ivan sits on a wooden bench in the atlantic avenue station he looks worse than he did during the bar years fatter his face a lot more red and pock-marked his nose a bulbous appendage pulling his face to the right he has some billy-goat goatee that looks taped on ivan doesn’t recognize me yet and that’s good what’s to say when all you’ve ever had between you were lost hours sitting in a bar spinning life’s tattered yarn while listening to the dead and hot tuna? eventually, time hands down the death knell for all of us everything begins to fade and somehow you just deal with the numbness of life turning from a promise to an absolute i wonder if ivan is still working for the MTA if he’s even working at all if he’s found a new bar, a new glorious drunken haven since the old joint closed down the last time i saw him he was drunk at nine in the morning scrambling up 3rd avenue the day after a hurricane while i was walking down the street working on a mean scotch and wine hangover ivan’s not even waiting for a train at least i don’t think so three of them have come by but he just sits there staring down at the soiled platform like time is of no importance or it no longer has a consequence for him when our train comes my wife and i get on thinking we’ve dodged a bullet although looking at ivan i’m not exactly sure what kind and as we move away from the station for lunch in manhattan a dalliance with van gogh in the art museums I stand there watching him for as long as i can like i’m spying some celebrity or a god fallen to the concrete until the train disappears down a dark tunnel and life makes us rank strangers yet again.
calvin’s coffee
calvin’s coffee was a goldmine for scientific experimentation after another fruitless night cruising the pittsburgh suburbs for girls ketchup salt pepper mustard salad dressing jelly butter packets really anything that was available to us on that eat’n’park table went into that steaming cup of joe whenever calvin got up to take his inevitable piss the magic always happened when he came back the anticipation on all of our faces waiting for him to take that first sip grimace spit into his hand or in a napkin or on the floor …was priceless and it happened every single time without fail just like we knew when we went out for the evening to the mall to the movies to north park just to cruise around that we weren’t going to meet a single girl who’d want anything to do with us we always had calvin’s coffee to make the night seem all right to make it all seem not so lonely calvin that gullible wizard begging the waitress to bring him another cup looking around the table angry saying you guys you guys like he didn’t know what was coming his way.