Unbuilt Projects

Location: the Harlem home of Rosey Eisner and Paul Johnson (in fact more than one Paul Johnson)

(The other) Paul Johnson used an eyedropper to add squid ink into the shaker with a dash of agave and Amsterdam gin. He stirred the drink thirty times before pouring into an up glass and adding a skewer with one blue cheese stuffed olive and one anchovy stuffed olive. Rosey walked across the kitchen to Paul, picked up the black fluid and took a sip. “I love it,” she said smiling and kissed him (the man she was sure was her husband—but was not). “If you don’t love a dirty martini, then you’d hate it.”

“And the color is off-putting,” he added.

“But I love a dirty martini and this is right up my alley.” She smiled at him, not sure what was different about him but knowing something was. It aroused her incredibly. Rosey strolled from the kitchen to her bookshelf, looking at her collections of Pynchon and Roth, Doctorow and Dostoyevsky, Irving and Atwood. Instead she picked up a BDSM novel set in TJ in the GLBT variety.

Paul looked from his cleaning to exchange smiles with her by the bookshelves in the hallway. Rosey snuggled into a spot on the couch with her black martini, her volume, and a legal pad.

Then, Rosey started to read—and make a list…..

Paul poured himself an aged Haitian rum and sat with Gaugin at his toy Logos ™ Seurat tea set; Gaugin sat on a miniature plastic chair and Paul sat legs crossed on the floor. The TV was on to “The Chutzpanauts.” Paul and Gaugin sat far enough from Rosey—who seemed to be studying and recording diagrams from a novel—that Paul felt comfortable talking quietly.

“Your dad’s diary is incredible!” he said in a hushed whisper to the boy “I’ve never seen cocktails in my life like this. I’ve tended bar here and there, along the way. Hell—sorry—heck, I’ve done just about everything for money in the last couple years, but your dad’s drinks are radical.”

Gaugin was reading “Raven and the Writing Desk” by Lewis Carrol on an iPad, but closed it’s cover to listen to Paul. “He’s a good one, my father.”

“You really read and watch TV at the same time?” Paul asked.

“And play tea time with Cometor and McBuck Meatball,” Gaugin said, cocking his chin to a small long-legged robot and a strange cross between a plush toy cat and a ball; the robot and cat-ball sat wordlessly with cups in front of them, eyes forward as if ignoring Paul or expecting him to impress. 

Shrugging, Gaugin added, “Marshall McLuhan thought it a sign of a new human nature. Whatever. Look here: do you mix drinks as good as Father?”

Paul suppressed a laugh. “No. I can mix drinks, the basics, but few are better than your Dad—and no one’s as original.”

The phone rang. Gaugin opened his book again and said, “To be continued.” Paul got up and took his drink to the cordless landline.

 “Hello?” he asked.

“Paul? Is that you? You sound different,” the voice asked.

Paul bluffed. “So do you. Maybe it’s a bad connection”

“It’s Nick. Don’t hang up! Look, I know you said you’d never work for the city again but the Conservancy is cutting the check here. Not the Mayor’s office,” Nick said. “It’s a one-night bartending gig on Roosevelt Island for the Grand Opening of Four Freedoms Park.”

Paul picked up the red journal and remembered where he read of Nick. “Tell me about it,” Paul said, but didn’t listen. Instead he read several entries about Nick, and even about the debacle at Kafka Station that led to Paul’s bout with Legionnaire’s Disease. (Long story.) (Not that long—go back in the blog to “Kafka Station.” It’s a good one!)

Nick offered Paul $800 plus expenses to bartender for a hundred people for four hours. A drink list was required, a basic bar, as well as beer and wine.

“I’ll do it,” Paul agreed.

Thus, Paul began scoured the pages of the red journal for hours at the toy tea set amongst Gaugin, Cometor, and McBuck Meatball. The book itself was a hyper-productive jumble of address book, recipes, origin stories for cocktails, and drink lists. The easy part was tracking down six cocktails that typified FDR. More difficult was navigating the chaotic nature of the diary with two simultaneous organizing systems: chronologically and by emotional impact.

And the business contacts! There were hundreds of names and details on the host’s needs, wants, strange quirks, what went well and what went sideways. Scribbled in the margins were phone numbers and addresses both physical and email. 

 Surely, a dozen calls could produce another paying job. If he could score even one such lucrative gig per week, he could live comfortably. He closed the book, feeling it’s heft in his hand. Could a single book really change his life? He distrusted his new faith in such a light volume; in his life, bad news defined itself by its steadfast reliability.

Gaugin put his dishes in the dishwasher, as well as Paul’s empty glass. “I’m turning in early. Soccer practice. I need to be goalie,” Gaugin said.

Paul and Gaugin went upstairs. They brushed their teeth and each went to their respective bedrooms. Paul closed the door behind him. Rosey lay under the sheet. She set aside her novel “La Sangra de Pasion!” and notes, by now full of complex machinations and angles.

Hours later, Rosey finally said good night, rolled over and fell asleep. Paul limped to the bathroom and took a long hot shower to clean the scratch marks and settle his jangled nerves.

Afterward, he put on a bathrobe and went down to the kitchen. He started making honey simple syrup and cooking cinnamon simple syrup. He followed the sketches and journals of Paul’s process. Make a drink list. Make a grocery list. Two rolling suitcases were packed with liquor first, then mixers, beer and wine, and stuffing limes and lemons in any nooks and crannies. Tools went into his messenger bag.

Once his two rolling suitcases were filled, Paul felt the quiet, subtle stab of fear. Could he pull it off? Would everyone mistake him for the real Paul Johnson? Could he make a bar like he did so long ago? His doppelganger spent years on his red journal, perfecting his Guerilla Bartending. But reading was not the same as knowledge and experience.

Paul walked through the house in the dark, feeling the space against his skin. It already felt like home. “No guarantees…” he said to the emptiness. His nerves never settled before going back to bed.

Laying in bed in the dark, quiet beside Rosey, he felt acutely aware of the soft sheets against his skin. Half the week, he slept in the back of a subway train, when the real Paul Johnson came home from the rigorous schedule of a man getting a new bar up and running.

In the morning, Rosey surprised Paul with an act that certainly woke him up, then she hit the shower.

Paul dressed and made coffee. Rosey dried, dressed, drank coffee, and kissed Paul and her son goodbye before going to work. Paul poached eggs and made toast for Gaugin and himself. They chilled out together, watching “Noble Gas Manor” and talked. Later, they visited the Museum of Natural History and pretended to be dinosaurs in Central Park. Paul asked Gaugin if he liked rice, which he did. They went home, where Paul cleaned and tidied, and made a cheese/asparagus risotto dish he learned to make in Reno from a chef trained in Amatretia, Italy.

By the time Rosey got home, Paul reheated his risotto. Once she was settled in and debriefed on Gaugin’s day, Paul took his two rolling suitcases and headed out.

Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island begin as a stately, wide stairway leading upward to an unknown level. Once you reach the top, a long triangle of white marble completes the geometric angle on Roosevelt Island’s northern tip. There were chairs at the zenith, looking out at the mingling waterways by the RFK Bridge. The soothing effect was amazing.

Nick Calabrese swooped in beside him in his wheelchair. “Can you believe this fuckin’ place?”

Paul took a deep breath and signed. “Bumpin’.”

Nick grimaced, saying, “I meant the wheelchair access sucks. It takes forever to get up here. I gotta get on them about that.”

Paul looked back behind him at all the stairs. “Guess that does suck.”

“Not in keeping in the spirit of the guy who they’re honoring,” Nick grumbled.

Nick showed Paul the bar, a massive column of white marble more fit for Easter Sunday mass than Bloody Marys. Paul ran details through in his head like a continuous loop, but setting up did not go as planned. A leaky pitcher here, a missing waste bin there, but he kept cool and kept going. Even when he knew he would not be ready in time, he never quit. After half an hour he had used all his well-read knowledge; then he listened to passion and instinct, which came from deep within and part of the man he knew himself to be. He set aside his doubts, anxieties and stress. There was only the goal, and there was no stopping.

When the first customer came, Paul was not completely ready. Details remained undone but Paul kept going, made a drink or two for early arrivals and then never quit preparing. He never stopped trying so he did not fail.

By the time the crowd arrived, he was ready and kept pushing. Four hours, Paul stood his ground and held. The salty, wet breeze drifted across Paul’s face. He answered every question, and told the story behind every cocktail with the least provocation: about the real Rosie the Riveter, how FDR liked a dirty martini, how the origin of the G2C2.

The crowd was teetotalers more interested in talk than drink, but the scene was beautiful and by the party’s end, Paul felt a new, true confidence. For so long Paul had lived fake-it-til-you-make-it and judged himself harshly for it; now, without an “or-else” added on, he felt a new freedom. A freedom from fear so great he would rather live in car and work odd jobs than fail to live like a normal person. From fear that he was a weak and cowardly man running from good and bad. From his own lack of skills to handle anything the future planned for him.

By 8:30, there were still a few lingering guests. Nick Calabrese watched the sun go down. Paul drank a bottle of Rheingold lager and handed Nick a C2G2. “You know they told me I’d never have kids?” Nick asked. “Years ago. Still in the ICU.”

Highway traffic across the river to the west was light, illuminated by a million windows looking down. Smaller and boxier was Queens to the east, like a quiet sister to Manhattan, the kind who never knows what to say in front of crowds or how to dress flashy. Further still, the imposing shadowland of the Bronx.

“Louis Kahn planned this whole thing out before he died, but the plans sat for a generation and a half. But now here we are, standing on the blocks and looking at the view. You never know what can be done,” Nick said, digging out his wallet from between his butt and wheelchair, opening it up to a photo of his two daughters. Ten year old Lily smiled playing in sandy mud on a beach, while her six year old sister Suzanne prepared to pour a bucket of water over Lily’s head.

“There’s this perception to impossible, no? You know when a thing is impossible. You just know it, yeah? Like an old-style marble monument getting built in a recession. Like fighting World War II from a wheelchair after polio nearly kills you.”

Paul sat down beside Nick, who rested his hand on Paul’s shoulder. They watched the lights of the cities and listened to the traffic and the waves. 

The first thing one notices about Meryl is her eyes. 

At least (the real) Paul Johnson thought so, as he ate breakfast with his two friends Paddy and Rodney in the Wright Angle, the restaurant in the St. Mark’s-on-the-Bouwerie Tower Hotel. Her eyes reminded Paul of Annie Lennox in the 80’s. Then one noticed her tightly cropped hair the color of butter, which in turn accentuated her Audrey Hepburn neck.

Meryl was a tight-bodied beauty with creamy perfect skin, but the depth and soulfulness of her eyes drew attention like fine art. She ate her egg whites with Herbs de Provence, paprika tofu sausage, orange juice and espresso. There were only two parties at the Wright Angle, Meryl alone and three rowdy bartenders: one was the St. Mark’s own Paul Johnson in his rumpled cobalt blue suit and bald head; Paddy Sterling looking like a bouncer for Robert the Bruce in 1310; and Rodney Landers with his jet black hair pulled back into a ponytail and tailored Hugo Boss, the baddest biker ever to be exhibited at MOMA.

Meryl checked her emails on her iPad (in it’s glossy alligator skin cover, dyed candy apple red with real gold studs and latch). Paul paid attention to his two friends but could not stop looking at Meryl, who pretended not to pay attention to Paul. She liked his attention.

Donenfeld Harriman-Wright walked in like an emperor, which he was, on a very small scale. Meryl and Paul sat up straighter when Don Wright (as he was called behind his back) stepped onto the carpet of the restaurant; he nodded to the waiter, who nodded back, indicating that his exact breakfast order would be prepped immediately and would hit the table in four minutes.

For he was not simply a striking man in his early fifties with maturity on his boyish face; he was also (a) self-made multi-millionaire, (b) owner of the St.Mark’s-on-the-Bouwerie Tower Hotel, and (c) CEO of various companies from a winery in California, real estate in New York, tech companies in Silicon Valley, and bio-research in Maine, among others.

Donenfeld Harriman-Wright was a lion among men, and carried himself as such.  He slid into the booth beside Meryl like a former lover. He was. That was years ago. Meryl put on her silver scarf around her neck twice to make sure he did not see her skin go blotchy around her décolletage

“Good morning,” Don said.

“If you think so, then you didn’t see the bar,” Meryl said.

“Oh, I saw the bar,” Don corrected.  His eyes twinkled when he looked at her. “Quick question: what’s worse than a total loss?”

“What we have,” Meryl answered. “It could be weeks until we can reopen. And money. Real money. More as we push the contractors to speed up the time frame. I’m trying to see the upside, but…”

“If you’re looking for good news, Tenacity flies in tomorrow,” Don said, smiling at the waiter as his café au lait arrived.

Meryl gagged slightly on her egg whites. “How is that good news?”

“She’s my youngest daughter,” Don said smiling widely. “So for me it’s good news.”

“For you. My last gallery opening? She bought me a present, a case of Slim-Fast.” Meryl told him.

Don chuckled. “She did not. But that’s funny.” He looked at Meryl who stared back. “Oh my god, she did?”

“I take it she’ll stay here?” Meryl asked innocently.

“The penthouse below mine,” Don said. “Unless you think she should stay with me. Didn’t she used to walk in on you in the bathroom?”

Meryl suppressed a laugh. “It’s years since I regularly spent the night in your place.”

“Now we work together,” Don said in fake innocence. “There might be a time when we work late together. Or have figures to go over. Or need a good right arm.”

“You have other figures to go over, instead of mine, who would be happy to give your right arm a rest,” Meryl said.

Don’s breakfast came to rest in front of him. He picked up his fork but then stopped. “For the life of me I can’t remember why we broke up.”

Meryl thought as she chewed, then swallowed. “Neither can I.”

From across the room Paddy and Rodney laughed uproariously at a dirty joke. Don and Meryl turning to see them. Paul tried, and failed to hush them.

“Tenacity flies in tomorrow?” Meryl confirmed. Don nodded. Meryl set her napkin beside her cleaned plate and turned to Don smiling. “I need to hit the bar.”

Meryl got up and left. Don and Paul watched her ass sway in her red Chanel suit as she left the hotel restaurant, down the hall, and into the bar. Two housemen only recently arrived to drape the damage with cheap, tyvek, orange drop-cloths. A massive pile of them lay in a heap at the entrance as the two men finished cleaning the Bordeaux colored rug.

Each wood panel on the wall had been shattered. Drywall busted here and there. Broken furniture was loaded into a wheelbarrow by the double-doors that led to the kitchen.

Meryl looked, seeing something few see….

(And it is here we revert back to Northrop Frye’s Educated Imagination. First, the words we learn are nouns like we are Robinson Crusoe on the island: Tree. Rock. Water. Food. Next come abstractions: Sunrise. Tide. Soft. Lucky. Thought. Finally, we see the world as it we wish it were or how we would change it.

This is where both art and revolution comes from. This is how Meryl Ranzer saw things, the beauty in such unlikely circumstances as suburbs, weeds, broken toys, collecting salt on a riverbank, and trees fallen from a storm.

The orange tyvek drop-cloths hung like a Renaissance draping from the walls. There was one chair and end table only cosmetically ruined from the brawl, now covered. Said coverings on walls and furniture clung to nothing, making everything look airy and billowing as marshmallows and ripe vegetables.

Meryl took off out of the hotel immediately and down the block to the hardware store for several roles of wide orange tape, roughly the same shade as the tyvek sheeting. She hurried back to the St. Mark’s and into Wright’s Bar.

The first time taping down the orange covers, she pulled them right up and tried again; they just didn’t look right. Neither did they the second or third time taping. But the fourth time, Meryl knew what would NOT work. Which opened the door for what would.

******************************************************************************

An hour later Paul came in look into Wright’s Bar. He saw Meryl on a ladder taping up the oval chandelier. Meryl did not stop her work to look at him.

“I thought the chandelier wasn’t broken,” Paul said.

“It’s not,” Meryl answered, still not looking.

Paul watched Meryl’s musculature flex and move under the sleeves of her designer outfit. It both concealed her and revealed her. The clothing told Paul everything about her nude form—except how she looked.

“This isn’t about renovation, is it?” Paul said, more statement than question.

“Yes and no,” Meryl said, putting the finishing touches. She stood with her legs grasping the top of the ladder, elongating her form high aloft, arms straight above her head. Her chin held high to the heavens. The hem of her coat and blouse pulled up slightly, but enough to reveal her flat belly.

“We’ve got great review in the Post and Daily News. We open as Gate’s Bar in three hours. Get the bar ready.”

“We’ll need a new drink list if we’re changing everything,” Paul said flatly, wrapping his concussed brain around the whole thing.

“Take all the time you want, as long as I have a final draft in half an hour.”

Donenfeld Harriman-Wright got out of the shower, drying himself, when someone pounded on the door like a frantic cop. “Saints and ministers of grace,” he muttered to himself, pulling on his robe and heading for the front door.

Through the spy-hole he could see Meryl. When he opened it, she flew words at him. “Every month we get a new artist to re-make the whole bar, whatever they want it’d be so cool we’ll still have high standards for the staff and constant training but guests will never know what to expect, except excellence!”

“Paintings are fine. We talked about this already,” Don said.

Meryl took a breath. “No. Not just paintings on the walls. A different artist transforms that whole bar into their own image of beauty. The bar can have a different name, different look—“

“We’ll talk about it. Later,” Don said, and then shut the door. Always a quick mind, Don reopened the door immediately. He saw Meryl walking back to the elevator. “Do we pay them?”

Meryl pushed the button, too excited to sand still. “A nominal stipend, just enough to cover basic supplies such as paint and lumber. Not labor, of course. Three hundred bucks, five hundred bucks, something like that.”

“Standards—“

“Will always be kept high. That’s why you have a crack management staff—like me! But the experience will be warm, welcoming, and express the spectrum of excellence! But the bar will look different. Feel different. Art in action.”

Don smiled. “We’ll talk. Later.” He closed the door again, and then opened it again, and again, each time wanting more details. Finally, Meryl came into his penthouse, the entire top floor of the St. Mark’s-on-the-Bouwerie Tower. Three hours later she rushed out of Donenfeld’s penthouse.

“Oh, Don,” she sighed at the elevator. “Always the marathon man….”

She hurried to Wright’s Bar for it’s second grand opening in two days.

Paul stood alone behind the besieged bar, but Meryl rushed beside him. Drinks slid outward, and credit cards and cash came back. Paul’s gawkiness and hyperkineticism leveled off and found a new focus; his limbs now seemed smooth and controlled. His frenetic energy became channeled.

Meryl’s posture was perfect as she poured. Great female bartenders jerk from the shoulder, but she coaxed waves of liquor just raising her hands.

Paul studied Meryl, who tended bar in graceful feminine puzzles like taking a bra off with her shirt on. She inverted her wrist when lifting a bottle from the well in a way Paul saw hundreds of times and could not repeat; in a blur of lithe motion the bottle hung upside-down from the tips of her middle finger and thumb. The other fingers flared out like ornaments. It was as if the bottle knew a good time and a beauty when they saw one and couldn’t wait to do what Meryl wanted.

A group of crazed French waiters rushed the bar around ten o’clock wanting shots. Before Meryl could hand him the Patron, Paul filled the first in a row of shot glasses half full of absinth. He flipped the half-shot into the next—then next—down the line, before emptying into a teacup. Using his Boston shaker, he poured Peychaud’s bitters, brown sugar syrup, and Sazarac rye. Stir. Pour. Not a drop wasted.

His deft pouring did not surprise Meryl but the idea that he spent the time and care to make Sazarac shot impressed her.

There was little time for talking durin the onslaught hammered both Meryl and Paul. She spoke to him infrequently, but never ran into him. He stepped aside or leaned in to give her room. With his eyes off the patrons, he sensed her and gave her room. When he needed to open a fridge or cabinet, he gently touched a the curve of her shoulder or deltoid.

It was called “ballet,” a skill whereby bartenders harmonize their movements enough to work as quickly as possible yet avoid running over each other. To mix drinks without looking at one’s mis en place’ comes with time and practice, but not cracking a bottle into one’s partner’s head as he reaches into the ice bin is a skill based on valuing the person beside you.

One might say “Dude, your ballet is off tonight” after your co-worker backs up into you, or “get your ballet together” after the sharp metal corner of the fridge rakes across their Achilles Tendon.

Paul and Meryl both knew how to act in concert after years of service. Each knew in the hustle-bustle of a wild Saturday night that nothing was more likely to save their body or sanity like the each other.

    At eight years old, Gaugin munched on a Twizzler in the hall with his Vampire Wrecking Ball toys, prepared for yet—still—another—lesson in patience. Mom and that strange man, to Gaugin’s reckoning were in the shower a long time even by Grown-Up standards.

            Mom (Rosey Eisner) came out of the shower in her white towel. She smiled at her son Gaugin, sitting in the hall outside the bathroom, playing with his toys.

            And then HE came out. Gaugin was a small child, and his lower perspectiverevealed more than most could see. For instance, the man calling himself Paul Johnson was not the same Paul Johnson as Gaugin’s father. Mommy couldn’t tell.

            Gaugin took special comfort knowing Mommy believed every word he said. There was trust between mother and son. But Mommy was happy having this man here who looked so much like his father.

But he was not.

How could Gaugin tell his Mommy about this man? Did she already know that the stranger was not Daddy? Was this simply a Grown-Up version of pretend?

            The other Paul found a pink button down shirt and light grey slacks in the closet of the bedroom. He walked downstairs as the phone rang.

Mommy called downstairs, “Paul, would you get that?”

            “Sure,” he said but let the answering machine take the call:

The voice from the phone was Daddy’s, saying: “Hey, Rosey. Funny thing: I’m going to be working late and staying at the hotel tonight. Don’t wait up. I love you.”

            Paul erased the message, then looked over at the eight year old staring at him, leaning against a wall, nibbling a Twizzler. “We need to talk,” Gaugin said, walking past him and sat at his Logos (LEGOS?) Kiddie Tea Table ™.

            Paul looked at the boy, sure that all he wanted was to talk. He sat across from the boy, crunching himself into the hard plastic chair just six inches off the ground. There were rubber scones on the plastic plates shaped like a fish.

“Look, I’ll get to the point,” Gaugin said, setting his Twizzler in a dish. “You don’t live here, but Mom seems to want you around, at least until she realizes exactly who you are.”
            “She’s definitely OK with me being here,” Paul said smiling, almost laughing. “She let me know that in the shower upstairs.”

            “I’ve know her a long time now. Years in fact,” Gaugin said crossing his legs, “and I live here, too. I don’t approve of you being here. So maybe you can tell me what’s going on. Tell me a little about yourself.”

            Paul took a breath. There was no pressure, and for the first time in half a decade, he felt no urge to run. So he told the boy about himself. His real name and where he came from. He spoke of his loneliness of traveling America for years, living in a car, piling up debts—financial and karmic—and staying ahead of them. How his car/home towed just that morning. Finally stumbling into the movers, being mistaken for one by the super, and hoping to make some quick cash by carrying the crates from storage to Mommy.

            “Honest to God, kid, I had no idea I was a dead-ringer for your Papa until after I got out of the shower and saw the portraits in the bedroom,” he said.

            “So a woman tells you to take off your clothes and get in the shower with her? And you just do it?” Gaugin asked in veiled astonishment.

            Paul shrugged and gave no apology.

            Gaugin thought about this for a moment. “Is this something Grown-Ups actually do?”

            “When they look like your Mom? More often than you think,” Paul answered.

            Gaugin leaned back in his chair, taking a bubble pipe out of a small pouch, dipping it’s bowl into a saucer of dish soap and exhaled a small cascade of frothy bubbled down the pipe and his hand. He thought for long seconds before uttering a single word: “Amazing….”

            “Look, kid-“

            “Gaugin,” the boy corrected, poking the stem of his bubble pipe at Paul without looking at him.

            “OK, ‘Gaugin,’ I don’t have a plan. If you want me to go, then I’m gone. But staying here means I sleep in a bed and eat something not cheap or out of a bag,” Paul said, then let out a big, silly, nervous laugh.

            “I know this whole thing hasn’t been easy on you,” Gaugin said, refilling his bubble pipe and wiping the bubbles from his hand onto his shirt. Once his hand was clean, Gaugin picked up a plastic purple teacup shaped like a cartoon tadpole and handed it to Paul. “Pour yourself a Rum and tell me about it. Far cabinet, top shelf.”

            Paul brought the whole bottle from the kitchen, but sat on the floor instead of the ridiculously small chair. He filled the tadpole cup with the Kraken Black-Spiced Rum and began talking, at first about the hardest parts of living rootless. A wave of relief flooded over the impostor. He talked to the boy for almost an hour, revealing insecurities and isolation.

            “Anyway, Gaugin,” Paul said, finally having talked himself dry, “I sorta suspect your Mom knows I’m not your daddy.”

Paul was ready to go on, but Gaugin held up one hand to quiet him. “Clearly, she doesn’t know EXACTLY who you are. But feel free to go upstairs and spill your guts.”

            Paul did not move.

            Gaugin pointed with his nub of a chin toward the stairs. “She’s dry by now….”

            Paul waited, not sure what to say; he was never good with kids. Now he needed to be honest and use simple language, just to be understood.

“OK, so I don’t want to spell it all out,” Paul said. “But this is real grown-up stuff. Do you really want me to just go? If I do, then I should just disappear now. Should I go?”

Gaugin waited. “No. We need to work something out.”

            By the time Rosey was done with the laundry, Gaugin and Paul forged a deal. Gaugin would spend the night without revealing identities. Gaugin understood Paul was broke, but when Gaugin insisted that a great deal of work ought to be done around the house, Paul was delighted to be a part of a home again. 

Paul could stay as long as Gaugin’s Daddy was not around, and as long as he did everything Mommy wanted, everything she asked, and never disagreed with her.  Gaugin would not lie or in any way be dishonest; once the Grown-Up Pretend Game was done, Paul would disappear immediately. Gaugin would not call him Daddy. Also, no money would go from Rosey to Paul in anyway—not so much as a penny.

Finally, they shook hands.

Gaugin went back to his Logos-brand Argo-bot Assembly-Liners action figures (each sold separately!) and Paul told the boy he would take the crates he brought in up to his Mama.

Kneeling down to pick them up, Paul looked at the red leather notebook with the complex Gaelic symbol molded into the cover. And then he started to read….

It was a meet-and-greet, a grip-and-grin, with bartenders from all over New York City. The St. Mark’s-on-the-Bouwerie Tower Hotel wanted everyone in the mixology world of NYC to know it’s name, so they had an open bar for the bartenders. Spirits flowed and Paul showed off. “You know, a touch of champagne on top of a Mint Julep breaks two important rules of champagne cocktails, but is delicious. A wonderful addition that quickly replaces the old way in your mind.” “I use every bitter I can with no loyalty to any one brand. They’re tools, not religion.” “A Bellini is great, the best cocktail with complimentary flavors there is. But contrasting flavors, ah, now we’re talking. Not conflicting flavors. Contrasting. The older you get, the more you appreciate the differences.”

“Chiaroscuro,” Rodney Landers said. “The difference between light and dark give depth and mood to a picture.” Rodney was a barrel-chested man with a poet’s eyes. He wore Hugo Boss down to his boxer-briefs and pulled his jet black hair back into a ponytail; his other passion was oilstick and acrylics, he was one of the few representational artist left in the five boroughs.

“Exactly,” Paul added, then spoke to the bustling assemblage of barmen. “Rodney here worked with me at the Plaza years ago, before it became the decaf latte with soy milk and saccharin that it is today.”

“I always hate to see one of those Old Grand Dames fade away,” Rodney said.

“Luckily,” Paul pointed out, “Rod works at the Algonquin in their Blue Bar. They don’t get more dignified than that! To the Algonquin!”

Every man and woman lifted their glass and cheered as they took a swig; Paul lifted the nearest bottle with a sealed top and put it to his mouth, tipping it back in a cartoonish manner. The exaggerated effect appeared like he was drinking from a bottle of Dolin’s Dry Vermouth. Rodney finished a Hendricks’s wet and perfect with Regan’s 6 and a cucumber slice.

Paddy Sterling stepped up with an empty Antique Fashion. “Paul, set me up,” he belted out, waving his hand, “dealer’s choice. Whatever you feel like making. Just don’t give me diabetes. And it has to have Rye.” Paddy stood five feet and seven inches with a burly, hard-working frame and thick arms; he wore a leather vest, a kilt, and boxing shoes—and nothing else.

“Same for me, but definitely Gin,” Rodney added.

“Here’s to Attebury’s Pub and Eatery and Paddy Sterling!” Paul called out, and glasses went up. Paul pantomimed a sealed bottle to his lips, and then made two drinks.

Soon, two Highballs were topped by Proseco and slid across. “Paddy, this is a Cinnamon Cordial I made myself with fresh grapefruit juice and Rye. Topped with bubbly.”

“And what do I have here?” Rodney asked.

“The same thing, only with Gin,” Paul told him. “I know what a Gin lover you are.”

The natural enemies turned to each other, Rodney and Paddy, both formidable men who knew how to throw a punch—and how to take one.

“WHOA!” Paul cried out. “There’s room enough for Gin-lovers and Rye-lovers in this world. Certainly in this bar.”

But it was too late. The bartenders divided themselves in the bar’s interior and Paul feared the worst. An ugly anger seized the group and their focus turned to their champions.

Rodney and Paddy rushed behind the bar. Paul pushed between them. Pressures built as every eye was on their duel. There were no by-standers here.

Paddy commanded the presence of a wartime admiral as he deftly crafted a Gin Sour and planted it in front of Rodney, before sliding a bar spoon down the pine beside the drink. “No turning this into a Collins,” Paddy challenged. “Just use one table spoon to make the whole thing better.”

The crowd now rumbled like a witch-hunt.

Rodney picked up the spoon like a pianist touches ivory keys; his soulful eyes running over the scene as he filled the spoon with Ruby Port, before stirring it in. Three dozen bartenders clamored after the glass with straws to taste a small portion. Exactly one spoon went into the Gin Sour, but a broader texture and more subtle notes appeared.

Cheers and cries of argument. There was no clapping, only greater conflict between the throng. Paul cried out for calm, trying and failing to relieve the pressure cooker.

Rodney slowly slid his Rye Whiskey Sour down the bar, stopping in front of Paddy. With all the flourish of a musketeer Rodney rested a different bar spoon on his forearm like a surrendered weapon. Paddy plucked it away, filled the spoon with pineapple juice and stirred it in. The crowd devoured the drink yet settled no differences about it.

Arguments escalated to hostile screaming over who improved their drink the most.

A tattooed woman in the mob cried out: “Challenge! A Beer cocktail!”

Rodney and Paddy sprung into action. Rodney made a masterful Black Friar’s Pint with Gin, Spanish Fino Sherry, Agave, a small egg white, Angostura bitters, and a reduction of Guinness with cardamom pods and cinnamon, in an old fashion glass with no ice. The foam on top was half an inch thick and snowy white against the deep, rich brown.

Paddy mixed Canadian Rye with fresh lemon, simple syrup, his own bitters aged in sauterne casks, Stonepine Liqueur, and topped with Imperial IPA, standing regal and golden in a tall pilsner glass with ice. “A Great Lakes Daisy!” Paddy roared.

This inflamed the crowd more, yet splintering the two groups into four. Paul understood the originality of calling it a “Great Lakes Daisy” even if a daisy by definition calls for Champagne, but the crowd—oh, the liquored up, seething, Tea Party of a crowd!—could not.

Rodney tasted Paddy’s and turned away, waving a hand in disgust. Paddy tasted Rodney’s concoction and spit it on the floor.

The two large men flared up their large tempers. Paul knew what would happen next and tried to separate them, but it was too late. He never found out who threw the first punch but certainly knew the first to fall.

When Paul woke up in the ambulance, the sun had not yet set. The early hour surprised him, even in his concussed state. The EMT’s let him use his cell phone: “Hey, Honey. It’s Paul. Small mishap at work. I’ve gotta work a double. A really late double so I oughta sleep here tonight. It’s gonna be busy here, so I’ll call if I’m able but no guarantees. My love to the boy.” Moments later he passed out.

When Paul awoke the next morning at dawn (That night, after being held for observation at Belleview Hospital for his head injury, Rodney and Paddy failed to get any sleep in the Tombs) he rushed out to see how bad the damage was to the bar. His bar.

The answer: catastrophic. Paul shuffled through the wreckage of Wright’s. Drywall lay shattered and ground into the carpeting. The stools lay smashed to kindling against the broken cocktail tables. The curtains ripped to tatters and the garden ripped up, lit on fire and peed on until extinguished. Even the bar itself took enough damage to look scarred and ruinous.

Paul could not believe it—until he realized it was a crowd of drunken bartenders.

Drunken New York City bartenders.

A duo of cops brought in Rodney Landers; Paul palmed an officer four hundred dollar bills and thanked him. He ordered his friend to sit and wait, which the recalcitrant Rodney did, though in the broken remains of marble and wood. Paul looked at his phone for a text and in moments another pair of cops brought in Paddy.

Paul slipped another four hundred to the officer, and told Paddy to sit. He did.

“Keep a low profile and this all goes away. The charges, the trouble,” Paul said, stepping behind the bar. “Even the property damage. I’m sure you didn’t see the Post and the Daily News this morning but Wright’s just got the most spectacular review of any bar in their histories. Musta been a slow news day.”

Paul found the last two glasses left unbroken. “Turns out this is the kind of story too dumb-assed to ignore. Wright’s earned front-page coverage, coast to coast. Bartenders brawling over whether Gin or Rye is better to mix with? Idiotic? Sure, but it is the Post and the Daily News.”

Paul brought out two cocktails. The clearer of the two he handed to Paddy. “This is a Gin Old Fashion. It tastes like the classic Old Fashion but it’s all an illusion. Two kinds of bitters. Amazing stuff.” Paddy took it out of obligation.

“And a Rye Negroni,” Paul said, handing a drink to Rodney. “It’s got Aperol instead of Campari, but W.L.Weller and Carpano Antiqua none the less.”

Both men sat in the wreckage of the bar they helped destroy, the wreckage of their own self-esteem. Sleep deprived and hung-over, Rodney and Paddy clinked glasses but hesitated as their stomachs roiled.

“Drink,” Paul ordered. Rodney and Paddy looked at each other nauseously.

“Look, breakfast and coffee are ready for us next door. Or starve, I don’t care,” Paul stated flatly, “but neither of you is going anywhere until you try these.”

Rodney played with the orange twist in his Rye Negroni. Paddy took a deep breathe and said a Hail Mary to himself.

Finally, they both drank, tentatively at first and then deeply.

“Shit ain’t bad,” Paddy said.

Rodney nodded, adding, “I never would have thought so, but it’s superb.”

Soon the three men ate breakfast together in the hotel restaurant. Wright’s bar was destroyed utterly, yet would be closed less than one shift (but that’s another story).

Rosey designed each room of the small two-story, three-bedroom condo with its own tableau. As an artist and painter, completing this took time and concentration more than money.  Her nine-year old son deserved and received time, but Rosey was a monster of concentration.

            In contrast to her husband, Paul, who rushed around in his cobalt blue suit, light blue shirt, and arterial red tie, bustling about in his frantic rush to leave. “Where’s-my-keys!where’s-my-keys!where’s-my-key!GOT ‘EM!” The bedroom looked modern but with Victorian touches and details here and there; walls were painted the as vivacious as grey could get, like an angry storm about to boom.

            Rosey folded a pile of different colored, different sized (yet perfectly coordinated) hand-towels into a single, fluffy, perfectly symmetrical tower.

            ZOOM! Paul flashed by her. “It’s in your shoes,” Rosey called, not looking up as he ZOOMED past her in the other direction.

            Paul WHOOSHED, opened the doors of his closet with both arms, as dramatically as David Boreanez on “Angel.” He picked up his raspberry and eggshell wingtips, fishing about with two boney fingers, contortions in his rubbery face  plainly pantomiming puzzlement.

            He almost repeated the question but Rosey beat him to it.

“In the shoes you should be wearing,” She pulling out her Iphone with one hand, the other folding a bottom sheet into a perfect square: “

            Paul felt struck by his wife’s naked controlling mechanism but said nothing. Rosey was good at this kind of thing—and he needed his metrocard. He tickled the inside of his four pairs of shoes until he found the metrocard in it’s Superman fan club caring case inside shined black Doc Martins with the yellow laces not polished over.

            On with the Doc Martins! Pocketing the metro-card! Paul ZIPPED past  Rosey, ZIPPED backward until he reached her cheek and kissed her as she called the super, then ZIPPED down the hall to his son, Gaugin. “I’m out of here, Wombat,” Paul said kneeling beside the boy. “You and Mommy have fun. I’ve gotta go to work. OFF! To Wright’s bar!”

            He skidded to a halt. If there’s any way to be back early, I will, “ Paul shouted over his shoulder and out the door he went.

            Rosey spoke before the super, Jon-Marc, could say hello. “It’s Rosey in 9B. I was hoping you could bring up those two milk crates in our storage in the basement. Would you bring them up for me?”

            “I’m not sure I can get to that today,” Jean-Marc said. “I’m—“

            “Yes, you can. The O’Dares are moving out this morning—right now in fact—and you’ll need to open their storage locker for the moving men,” Rosey said.

            “I don’t know where the keys are in my—“

            “Yes, you do,” Rosey said. “The keys to our storage locker are on your usual pants keychain for two weeks now.”

            Jean-Marc the super was silent for long moments. Rose waited. “How did you—“

            “I saw it there two days ago,” Rosey added.

            “How do you know I didn’t take them off my usual pants keychain?” the super asked contritely.

            “I’ve lived here for eight years, seven of them with you,” Rosey said, unlocking the front door and propping it open. She nearly hung up immediately, but waited until Jean-Marc told her he would have someone bring the milk crates up to her.

            Two hours later, Rosey finished washing the dished from her lunch with little Gaugin. She walked into the dining room (a neo-Titanic style stately room, on a budget but unlimited taste) and saw Paul. He carried the two milk crates to a corner and set them down out of the way.

            “Thanks,” Rosey said, immediately concluding he had changed from his ridiculous green suit into rumpled jeans and black t-shirt. There was something about him.

            Paul looked up from the two stored milk crates full of smaller momentos, knick-knacks and important papers. There was something about him, different, but then she thought so since the Legonaires Disease ravaged him while locked up by the police. He moved differently.

            He looked at Rosey, aroused; she did not need to be married to him for ten years to tell that. Rosey perfected womanly arts like few others walking the earth. Paul looked different somehow, though Rosey did not know how.

            “Fish me out last year’s taxes,” Rosey said and when to go check on Gaugin.

            (Paul fished around, finding a red plastic sleeve magic markered “TAXES ’11 and brought it to Rosey.)

            Paul strode into the living room, a modern Geisha’s parlor with soft hues with splashed of exotic vibrancy, pomegranate and saphron, sapphire and oystershell. Rosey saw a sense of confidence in this man before her.

            “Take off your clothes. Go shower,” she told him. Gaugin played with his Vampire Wrecking Ball playset from Lego ™. Paul was about to speak when Rosey held up a hand flat, ending all conversation. “I know you don’t need it. Just enjoy the shower massager jetting hot water all over you.” Paul was surprised but kept it to himself. He stripped and showered.

            Rosey set up Gaugin’s favorite episode of “Ugon Bun-gundi, Capoiera Chiarascurist.” She walked upstairs, took off all her clothes and got into the shower with Paul, who was not terribly surprised.

            She bent forward to adjust the water, both hands on the chrome fixtures, which Rosey continued holding as she allowed something to happen that most wives would certainly have drawn the line at. His hands ran over Rosey, who delighted in his slow hands and speechlessness.

            In truth, Paul hadn’t had a woman in a year. Rosey could not know this, as she did not yet know that the man in the shower was not her husband. 

(Prologue and warning: there is nothing here about bartending. Zip. Nada. To tell the kinds of stories I want to tell I want to bring in this Man in Black, who will no longer be referred to as such after this. You’ll understand by the end of it. Also, this posting connects exactly with the next one called “Rosey Eisner” where we meet my wife. Cheers.)

The man in black woke up in his car on 145^th street in Harlem. He walked half the night away before returning to his car around dawn. Tired, hungry, he arose. He only need to get on his shoes, as he always slept in his clothes.           

Up and out, the man in black moved away from the car quickly. Keeping a low profile was important. He did not want to be seen sleeping in the car, for fear of night predators as well as policemen. The 2002 Honda was the spoils of a great card game a two years ago in **can you say he won it in a great card game, this seems contrived to me**Reno; the man in black held no illusions that the registration was no longer in his name and insurance expired.

            So he walked on, as every female eye turned to watch him pass. People did this often, referring to him as “pure sex in blue jeans” and “the sexiest man alive.” Even in his rumpled black t-shirt and jeans stretched out in the knees and butt from sleeping like a ball under a blanket in the back seat. I don’t get the point of this sentence.

After two weeks living in his car in Harlem, he knew the neighborhood pretty well. Breakfast consisted of a quarter pound of bologna at the Pathmark grocery store. He ate out of the cellophane bag sitting on the corner, then did the only thing he knew how to do: he moved on.

            There was a Starbucks on the corner of Bradhurst and 145^th, the Man in Black looked in. New York City amplified the specific feeling that had grown into his way of life: looking in from the outside. He could afford a cup of coffee, but it was not simply the coffee. In every way he felt outside of life.

            He walked down the street, just in time to see his car being towed. Panic overcame him. Running to the tow truck, he wanted to scream why, pull the driver away from the lever that lifted his home’s front fender off the street.

            But he held back. He did not need police attention, not with a car that did not belong to him on paper, with expired tag, expired insurance and expired driver’s license.

            He stood back, observing in shock as the only home he had for three years got popped into neutral and dragged away up the hill toward Broadway.

            Crestfallen, the Man in Black sat on the curb and fell into inky depression.

            For hours he sat there as the city revolved around him, as people came and went, as strange characters and families and stoic workers lived their lives. Sitting silently, the city continued revolving.

            Eventually his mood reached equilibrium. There was no loss of personal effects—not many, really. When he finally stood, he realized that loosing his car/home was the purest he felt in his years traveling. His rootlessness had reached it’s zenith.

            The Man in Black stood up. For years he had no real friends, no set location, no personal mementos. Now he completed the picture by severing his last tie however unintentionally.

            He walked down Fredrick Douglass Boulevard until he found a barbershop. He waited an hour listening to the old men. They spoke of sex and politics, life and death, money and all the things worth more than money.

            When the Man in Black’s turn came, he got his head shaved. It made him look much older than his twenty-five years, but that suited him just fine.

            Next he went to the gym, not that he had a membership. Instead, he learned the pass-code number from an actual member while waiting in line at a deli. He simply said “BPS 3514” and they let him in. A hard workout made him feel good. In his years of travel, he had lost a great deal of weight, much of it recently.

            Afterwards, he took a shower, a cleansing baptism.

            Once outside again, he walked further down St. Nicolas Avenue feeling numb and relaxed. The ache of his workout was a bit too much yet reassured, like he was a new person.

            A new person, he thought. Why not? The Man in Black liked the idea. He had avoided collectors of debt so long—both spiritually and financial—maybe it was time to be someone else. First, he would take a name.

            Walking by a funeral home, mourners were coming out of a service. Six of the men were tailored and talking in low tones as if working out intimate details. “Pallbearers,” thought the Man in Black.

            “Paul….”

            He turned onto 140^th and wandered onward. A man walked past him saying “…yeah, like I got nowhere to be…yeah, like I’m just holding my Johnson or something…..”

            The Man in Black never over thought anything, acting on his instincts. “Paul Johnson,” he said out loud. It was as good as anything else. Why not? The name was not as important as his leaving his old name behind, a name he did not even like to think or say. He decided: his new name was Paul Johnson.

            “Hey!” The voice startled the Man in Black out from his deep thoughts. He looked up, almost running into three men moving about on the sidewalk. Brushing past him was a man in a burgundy suit with a pink shirt and black tie, but it was the men in front of him that he nearly walked into.

            Movers. “Allied Movers” in small gold letters across the back of cheap black t-shirts and blue jeans. They muttered in Russian. No jewelry and tight military haircuts.

            “Sorry,” he said, feeling like a new Paul Johnson, no longer simply a Man in Black. One of the movers walked past him, as a man from inside the building passed him from behind. Paul Johnson tried to get out of the way, but seemed to be failing.

            The super (named Jean-Marc) came out of the building. Paul bustled to get out of the movers way when Jean-Marc called to him. “Hey, come here.”

            Paul looked at the super in his blue work overalls, pulling off a key from a massive key ring attached to his belt loop. “Go down to the basement. Here’s the key to the storage area marked 9B. There are two milk crates near the door. Bring them up to nine 9B.”

            Paul paused. “Come on, come on,” the super said. “You guys get paid by the hour, right? Cash at the end of the day?  I know you’re not in a hurry, but I am. 9B.”

            Paul took the keys and went to the basement. In minutes he was on the ninth floor, in front of 9B. The door was propped open. He stepped in and looked for an empty corner. Setting the heavy crates down, he turned to the woman who walked in.

            He would not discover her name, Rosey Eisner, for quite some time. She was beautiful in the timeless classic way of a 1920’s movie star. She wore her hair short and asymmetrically, more of a wild modern sculpture or hanging garden a la art deco.

Paul kept his silence in spite of her eyes. Those eyes! Her eyes so deep and penetrating, powerfully intimidating him into silence yet coercing him to confess old sins at the same time. She wore cotton pajamas that hugged her curves in all the right places and draped down her body, both concealing and revealing. She was a mystery that lingered in the mind.

            “Fish out last year’s taxes,” she said and left the room.

            Paul knelt down and hunted around until he found a red plastic folder with thick black letters: “TAXES ’11.” As he pulled out the folder a notebook covered in crimson leather fell out.

            He brought her the tax folder in the living room, a lush Japanese-inspired Xanadu.

            She took the folder and told him to take off all this clothes and get in the shower. Having showered so recently, there was only one thing she meant. He had not been with a women in over a year so did exactly what she said.

            In minutes she climbed into the shower just as naked as he. She bent forward, adjusting the water’s temperature to just below scalding and beating down like a heavy wind. She gave orders and he did exactly what she said—for the first time in over a year.

My first time bartending for city government was a nauseating experience. Not just paperwork, either. The Second Avenue Subway was not complete, but to hype this great white whale of urban transport, the MTA held a celebration near Ground Zero. Kafka Station! So called for it’s complexity and abstraction. Salvador Dali envisioned a train station on an absinthe bender in 1938 and laid out by Gehry after a blow to the head.

The subway’s staircases spiraled down instead of zig-zagging like every other subway entrances. Gradually, the steps changed colors, morphing into shades of amber, yellow, and brown. Surfaces on one’s descent were not entirely flat.

This was nothing compared to the inside of the station itself. The 4 foot by 4 foot floor tiles were arterial red mixed with ventricular purple, a high-traction surface made of cheap material. Yet each tile undulated, swooped and swerved like a roiling ocean in a Dr. Seuss picture. The walls were curved and rounded like a cave or birth canal or throat, depending on one’s baggage. The uncovered light bulbs were far too intense for the half-reflective surfaces, creating a painful glare off every surface, thus blasting one’s depth perception.

The immediate effect was horrible vertigo deep below ground, imbalance, a feeling of being washed away like elimination. I staggered onto the floor, flailing my arms just to remain standing.

Nick rolled up in his wheelchair. “Isn’t this great?” he beamed, swooping and dipping as he careened across the wildly uneven floor. Nick Calabrese worked for the city inspecting and consulting on handi-capable access to parks and transportation.

“Swear to god, I’m gonna chuck it,” I groaned, holding onto the metal craggy wall.

“Actually,” Nick said smiling, “all my friends in chairs LOVE this place! It’s like a rollercoaster. Kids, and people in wheelchairs are going to come for miles around.”

To take a step forward, one is inherently imbalanced for a moment. There is no moving forward without accepting and experiencing a loss of equilibrium. Nick rolled smoothly, and lower to the ground than a walker; no stride meant no imbalance, so no barfing.

Nick’s two daughters swooped down a gradually slanting hallway on sleds.

My head already hurt. I walked with my feet as wide apart as possible, inching my way to the portable bar set up near the tunnels to the train platforms. Just at that moment, Nick’s two daughters Sosha and Lall ran back up the tunnel with their sled. The roiling tunnels sloped twenty degrees to another atrium just as chaotic as the rest of the place. The sense of motion everywhere startled me and I forced down my fried egg sandwich.

“What’s your secret?” Nick asked. “Everyone else who’s come down here has either puked or nearly puked.”

“The night is young,” I submitted. Nick is a good friend but I struggle to speak about my year as a cancer patient. I am a veteran puker who learned to control his stomach masterfully. Chemotherapy had saved my life more than a decade ago—and now saved me dignity in not barfing at my temp job—but there are some things too difficult to explain.

I stumbled/staggered to the bar. Setting up focused my attention on the bottles and back-bar, settling my stomach. I felt better soon enough. I zeroed in on guests as they arrived, forcing my vision to reject the sickening station. The party was slapped together haphazardly. Most of the guests were city employees, particularly off-duty police in their dress blues. It was a train station full of cops—

—who wobbled/hobbled this way and that, loosing the balance, loosing their lunch, arms pin-wheeling to retain standing. Veterans of crime scenes and violent deaths vomited at the sight of the train station. Many more held their dinner or donuts down, but several could not help themselves.

The drink of the night was the Catwalk Justice, a mix of Xante herbal-vanilla brandy, espresso, Crème de Cacao, and muddled allspice berries. I kept my eyes on the bar or faces; the thought of looking up filled me with fear or nausea.

Suddenly, from the entrance—LOS OCCUPADOS! (Los Occupados were a protest group dedicated to income inequality, the rights of people over financial institutions, and pissing off the billionaire mayor.) They came in wearing ponchos that were not ponchos, but blankets. Only the blankets were blankets that turned into one-person yurts. They had taken over a motorcycle parking lot on Wall Street where day-traders parked their Ducati’s, their Harley’s, and their Royal Enfields.

They came down screaming: “FOR DUCATI PARK!” and “FOR HARLEY PARK!” and “F**K THE ROYALS!” (This I took as a cry against the financial executives, not so much their motorcycles.) (Royal Enfield, the famous Indian motorcycle, was more prestigious than luxury. I know no reason why Los Occupados held emnity for Mr. Windsor or Miss Middleton.)

The police roared in a tidal wave of rage. They sprinted forward, in full attack—for ten or so feet before slipping and lurching, tumbling and teetering, vomiting from both nose and mouth. Yet they continued!

Their rage pushed them beyond the equilibrium and sanitary needs of the ordinary man. Puking down their own class-A uniforms, they charged like “Braveheart” with a stomach flu.

Thus when the wave of cops met the Occupados, fists and upchuck mixed. Fisticuffs hammered as bile blew. The cream and sugar of NYPD’s coffee mixed with the vegetable based diet of the protester, making a ceviche-cooked mothersauce.

Bechamel!

Protestors and police grappled on the sickening floor, a slippery seascape made wet from the bile-baked mix of diary/sucrose and aromatics, but soon after, the struggling men slid down the slick surface. Blankets wriggled and rolled as the constables and protestors fought inside the thick, blousy fabric.

Paul could not help but look and say simply: “Pigs in a blanket….”

Conflicted characters bounced under cover. They slid down the descending hall to the inactive subway platform—then onto it.

Luckily, trains could not reach this station for weeks but that was enough for arrests to be upgraded from disturbing the peace to the cherry-cherry-cherry in the slot machine of convictions: aggravated assault on a police officer.

Sadly, Paul and Nick were swept up in the wave of zip-cuffs and paddy wagons. To better speed things along, Los Occupados and Paul were taken by police water taxi (a former amphibious warship recently retired from the Persian Gulf) to Rykers Island.

Sadder still, things turned worse when the police water taxi (complete with twin fifty caliber machine guns and the world’s only Gatling gun made of other Gatling guns) suffered a damaged water pump. The Mayor’s Office decided to teach the protestors a lesson by imprisoning them in the middle of the East River on the boat until their court date.

Saddest of all, Paul, Nick, and Los Occupados contracted the rare lung infection Legionnaire’s Disease while locked up on the military/civilian boat. Once people started coughing up blood, charges were dropped and the city paid fifty-two times the amount of their proposed damages to Kafka Station to hospitalized those arrested.

To keep those arrested from suing the city into bankruptcy, the Mayor paid for several consolations. Steaks were brought in from Peter Lugar’s (though the protestors were mainly vegetarian). A Boston Red Sox hat for everyone, though most of the protestors were local or South and Central American diaspora. Cassettes came of the best movies ever made on betamax. The night before their release bottles of liquor came and Paul got to tend bar in his own make-shift prison.

The drink of the night? The Catwalk Justice.

Two weeks later when Paul finally came home to his wife Rosey and his son Gaugin, he was twenty pounds lighter. Paul, keeping his optimism, was proud that he no longer had his beer gut.

The unusable, impractical Kafka Station was dismantled out of pure common sense. It existed for only a single night, where a party that turned violent—like some of the best of New York City. (1300ish)

Ginni walked down past Thompson Square Park on 7^th one of those beautiful spring days. It was warm and sunny with enough clouds to be decorative. She cut down Avenue B looking for the Gustav DuLac gallery. When Ginni found it, it looked as she remembered from years ago; a large rectangular space with paintings on the wall (though in this case the “paintings” were abstract works painted on reclaimed mirrors and large pieces of chrome and steel that reflected, signed “Quinfluenza”).

She knocked. No one answered. Ginni was about to wander for a Starbucks when she saw the man running and rushing about. He was a lanky bald man with a small potbelly, yet his energy level was frantic but directed. The man reminded her of a Cat in the Hat cartoon or the Grinch. He wore a brown corduroy blazer and a burgundy shirt tucked into Kelly green slacks. His rubber-soled wingtips shone from enough glossy polish to make a woman in a skirt suspicious.

The rushing man’s face was clean-shaven—as was his head—and clearly expressed a variety of calculations all going on at once. Ginni could tell he would be a terrible poker player. His baldness boomed out a greater gravitas to his rubbery face that betrayed his thought and maniac impulse.

Ginni spied bizarre objects on the desk off to one side of the room. Sorbet. Bottles, big and small, generic and exotic. Lemons and limes. Some green herbs. A jar of powdered cinnamon and whole nutmeg. But when Ginni saw the boxes of tea on top of a red book, she beamed and walked right in.

His name was Paul and there was too much work to drop everything when someone walked in. Paul hustled about the desk turned bar, not looking up until Ginni closed in on him.

“Hi,” she said. “I know it’s early but I was hoping I could get a cup of tea and get off my feet.”

“Sure, but you know the reception doesn’t open for like, two hours,” Paul said, not stopping his arrangements to speak. He finally looked up at Ginni and there was much to look at.

The woman Paul would later remember as Ginni was neither black nor white, young or old. Paul thought she looked like a Madras Indian he met decades ago at a Star Trek convention, or a particularly dusky Pilipino from he knew from a night in the Tombs after a Beasty Boys concert.

No, definitely not Madras of Pilipino.

She had vaguely almond eyes, a rich dark brown, that swallowed him alive. Her black hair was cut short and moussed into place.

There was no telling her age, somewhere between nineteen with an old soul, or a stress-free forty plus. She was a hot number, but still Paul couldn’t say exactly what she WAS.

Ginni showed him her invitation, not that it would have mattered. She was a beautiful woman, thin and very athletic, in a little black dress and high heels of some strange derivation (Paul had never seen black high heels with cobalt blue on their undersole, so glossy that whatever they were made of looked like ceramic!) He noted her name, nodded impassively at her invitation, though he would have given her bottles, or his wallet to hang out with her.

“Would you like Earl Grey or Winter Fruit Zinger?” Paul asked.

“They have Winter Fruit Zinger here? I’ve know the owner, Gustav, for years and he never touches caffeine.”

“They weren’t here, though Gustav has coffee mugs,” Paul said. “I just bought both teas, and all the perishables.”

“Is that something you like? Winter Fruit Zinger?” Ginni asked, stepping lightly over to the desk and examining the box.

“No, I’m making a faux sweet vermouth with this cheap red wine they stuck me with,” Paul said, holding up a pint glass full of red wine and four teabag strings dangling from it’s mouth. “A bitter tea, a touch of dark fruit tea, and sugar. It’s not great but I’m not left with much to work with.”

“Earl Grey, please.”

She looked at the “bar” consisting of what remained after years of holiday parties, birthdays, and secretive gulps here and there to get through hard days. Three organic vodkas, none full. A pint of Jack Daniels. Half a seven-fifty of Peppermint Schnapps. A cheap rum artificially flavored with raspberry. Cheap brandy. Almost a full bottle of MacAllen 25. Beside the scotch was a medium sized black notebook with a blood-red leather cover; cut into the leather was a chaotic looking Gaelic rune.

“You sure I can’t interest you in some white wine?” Paul called to her, getting the hot pot ready. “Just so happens the boss has two bottles of pre-bullshit Grgich chardonnay. They must have been in the back of the his mini-fridge for a decade,” Paul beamed as he held up the bottle. “I could eBay either one for a check twice what I’ll pull for the night’s work.”

Ginni smiled but shook her head. “Just tea. Oh my god, what are those?”

Paul checked his fly. Zipped. Ginni tilted her long Audrey Hepburn-like neck, looking at the glasses Paul would use for cocktails in two hours. “These,” Paul began, “are my glasses for the evening. HAH! Wonky, huh? I dug them out of the back, where they stow art that artists leave behind or abandon, or whatever.”

She held up the glass constructs, looking more like trench life from the bottom of the ocean. It was in no way a highball glass, narrower in the middle than base or rim, undulating green texture. Twenty such monstrosities stood in a row, weighing a full pound. The glass of some wafer thin, but some over an inch thick.

“A host that has no idea how to throw a party will promise the world. Full bar, tools, even set-up sometimes,” Paul said. “This time I get a borough or a neighborhood. I dug those glass things out myself. It’s all I have to work with. They’ll do.”

Ginni’s eyebrows crinkled.

Paul filled a plain coffee cup with steaming water and dropped in a bag of Earl Grey. Ginni smiled the kind of smile to steal a heart. He took a deep breath and stopped rushing. He gave Ginni his full attention. “I call this guerilla bartending. I’m dropped off into hostile territory at the last minute and have to make it work, improvise. For people full of joy and bankrupt of planning, I’m the guy who pulls it together.”

“Guerilla bartender, huh?” Ginni asked.

Paul took the gallery’s only chair and carried it over to her. “At your service,” Paul purred.

When Ginni sat down, he watching her caress the backside of her dress against her glutes as she squatted down. Then she crossed her legs—to Paul’s mind the only thing to make the tableau more perfect.

“Is that your recipe book?” Ginni pointed her chin at his journal with the red leather cover.

“There’s some wacky-dacky recipes in there, real oddball stuff, but mostly it’s a date book. I mean address book,” Paul squinted and strained, his rubber face contorting as much as his thoughts to sum up all he meant. “The whole thing’s a little left brainer. It’s recipes for the weirdest cocktails I know, some drawings of architecture and maps—sorta/kinda. But mostly it’s contacts. People who throw parties and need a guerilla bartender. Phone numbers, addresses and dates of my guerilla bartending. How to handle problems, yadda-yadda-yadda. It’s not real organized-organized. But it helps me keep organized of people and places and what they want, what I did for them, and all their special needs.”

Paul thought for a moment, then tasted his faux sweet vermouth with a plastic straw. “Funny. I just got a new job at the St. Mark’s-on-the-Bouwerie Tower Hotel. This may be my very last guerilla bartending gig.” He added a pinch of sugar to the tea infused red wine, looking far out the window. “Weird to think I’ll never do this again….”

Ginni drank her tea, asking why Paul didn’t just buy a sleeve of plastic cups for drinks. Paul told her that he had to get supplies like the peach sorbet; herbs, lemons and limes, out of his own pocket, cutting into his wages to make sure the cocktails were as good as possible. Paul was all about the great cocktail and it showed.

“I’ll lose part of my check on this gig to make a great cocktail—up to a point—but asking people to drink them out of a plastic cup just reverses direction,” Paul summed up. “Better they drink out of these bizarre Chihuli clones. Or coffee mugs, if push comes to shove.”

“That makes sense,” Ginni added.

“Not everyone gets that,” Paul added, tasting the red wine mix, and adding another tea bag. “It’s appreciated.”

“I’ll have to get to the airport before the party gets started,” Ginni said. “I appreciate you letting me relax with some tea.”

Ginni took a deep drag off her tea. “So have you ever thought about changing the world?”

Paul’s reaction was immediate: laughter.

“Sure!” he crooned in exaggerated sarcasm. “During my time in the U.N. General Assembly.” Ginni waited and sure enough Paul continued. “What would be fun? How ‘bout all fashion models weigh one-fifty, maybe two hundred. Make everyone else feel skinny for once.

“Or all French men have to grow thin black mustaches that curl up at the end. What the heck, the women, too.

“Maybe magazines can only have one—make that two! Just two cards to get a subscription. Not twenty! Just two.” Paul giggled and Ginni smiled at his joy.

But the question rattled around Paul’s head, his mouth tight and eyes darting in quick right angles. Anyone with a modest amount of empathy could see Ginni’s question zipping around in his bald brain-pan, spinning around like a slot machine. “So are we talking here about impossible stuff traveling back in time, or just what’s possible.”?

“What’s more interesting to you?” Ginni asked.

Paul thought visibly. “Strangely enough, the possible stuff feels more interesting.”

“So how would you change the world, if only in the ways it’s possible?”

Paul thought for a second. “I’d cure cancer. I know, yeah-yeah-yeah, this is skating the edge of possible, but when JFK said we’re going to the moon in ten years, that was PURE science fiction. Complete pipe dream. But sure as shit ten years later, men stood on the moon. June 20 of ’69, we got one small step for man. If we decide we want to cure cancer in ten years, we could do it. I’m sure.

“I had cancer, a very long time ago. I’ll never forget the next person I heard who got it. I was poleaxed, as if God didn’t get the point. ‘Hey, Almighty, I get it! Stop giving people cancer now!’ But it ain’t just about me.”

Thus began a meandering conversation that directly turned into a reckless diatribe. Campaign finance reform and the end of the filibuster. Making Spiderman comics feature villains with distinct, limited super powers. Putting Canada in charge of America’s public safety. Interconnecting tree houses in Central Park for children, each designed by a famous artist. A constitutional right to privacy. A single parking garage designed by Frank Gehry where diplomats park, or else pay their parking tickets. A return of beaux-arts architecture and decorative manhole covers.

Paul would spend many nights afterward trying to piece together all he had said. There were many sources of his inspiration and he would never, ever figure out why she just sat there and listened. Ginni was clearly interested, patiently letting Paul ramble, and he had no idea why.

Eventually, he was spitballing ways to end poverty on a global level when he ran dry. He opened his mouth but his words flowed no more.

“I like the way you think,” Ginni said, setting down her mug. “I’ve got a plane to catch. But I sure hope you have fun. Knock ‘em dead.”

He thanked her several times. Ginni kissed his cheek; Paul’s knees went watery, but he kept standing.

Half an hour later, the gallery filled with very fashionable partygoers. Laughter and conversation echoed as drinks were poured and enjoyed. Many ooohs and many aaahs over the peach and sage with vodka, his Christmas Sazaracs, unconventional Manhattans, and raspberry-tarragon Mojitos. All served in bizarre glass sculptures.

Most notable was a loud man in a black turtleneck, and jacket with patches on his elbows. Paul called him the Cliché in his mind, because of his loud pontificating, grey beard, and balding with ponytail.

The Cliché complained about the bar’s lack of selection in liquor half the night; in response Paul did his best good-natured-shrug/smile combo.

The breaking point came when Mr. Cliché criticizes Nadine Ramquesoon for reading her poetry at an Occupy Wall Street rally.

Immediately afterward, the Cliché ordered a glass of the white wine with the melted peach sorbet and sage leaves muddled in the biggest glass available, plenty of ice.

Paul did something he rarely ever does:  he said no.

When the Cliché made a scene, gathering as many on-lookers as possible, Paul was ready.

“Sir,” Paul answer, “this is a 1998 Grgich Hills Chardonnay. Some say aged too long in the barrel, but it set a new standard for California chardonnay, known all around the world. But it’s like Miss Ramquesoon, the last of the beat poets left alive, and the only woman of color of the beat poets. This wine, like the lady, is the last of its kind, to be admired and valued and protected like an endangered species. And once she is gone, we mourn her passing, because we will never see her like again.

“So if you’d like a chardonnay like no other—for better or worse—please let me pour you a glass.”

Paul waiting motionless as the angel Bethesda with the bottle in hand. Finally, the Cliché rubbed his beard, unsure if his audience would turn on him. Then nodded his head.

Paul took up a glass (a clear glass gravy boat with accents of purple, tortoise, and auburn with curved tendrils swooping inside it) and poured. And when the older man tasted the Grgich, he paused before a single tear rolled down his cheek.

So Paul smiled at the schmuck.

(Why: Actually there once was a woman at a bar in Oakland who asked me how I would like to change the world, and the question still haunts me. I think of it as possible. Not just Ghandi and Dr. Rev. King. Candice Lightner changed laws and public attitude about drunk driving in just ten years. Ralph Nader. These people—and that one question—give me hope. As well as Lawrence Lessig, who wants a second constitutional congress to get the money out of American politics, and many others. But it’s disquieting to think that this is OUR world, all of ours, that we can make it any way we want. With leverage and work we can fix anything, make anything, create a new world.)

The day before Wright’s Bar opened, Paul wore his one suit and waited for Tim Collins and the Kaiser to join him. Inside the St. Mark’s-on-the-Bouwerie Tower Hotel, the lobby was a testament to ninety degree angles. The colors soft and comforting but varied enough to feel like a home and not a cheap movie set of what a hotel should look like.

 Wright’s Bar was no less angular. The lights were high during the day, giving the room a quality to the air that made one feel fresh, clear of mind, and at ease enough to stop and rest. Paul loved it.

 He walked about, unable to smell the new paint. The bar itself was a gorgeous single piece of wood with brass appointments and rail.

 Paul stood there, thrilled that this of all places was his bar. He soaked it up. The relaxed atmosphere. The quiet this deep in the city. The quality of the light, so full of life. And now it was his. He felt twenty again.

 Kaiser strode in; looking ever bit the best concierge in New York City. Paul thought his suit was tailored to the squark particle and costing more than his own rent; in all likelihood, Paul re-thought, Kaiser’s suit cost more than HIS OWN suit. “Have you been outside, Paul? I love it when it’s windy,” he said, sitting down on the artsy barstool. “Reminds me of Denmark.”

 Tim Collins came in last, as he always seemed to make the most powerful entrance.  He was more the sort to make off-the-rack Brooks Brothers look good, and even comfortable. “I’ve been looking forward to this for a week,” Collins purred. “I’ve cleared two hours from my day for this. Don’t hurry.”

 But Paul knew better; his first drink was mixed in the shaker with no ice. The GM of a hotel, even a little known new boutique hotel such as the St. Mark’s-on-the-Bouwerie, was a god in his element. Not the kind of man one kept waiting.

 Paul slid the two leather coasters across the bar, stopping their momentum with martini glasses on them. The Boston shaker rattled it’s contents, then poured out their contents. Twists cut fresh and Paul spoke: “This is an Elder Fleurette, a take off on a Gimlet. Instead of Rose’s Lime Syrup, this is half Beefeater 24 and St. Germain.”

 Both men sipped. Kaiser spoke first. “Equal parts Gin and St. Germain?”

 Paul nodded, saying, “Yes. This style of cocktail has recently gained a new amplitude. I call them medians, as they are all equal parts.”

 “So, does the drink becomes less invested in it’s garnish?” Tim Collins said, his breathy, soft voice coming from deeper in his chest than usual.

 “Quite the opposite,” Paul said. “I think…with a median style cocktail, there is a greater reliance upon the flavor the garnish brings. Not as much with it’s look or gravity or height. Now, the garnish elevates itself, almost to equal partnership with the two spirits.”

 Next came Pierre Ferrand Reserve Cognac and Chinese 5 spice mulled wine. The mix of lush, pungent mulled wine with an exotic bouquet was thinned out and given greater potency with a soft sweetness at the front of the mouth by the Cognac. “I called this an Elan Cocktail when I worked at the Pierre.” The old fashion glass had the mulled wine and Cognac with cracked ice and half rimmed with a powdered Chinese 5 spice with a touch of added ginger.

 “More of a cold weather concoction?” Kaiser asked, though his questions floated between inquiry and introversion. Paul nodded in the affirmative.

 “Intentionally,” Paul said. “This is good served either hot like a Toddy or shaken and strained. It’s one of my favorites.”

 “Will the whole list be these—what did you call them? Medians?” Tim asked.

 “Yes, though officially that means two spirits. The Svedka Citrus gets papaya puree and smoked paprika-spice mix. The Hangar One Citrus gets unfiltered apple cider with a cinnamon rim,” Paul said. “Using fruit and juice instead of liquor should give it another name but I made up the name Median. I’ll keep making names up, but then I sound too professorial. I can handle it if you two can.”

 Kaiser and Collins looked at each other and shrugged. “I can handle it,” Kaiser said.

 Tim waved away the statement. “The sun will come up in the morning, I think. But why this style? Why medians?”

 “Because the room and building are both Frank Lloyd Wright, and the look of the bar and hotel are angular. I wanted to reflect a clear, direct symmetry to the cocktails.

 “Such drinks have been around a long time. The Godfather Cocktail goes way, way back—equal parts Balvanie and Drambuie.”

 “A Scotch cocktail? On the permanent drink list?” Tim asked.

 “Let’s be brave,” Paul said as his only explanation.

 The cocktails continued to pour. Flavor elements were analyzed and examined from various points of view. In the end Kaiser and Collins agreed that the list would stand for the next three months minimum.

 “I’m not sure you’re right,” Tim said, “but I trust you. I’ll give this idea of yours some time to see if it does well. If not we go in a different direction. Until then, make the best of it.” (The fantasy fulfillment here is just my boss trusting me.)