Vanhattan

Tucked away in the greyish, water-stained facade of what was, at one point in its 100-year history, some sort of hodgepodge collection of offices now converted into tiny storefronts (first floor) and outrageously overpriced condominiums (all others), and nearly lost to the shadow of block-long dilapidated green scaffolding that had been loitering on the sidewalk unaccompanied for who knew how many months, as most all buildings in Brooklyn Heights could be found, squatted a miniscule restaurant front, noticeable only by the neon signs in the window declaring “Budweiser” and the like for anyone who passed and happened to look up from their phones or their feet. Its framing was structured out of dark, near-rotted wood and long, tinted panes of glass, which, despite their frequent replacement, somehow managed to each collect and maintain a thin sheet of grime like a prized possession. There was no name to be found anywhere, no awning with some quaint title emblazoned in big, bold white letters, no cute chalk scrawl on the sandwich board planted outside on the sidewalk, no hastily printed announcement in Times New Roman taped to the door (often could be found there instead a plea for dishwashers, or a refusal of bathroom-seekers, in the aforementioned manner). Patrons simply called it “the Bar”.

“Should we stop in the Bar for a quick drink?”
“Let’s run over to the Bar during lunch, I need vodka after that trial.”
“I’m gonna pre-game at the Bar, and then I’ll meet you in the city.”
“Who’s working the Bar today?”
“I love the Bar.”
“I hate the Bar.”

A neighborhood watering hole, seemingly only visible to those who’d grown up in the area and developed a type of high-functioning alcoholism that gifted them with the Sight, the Bar was not only a bar – a much larger neon sign than those advertising domestic beers stretched across the top, yet still somehow lost in shadow, reading “AND GRILL” directly to the right of the other three identifying letters. Customers could indulge in a daily menu of decent enough American bar fare: burgers, chicken wings, chicken tenders, chicken sandwiches, chicken nachos, amongst other non-poultry items with which one could avoid the occasional outbreak of bird flu (more concerns were bandied about regarding the freshness of the Salmon in White Wine Garlic Sauce, but no one had yet to complain of food poisoning – although it could be that no one had ever ordered the salmon). When the head cook, a short, skinny, kind man from Mexico, caught a commanding flight of fancy, the specials board would nervously propose ceviche con tostones, roasted red pepper flatbread with a balsamic glaze, lobster bisque. No one ever ordered those, either. But everyone ordered the lentil soup.

The Bar was a place of comfort drenched in the greasy stench of frying oil and stale beer, a familiar spot that seemed to retain its old New York attitude despite the steady pillaging of its surroundings, somewhere the lawyers and law students could gather and smoke and snort and drink and be mocked by the very judges presiding over their cases (also smoking and drinking); the cops of the nearby precinct could track down and usher home pretty (and not-so-pretty, depending on the drunkenness of all parties involved) women (or men, but who’s watching), in the interest, of course, of the latter’s safety; the erratic local lushes could come and dance wildly and chat even more wildly; the sports fans could bellow at one of the seventeen televisions lining the walls, or maybe two or three all at once.

A handful of sad sacks staffed the Bar at any given time. One or two in the kitchen, one at the dishwasher, one or two to take food orders, one to run said food, one to hold down the door, and one or two, depending on the night, to tend its adopted namesake.

One of these sacks went by the name of Sam.
Sam worked at the Bar nearly every night, and more than one day, for a total of fifty-five hours per week, on average, making drinks and catering to the majority Brooklynite masses from behind the bar counter, and had been doing so for no less than five years and two months. Sam saw a lot of people, and knew nearly half of them on first- (and last-) -drink basis. The other half were mostly easy guesses.

On one particularly common night, a slow, wintery, Monday evening in early December, with the icy wind hissing through the cracks in the windowsills and doorframes to cut the dusty radiator heat hovering throughout the long, near-empty room, and a flurry of sleet sheeting down from the sky to make the satellites – and therefore the Knicks game flashing across the TVs – falter, and only one waitress, a young Jordanian girl named Nadia sneaking puffs from a watermelon vape at the server station, Sam stood propped against the back counter, book in hand, foot on the sink, hoping that the words on the pages of said book would make the next five hours slide by marginally faster. This was something Sam often did on dead nights, and as long as there were half-full glasses in front of the two just slightly overdressed, seemingly tourists seated at the far corner of the counter, and enough ketchup and salt and pepper for a public defender named Todd in the middle picking at his basket of fries, and regular Captain-and-sprites snuck up to the kitchen, no one ever said a word to it.

Upon turning to page 394 of the night’s reading material, the door to the outside world swung open, letting in a gust of arctic air that blasted the couple sitting at the corner of the bar so that they shuffled around to stare resentfully at the source of the draft, crunching their shoulders to their ears and wrapping their arms around themselves in an effort to ward off the sudden cold. Determined to finish the current paragraph uninterrupted, Sam glared firmly at the book in hand, while the new arrival huffed and hunched and hobbled down the bar.

Finally, when the huffing and hunching and hobbling had paused, Sam placed the book page-side down onto the back counter, missing a puddle of spilled vodka by an inch and cracking the book spine, and looked up.

A short man, Black with a shock of grey hair haloing the crown of his head, in a contrasting mixture of fabrics – thick, dull, puffy winter jacket; dirty and dubiously stained cotton sweats hanging half on his hips; holey woolen socks and bedroom slippers – was staring back at Sam through squinted, bloodshot eyes, mouth half-open, teeth sporadically situated and multicolored. An overwhelming aroma of piss, sweat, and semen wafted from the man over the counter.

Nadia puffed on her vape and glanced at Sam.

“What can I do for you?” asked Sam.
“I want a beer.” His voice was as rough as his weathered skin, and forced out with a blast of the last bit of air in his lungs.
“Sure,” said Sam, “what kind?”
“I want a beer.”
“All right.” Sam’s foot dropped from the sink to the bar mat below. “It’s eight dollars.”

The man dug into the tatters of his coat while the other patrons cast sidelong glances in their direction, bodies leaning subconsciously away despite a distance of at least twenty feet between the nearest and the man and Sam. Sam simply watched the man dig.

“I lost my wallet,” rasped the man. “But I can pay you later.”
“Unfortunately we don’t hold tabs.”
“I just want one beer, can’t you – just gimme a beer.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“Fuck you, then,” he spat.
“Well, sure,” said Sam.

The man hemmed and hawed a bit, looking up and down the bar counter. At the people pretending not to stare, at the ceiling, at the sticky wooden floor.

“Can I use the restroom?”
“First door to your right.”

The man shuffled further down the bar in search of the corresponding bathroom door, watched by the entire room, and disappeared inside with the light thunk of wood swinging back into its frame.

Sam sighed, muscles quivering uselessly, and turned to Nadia. “Are you okay?”
She shrugged and puffed again. A thin, silver stream of sickly, sugary sweet blew over Sam. “You?”
“I’m fine.”

The bathroom doors were thick and prevented any suspicious or embarrassing sounds from penetrating the rest of the Bar, and the tension in the air lessened with his noticeable – but temporary – absence.

Sam wandered over to the rest of the customers.

“Doing all right?” Sam asked them each in turn. “Can I get you anything?”

Another beer here, a ‘no, thank you’ there. The couple at the end of the bar inquired as to Sam’s state, and the husband said, wide-eyed and slump-shouldered like he’d had a long, long day, “He really reeked, didn’t he?”
Definitely tourists, then.
“I mean, do you get that kind of thing a lot?”
“It happens.”
“What do you do, do you call the police? Do they cause trouble?”
“I’m surprised at how many of them there are,” gushed the woman, also wide-eyed, but her body was upright and tight, and the double Tito’s and soda in her hand shook slightly (but to be fair, it was her fourth in just over an hour). “You see ‘em all scattered on the sidewalks and everything, just such an eyesore. You know I heard on the news –”

The door opened again.

“Man, that’s cold,” said the man, turning into what must have been only the second gust of cold air since their arrival.

Another Black man, much larger and dressed in hoodie, noisy windbreakers, and sleek red Nikes to match the snapback on his head, walked in.

“Hey, what’s up,” he said, and held out his fist for Sam to bump.
“Hey, J,” said Sam.
J nodded at the man and wife, who were staring at him with subdued shock and awe. He really was quite large.
“Good evening,” he said.
“Good evening,” they echoed instantly.
“How are you doing tonight?”
“Good, thank you,” they chorused.
“How’s it been?” said J, walking away from the couple down to the service well, Sam trailing parallel behind the counter.
“Quiet,” Sam said. “But hey, I’ve got a guy in the bathroom. He’s homeless, tried to buy a beer off me, obviously no money. It should be fine, but I’ll let you know if I need you to guide him out or anything.”
“Sure, no problem,” said J. “I’m gonna go say hey to the kitchen, I’ll be right back. Who’s up there?”
“José.”
“Cool.” Flicked his eyes back over his shoulder with a reasonable tilt to his head. “You know you could just give him the beer to go.”
Sam fixed him with a look. J shrugged, carved a weary half-smile into his lined face.
Then he trotted with surprising agility up the stairs to the landing where the kitchen was helmed.

With arm propped on the well, Sam waited, watching the flickering TV in the corner with glazed vision.

After no less than ten minutes, the man shuffled back out of the bathroom, unbeknownst to him – or possibly he simply didn’t care – dragging a trail of toilet paper with his left foot. Instantly the tension returned to the air already thick with oil, vapor, and heat.
The man said nothing, but trudged back down the Bar. The couple, Nadia, and Sam surveyed his progress without a word.

Then, suddenly, upon reaching Todd in the middle of the counter, the man lunged and shoved his hand, pale and cracking and ragged, bitten nails, into the basket of fries.
Todd dodged out of the way instinctually, his arm raised to protect his face –
Nadia swore and lowered her vape –
The man shoved a handful of limp, undoubtedly cold fries into his mouth and went in for another –

“J!” shouted Sam, careening around the bar.

The thundering of J’s hulking figure descending the steps soon met the sound of Sam’s grappling with the man, who was rasping out a litany of cusswords to make the frustration in Sam’s chest jealous.

“Sir, you have to leave – sir, you need to –”
“Get off me, don’t touch –”
“– back away from the fries –”
“I said – don’t – touch – me – get your damn hands off me –”
“– you have to exit the establishment –”
“– I said –”
“– or I can just call the cops, then –”
“– I said don’t FUCKING TOUCH ME!”

J pulled Sam away by the shoulders. Then he stepped up to the – considerably – smaller man.
“All right. Let’s go.”
“Don’t you touch me, neither.”
“I’m not gonna touch you. But you gotta go.”

The man, ushered out by J’s calm, but no less intimidating, presence at his back, staggered the rest of the way to the exit, muttering mutinously under his breath. At the door, he craned his head, sat like a dried prune covered in silver fungus on his neck, back to meet Sam’s eye. Then, with an almighty gagging sound, drew in and spat on the floor.
“Let’s go!” J said firmly, and then the man was gone.

This time the pall over the air lifted fully, despite the toppled basket and squishy fries scattered all over the floor, and the small stream of toilet paper by the door.

Sam ordered a second, untouched serving for Todd against his protestations, his assurances that all was well, that he’d had enough anyway, that he was watching his figure, that he had to get home, that he was just watching what he could of the spasmodic Knicks game.

J returned soon after the fries were delivered (and happily accepted), shaking his head and brushing the sleet from his hoodie, as Sam approached the tourists once more.

“All good?” Sam asked, over the shoulders of the clearly-shell-shocked husband and wife.
“Yeah,” said J. “Just had to watch him a bit, give him a bit of the eye, you know.” Which he then reenacted for Sam’s benefit. “Make sure he didn’t try to come back in.”

Through the heat fog and grime on the windows, Sam could see the man wandering, alone, aimless, down the middle of the empty street, the orange glow from the corner street lamps casting a long, distorted shadow behind him as he shuffled on, still muttering and gesturing, if less emphatically, no less passionately.

Sam nodded and looked down at the couple. “Can I get you anything else?”
“Just the check, please,” said the man.
Sam delivered their bill, which the man paid with a sturdy black card from within a gleaming leather wallet, and bid them good night.
“Thanks, you, too,” said the man, as his wife bundled up in her sleek beige peacoat. He dropped a twenty on the bar top – Sam swept it away with a quick ‘thanks’ – and then led his wife out with a hand at the small of her back. They kept their heads down, inclined them further and murmured a good night to J as they passed, and then they, too, had gone.

“I’ve got a burger coming down,” said J after a second, shoving his hoodie sleeves up to the elbows and settling down at a table by the door. “Just call me, I’ll go get it.”
“I can bring it to you,” said Sam, and then returned to the middle of the bar, where the book rested patiently splayed out on the rotting wood. At the well, Nadia sunk onto a stool, puffing away on her vape, and above it all, the Knicks game finally gave out as the precipitation overcame the satellite, and all the TV screens went black with signal loss.

Sam leaned back against the counter, foot back on the sink, and lifted the book back to eye level, thinking with relief that at least it’d be an easy night.