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by Rob Harvey "I am an a r t i s t," she says, just like that, as if a bum pissing his name onto a warm square of concrete is anything otherwise. The old man with the fake leg is emboldened by his drink and leans over the counter-top, struggles to be audible over the ambient noise of the bar at 4pm on a Wednesday. "I used to sell peanuts and Coca-Cola at the A's games after the war," motions up to the Yankees and Dodgers game on the third screen from the left," only way I could get in to watch!" He pauses to chuckle to himself. "Fella I worked for then wore a ring so big you could fit it over your pointer and middle finger. Shit you not!" I give him a moment, hesitantly waiting for the continuation of the story and, finding nothing more forthcoming, nod in agreement and mention that it was an unpopular war. Someone else steps through the doorway, propped open, and heads over to load the jukebox. We all hope he loads a hot one and I hope I make it home before I wind up having to call Amanda awake at 3am for a ride. "Well at least your pinky and ring finger." With this resolution to the story coming from the blue I hold up my pinky and ring finger where the old man with the fake leg can see, analyze them closely for quite a while, and finally nod in a perfected, feigned fascination. I lean to the fly sitting on my opposite side and disrupt her as she stares through the bottles and drywall and clear through to outside at some unknowable thing that most certainly is not there anyhow and reiterate for her that it was an unpopular war. Amanda paints a picture of me but in place of where my head might be is a pickup truck because I got drunk one night and told her that my head is a pickup truck, explains to her friends the complex nuances of what I might've meant that so compelled her to art this one out for the world. Something about the choking grasp of gasoline-powered engines, about societal strangulation, about the weight of the load at the back of my mind. Her name is signed down there, next to me with a pickup truck for a head. Signed there, existing there. Sometimes when I drink too much, I can remember precisely what I'd meant. He pulls out a wooden leg with a Raiders sticker on it, slaps the thing up on a stool with some pride. "Made it all the way through Vietnam without losing a thing but my innocence. Nope, didn't lose this leg until my fifties and to diabetes at that." He pauses to chuckle to himself; I look over the stinking thing propped up now for the ninth time this month. For the ninth time this month, I almost ask him to take it off. To finally show me something real to take this never-ending edge off, let us all see your stump. Let me see what you have left behind for what I've left behind is not so visible, old man. For the ninth time this month I chicken, I never ask. Yanks for a solo homer. Amanda's done alright for herself: she's taking the long way to a four-year degree, has some parents with pockets deep enough to afford her a Midtown apartment and an artist's life in the interim. A r t i s t. It's not the Bay, she always sees fit to remind me, but you make do with what you've got. She's wrapped so in these Goodwill sheets like they're the only thing holding her together, gaudy things, once other people's things, maybe even purulent discharge things. With much fanfare, she had bought them with what I assume is her allowance. She asks me how I'd do it and I tell her I've always dreamed of deep water, sinking under the waves as the light grows dimmer down the columns, struggling before the unfamiliar takes hold...she cuts me short, laughs me off as a romantic. Tells me she'd just shoot herself a good one through the brain. "I'll shoot you a good one through the..." She has just gotten a rescue cat and now we both see it shoot across the dimly lit room until it is underneath us, underneath the bed. When she refers to it, it's never a "cat" but rather always a "rescue cat." Not the half-assed Netflix original character its named after, but a "rescue cat." One or the both of them will curl up on my chest as I sleep and take a little of my soul with them. Good riddance. I can feel myself sinking under the waves, find I can visualize the light growing dimmer down the columns if I really try. Bleeding through a proper chickenheart, pitted against the new smell of cat piss rising from underneath the bed. It's a rescue, she's an a r t i s t, and I'm just meat, albeit immortalized in the other room in a portrait sans my own head. I'm strangling Amanda with a charmed look on my face and she, you've got to love her, has an bountiful smile on her own face as the last of her life is forced from a tightened esophagus. But now I've awoken and she's holding a gun to my head, a gun just like she might kill herself with one day, and I scream fourth not with sound but instead only breath rancid as cat's piss. She's telling me she must take a trip to California. Meat. I awaken from that dream as well and she's over the top of me with the lamp on and a concerned look holding to her face. I am on the couch and can't tell who is trying to kill who anymore. The clock reads 4pm Wednesday night and her face reads with a quiet fear I've never seen on her before. I recall falling asleep with her in the bed on Tuesday night, the cat darting underneath us, but can smell that I certainly went to work this morning. Sitting up, setting my hands on my lap; cross them, and set them down again. I look into her startled face and ask," What?" Scream what, whisper what, uncross my hands until they're as they had been. How long has she been stapled to the couch all wrapped in those Goodwill sheets she's dragged from the bed even though its July, complaining of a ghastly cold? By the light of the lamp and the sun filtering in from the blinds I can tell she is worried. Somebody on a gameshow broadcasted upon the first television from the left wins $20,000, prompting the old man with the fake leg to ask me what I might do with such a sum of money. I tell him I'd probably use it for a down-payment on a little house and he, unsatisfied, further pesters, asking what I might do with a million dollars. I think a second, sense the whole bar waiting for whatever I might respond, and confidently answer that I'd take that money down to Columbia. Send the girlfriend a postcard without a return address the second I was out of the country and take the next five years off. The whole place lets out an inaudible sigh of relief, someone down the way even chuckles. Everyone is safe within their own heads and their sports programs once more. Suddenly the face of old man with the fake leg takes a cruel one-eighty and twists into a very angry thing. For my ears alone, he asks," What would you do to keep what you have?" I am unsure of the answer he wants, so I smile prematurely and take a sip of the proverbial "coldest beer in town." I smile because I don't have anything. A truck. A place I can usually sleep. The beer before me. "I don't have anything. So I guess I'd go to work every morning, like I already do, to keep what I have." He reverts to normal and commends me for my hard work, a thing he's never actually witnessed me in the process of producing. Gives a lengthy spiel about working for a little something, a vaguely relevant story about selling peanuts and Coca-Cola at A's games after the war. A dissonant humming, a distorted taping. Blown fuses, ringing circuits. Arf-arf. I must take a trip to California...I awake in a sweat and look around me. The song. Amanda, is it? "Mandy, the song was '(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window.'" She's barely awake, thoroughly confused again. The tune plays over through my head as I pull on socks, lace one work boot, cross my hand over to lace the other. It is a Wednesday morning. Copyright 2018. All rights reserved.
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