied involuntarily to the formality of the bartender.

He thought back to that girl, as the bartender left to prepare the drink. She had paid for the Akron Jameson with a ten-dollar bill, but he couldn’t remember if there had been any change. If it was close to ten dollars in Ohio, how much would it be in this place? Fuck. Maybe he ought to just . . . He could hear the bartender adding ice to the glass.

“Shit. Fuck it. I’ll just stay here until the place closes if it’s too expensive. Hopefully he’ll finish his shift without calling in the tab, and if it’s exactly $12.00, I’ll pay absentmindedly and then bring him a tip next time. Or if it’s more than $12.00, I’ll just, fuck, leave, and then return some day and apologetically say that I had left in a hurry for some emergency and had forgotten to close my tab.” He felt satisfied by all these plans and turned his attention back to his accouterments: the pen, the notebook, and, moreover, the muddle of his own mind.

The guy at the bar cleared his throat—again. This was really annoying. Jude wondered if it was going to happen again. It did. Now he began to fear that he’d wait for the next one, a habit that he’d developed whenever he was near a barking dog. He hated barking dogs, and as a result, he could obsess and fill hour upon hour not only with the aggravation of the ambient sounds that surrounded him, but with sounds that were in fact not occurring.

“Okay, silence. Here goes.” He raised his Montblanc pen for duel.

The egg. Perfect imperfection. Balanced, strong, impeccable, the very seat of life, flawless, even with the almost imperceptible flaws of mottling upon its delicate yet hardy shell.

“Okay, right. Now where was I going with this?”

Perfect, too perfect. Too perfect.

Jude thought back to Tina. His cock stirred again as he continued writing:

Nature had chosen thorns for the protection of delicate, little flowers, dreadful odors to ward away predators from skunks, ink to blind and frighten sea creatures who prey upon octopi, and strong flavors to dissuade herbivores from devouring oregano or parsley. And for the most fragile being of all, the as-yet-unborn bird or reptile or insect, nature opted for the mottled, fragile, resilient eggshell.

“Where the hell am I going with this? I can’t just start talking about God, it’s going to sound like a greeting card. What ever made me think that I could write an entire monograph about eggs? I need a hook,” thought Jude.

He lifted his head to see if Tina was around, maybe she would provide some inspiration. He peered beyond the divider towards the table where she’d been seated a few minutes earlier, but she was gone. John had evidently lingered, and now sat by himself, in deep reflection. Suddenly, he rose and began to approach the bar. Was he on to Jude? He was staring again, and once again John met his gaze. Jude detected a slight smile, a kind of caustic grin, momentary, the visage of a man who had just shot a wild turkey, and with that single shot, had made it fit for plucking. Then he looked towards the bar, which he approached, settling into one of the tall bar stools near the bearded client. His voice bellowed through the restaurant.

“Robbie?” he inquired. The bartender approached him, ready to serve.

“Yes, sir?”

“Robbie, we’re expecting the health inspector.”

“Yes, sir!” Robbie seemed to have heard this before, based on his demurred reaction.

The guy at the bar cleared his throat and looked over towards John.

“Salmonella is in the news, John,” he said with a grin. Then he cleared his throat again.

“Salmonella, yes, Ted,” said John. “Nasty.” He looked over toward Jude, who avoided his grey-eyed gaze.

“Ted,” thought Jude. Wow, cool name. Actually, this guy does look Russian, and Jewish. Is Ted a Jewish name? Theodore?

“Let’s see.” Ted manipulated his newspaper expertly, from one folded quarter to another, until he found the desired area. “A bacterium,
Salmonella enteritidis
, can be inside perfectly normal—appearing eggs, and if the eggs are eaten raw or undercooked, the bacterium can cause illness. Jesus.” He looked up at John. “Fabergé eggs are immune, aren’t they?”

John smiled wryly and then lifted the glass of cold water that the bartender had placed before him, took a long drag, then rose, pulled a white chef’s rag from his belt, and wrapped it over his hands as though it was a small switch used to encourage a galloping racehorse. “Immune, Teddy. Immune.”

John glanced back at Jude, who was now staring fixedly at him.

“Immune,” he muttered, this time in Jude’s direction, and he smiled before turning and walking back towards the kitchen.

“Immune,” he mouthed quietly, but this time directed beyond Ted, beyond Jude, beyond the restaurant and the city and the state and the country and its many possessions. “Immune,” he said again, this time louder, to the vast expanse beyond the cities, beyond the plains, towards the ocean, and then through the atmosphere and beyond the planet, and towards the entire galaxy. This, as anyone who knew John knew, was certainly a theme.

Ted pivoted in his chair and swung his body towards Jude. “Your drink is safe,” he said, as the bartender placed a coaster with the large dose of Jameson down on Jude’s table. “John is the owner, he keeps everything salmonella-free, don’t worry.”

“Thanks,” said Jude. He was happy for the distraction and anxious to prolong it. “I was worried about it, but even more worried about the
enterI-dies
.”

Ted looked back to the article that he’d read out: “
en-ter-i-ti-dis
.
Enteritidis
. That’s what the egg says when it gets salmonella.”

“Enter I die—dis?” asked Jude, following the joke’s pathway.

Ted laughed, and his eyes illuminated behind his glasses.

“Very funny. I’m Ted.” Ted extended his hand towards Jude.

“Jude, hey, what’s up?”

“Hey, Jude,” said Ted, not even bothering for a response. “There’s a song title for you. Write that down. Are you writing a letter to the bartender? I can probably call him over if you’re in a bad way. Want a double?”

Jude smiled, “No. I’m writing to the hostess.” Shit, he’d not meant to say that. She was closer to his consciousness than he’d realized.

“Tina? The porcelain lady?”

“Sorry, just kidding.” Jude suddenly realized that (a) he wasn’t the only person to notice Tina’s unearthly appearance, and (b) he may have sounded homophobic, not wanting to write to the guy behind the bar. “Maybe,” he thought, “Robbie is gay, especially with a name like that. And maybe Ted is gay.”

“I’ve already written to the bartender,” blathered Jude, to recover from the blunder.

“Shit,” he thought. “Now he probably thinks I’m gay.” This was so ridiculous that Jude almost broke into a smile.

A clink emanated from behind him, and Jude looked over to the bar, just as Robbie lifted his eyes from his labor. He then returned to polishing glasses, presumably to scrub away any chance of salmonella, and had either purposely, or clumsily, knocked a very elaborate-looking, tapered wine glass onto the counter. It didn’t break, but the sound awakened him to his employment beyond the spotted glasses. He looked back towards Jude and said, “Sorry I haven’t gotten back to you yet, dude.”

Jude acknowledged that information with a nod. Silence. Jude was anxious to keep his conversation going with this guy, maybe it would help him with his eggsasperation in writing this text, so he pressed on, turning back to Ted.

“It’s about eggs. I’m writing a story about eggs, for a contract I received.” All of that sounded ridiculous, but Ted was looking over to him with an encouraging smile, so he kept going.

“I’m a novelist. I want to be a novelist. I guess that’s the same thing. Anyhow, I used to be a mover. Now I’m a writer. I write for a living. And I just got my first paycheck. For writing, that is.”

Ted listened intently, but didn’t seem to know what he should respond. Robbie arrived at the table, tray in hand, and set down an ashtray, a little bowl of coriander-flavored egg-white balls, a favorite amongst the locals, and what looked to be a very full glass of whiskey. Jude looked at the assemblage before him with deep concern, because this was looking like a hell of a lot more than $12.00 worth of Jameson, and who knows if all these little goodies were extra?

“I’m definitely fucked,” he thought, and raised his glass in a jest of abandonment towards Ted.

“Cheers!”

“Cheers,” repeated Ted, and drew a long swig then reached into his own little bowl of egg-white delights and popped a few into his mouth before clearing his throat. Jude sipped the whiskey, which tasted as delicious, sweet, earthy, and profound as anything he’d ever drank before—ever. He raised his glass again for a toast: “To liquid paychecks!”

Ted turned back to the bar, grasped his own glass, and turned back to Jude. “Cheers.” He once again reached forth to clink Jude’s glass, this time with remarkable grace, considering that he looked otherwise like a ‘man in a suit’ near Wall Street, one of the hordes of such men that frequented Fabergé Restaurant. When he did so, the chain around his neck dropped forward.

“Cool chain,” said Jude, feeling suddenly on top of the calm world of total satiation that people feel during the first few drinks in a nice bar on a quiet Tuesday afternoon, right before suppertime.

Ted settled back onto the backrest of his barstool and fingered the chain.

“From my ex. An ex. She gave it to me when we split up. We were into bondage. It was to help me remember her, I guess.”

Jude laughed out loud, quietly at first and then, in the intoxication of the moment, with a kind of internal bodily violence, forcing the guffaws out of himself. He felt as though Ted was his new best friend, and he had only had a few sips of alcohol. Ted was smiling. He seemed like a really great guy.

“My ex-girlfriend gave me this pen,” he lied, reaching down for the Montblanc. “It’s a Montblanc. It represents . . .” He was grasping for something great to say to his new best friend, but Ted was already swallowing a grin, thinking, no doubt, about how thick the shaft of the pen was in Jude’s hand. “It represents . . . um . . . the distance I’d have to climb to win her back! Mont Blanc, about ten million feet tall!”

“Now it was settled,” thought Jude. “I’m funny, just like you, and I’m heterosexual, so my talking to you is cool. And I know about Mont Blanc, the mountain that the Romantic poets loved so much back in the era before endless alpine adventure sports, so he knows that I’m not some idiot bum in a bar.” Now they could talk, they’d worked it all out, the tensions and stresses of meeting a guy in a bar were past them, and they had done it without discussing the ongoing NFL draft, underway in Madison Gardens that weekend.

“My college roommate became a writer,” said Ted, easily. “None of this,” he motioned towards the newspaper. “No bonds, no stocks, no housing market, and no consumer price indexes.” He lifted the newspaper up, and then turned it over to reveal a decapitated model in a pair of micro panties and a push-up bra. Even from a distance and in black-and-white newsprint her body looked warm, glistening, full, and, strangely enough, more human than Tina. Ted realized that Jude was looking at the advertisement, and not the graphs and charts and lists of stocks.

“She is the very best reward for reading those numbers,” he reflected, almost inaudibly. Jude looked inquisitively into this strange businessman’s face. “Have you ever noticed that, Jude? Amidst all of these figures, there’s always one figure that matters! And her name is . . .” Ted scanned the page. “Givenchy! Nice name. Clearly an important figure!”

“She keeps going up!” said Jude, wittily. Now he was really proud of himself, then slightly sickened at how stupid that must have sounded. What was going up? Her bra? His penis? “Jesus, I’m insane,” he thought. Ted let it pass.

“Join me?” Ted paused.

“Shit, maybe he thinks I’m bi?”

“If you . . .” Jude had no idea where he was going now, but was saved by Ted sliding off the chair, drink in hand.

“I have a meeting at four,” said Jude’s new best friend. Ted looked at his watch. Perhaps it was a Rolex? It was very fancy, whatever it was.