gpc

Lomo saltado — I’ve ordered it twice here. The first time was at a table for five in the back. The second time is at the bar in the front.

The bartender recognizes me; I have a friend who used to flirt with him when he would take her order. He looks surprised.

“Your friends not coming today?” he asks.

“Nah. There was some kind of mix-up, so I’m in the wrong place.”

He can tell I’m lying. “You don’t want to meet them?” he asks.

“Not yet,” I answer.

He smirks a little and then turns around to make a half-pitcher of sangria. I bet he is a good liar.

After we turn the corner onto India Street, Xiao hong says, “Everyone’s staring at your leg.”

“Really? I thought maybe they were staring at you.”

“They’re looking down,” she says. “They see you limping. They’re looking at your knee.”

“Maybe they’re looking at you,” I counter. “You have nice knees.”

“I’m wearing jeans.”

“They can imagine.”

“Oh shut up.”

The last time I was here was back in February. The usual waitress (who is one of my neighbors) is not working tonight — which is probably better, as I would rather not feed her imagination. This is not what it seems. I’m not sure what I would call it. Accidental dinner. But even that sounds risky to me, as if expectations were attached.

Let’s leave it at details gathering.

I rarely get house calls from friends. Maybe it has something to do with the front door…

When I do get someone brave enough to drop by, I panic a little because I know the place still doesn’t feel very lived-in. The inside looks a bit empty. (The outside, meanwhile, has a slight message problem.)

My visitor steps in and looks around: bare white walls, a few shabby file cabinets, a messy desk beneath the skylight.

“This place is too big for you,” she says.

I suddenly am aware of another problem: there isn’t a logical spot for two people to sit and talk.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“It’s nothing,” I say.

“You can tell me.”

I wait for her to sit down. It’s not really about “what’s wrong.” It’s just the mess of things in my head right now — things I think about inside this place that looks a bit empty and doesn’t feel very lived-in.

Things one can do while seated (a listing exercise for today):

1. Drink coffee.
2. People-watch along Manhattan Avenue.
3. Ponder new blog titles.
4. Imagine the feeling of take-off and landing.
5. Read.
6. Relearn “Shuffle Rag.” “Slow Drag.” “Will There Be Stars in My Crown.”
7. Write.
8. Shop for walking cane online.

Number Six. C’mon, work with me, Number Six…

We sit on a bench facing the fountain. There is a bearded man shuffling around it counterclockwise. He wears a tall leather boot on his head and has an inflatable horse tucked under his left arm.

“I accept all and any donations,” he declares, “for my run for the presidency!”

I lean back, but not too far so as to avoid getting snagged on the wall of chicken wire behind us. My friend props up her right elbow on the back of the bench. I was about to do the same thing with my left elbow, but she beat me to it.

“There is something weird about this park,” she tells me. “Whenever I come here, I always get strange men who want to sit next to me.”

“Gee, thanks,” I say.

She laughs. “Not you! But before you got here I had this weird guy try to start conversation with me. It’s always so awkward, I hate it.”

On the north side of the fountain, a bunch of high school girls in pastel-colored prom dresses are having their picture taken.

“Attractive people attract attention,” I say.

“What did you say? You’re always looking away when you say stuff.”

I look at her face, and then at her elbow propped up on the bench. “Attractive people tend to attract a lot of unfiltered attention.”

“Aw, that’s nice of you to say. But of course you’re exaggerating.”

“I don’t think so,” I tell her. “These random guys who come up to you in the park? And I’ve been with you on the train, walking around the city. I see the heads turn. I’m pretty sure they’re not looking at me.”

“Could we maybe not talk about this?”

“And you’re shy,” I go on. “That’s another thing. A lot of insecure guys interpret shy as inviting. So they will sit down next to you and say a stupid line. And you’re too shy to make them go away. You’re too nice to tell them off.”

“Okay…and is what you are telling me now supposed to be your stupid line?” she asks. “Can I practice making the insecure guy go away right now?”

She laughs at me again, and I look back at the group of prom kids. They are lining up boy-girl-boy-girl-boy-girl…the photographer tells them to stand closer together. We have a friend joining us for dinner soon. How will we sit together on this bench? Probably girl-boy-girl.

“How come you can’t seem to look at me when we talk?” she asks. “You look down, you look to the left. Just now you looked at the elbow. Is it that interesting to talk to the elbow?”

“It’s hard for me — the constant eye contact thing.”

“Why? Why don’t you just look at me? See, here we go again. The elbow. What is so interesting about this elbow? Tell me!”

I look away from her — this time at a white golden retriever leading his master toward the arch.

“Now the dog!” she says.

“Okay, okay.” I look at her and I stay there. “Just for you, okay?”

She smiles, and I realize she is right: the elbow is not particularly interesting.

Across the table sits someone with a question.

“What makes you happy? And please don’t give me a melancholic answer.”

“That’s a difficult one for me,” I reply. “I’d have to think about it some more.”

“You can’t think of anything right now? Little things like ice cream…or baby pigs?”

—
A few hours later I remember talking to the musician when he was in town, and I arrive at something to put on the list of things that make me happy: When I hear about friends’ dreams coming true.

I used to know a woman whose mother had been a Singapore Girl.

“Eventually they ground you,” she told me.

“What is that — like a suspension?”

“No lah, it means they put you on ground. Cannot fly anymore.”

Right now I am imagining what it would be like to fly out of this chair. I am going to be stuck in it for a while — not sure for how long. I will have to decline a few rounds of mercenary shift offers. I will fall off the post-game radar…

One of the skeptics tells me that I should try to make good use of the time.

“You could write something, you know.”

“I could,” I say. “But it always ends up being nothing more than an attempt to write. There is never actually anything that ends up being written.”

“Okay, fine. Go cry over your stupid knee.”

Xiao hong has two havens in New York. One is next to this machine. The other is west of here.

“I like looking at this thing,” she tells me.

“It’s kind of steampunk,” I say.

“Steampunk. What’s that?”

“It’s sort of an exaggerated, comic book version of the Industrial Age. Spaceships that run on steam engines, mad scientists who make crazy-looking machines, stuff like that.”

“I’m not sure we have this back home. I will have to ask.”

“Oh — I might be explaining it wrong if it doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Why do you always do that?” she asks. “You explain something and then you back off as if you’re afraid you don’t believe what you just told me.”

“I don’t know. It’s just a bad habit, I guess.”

“Well maybe you can stop this habit around me. I don’t like it.”

She is kidding, but not.

“Why do you keep holding your arms like that?” she asks me.

“I’m cold.”

“Then we should go. Come on.”

The preface to the story about the Girls from Thursday turns out to be another girl — a girl who is too young, according to our thirtyish driver.

“I had to tell her I don’t want to date her,” he says. “She’s like twenty-two or whatever. I don’t stay out that late anymore, so I was like forget it.”

“Awww, too bad for you,” mocks the front-passenger girl (whose age remains a question mark). She then decides to meander from the plan. “You hear that, Mr. Sleepyhead in back? He leaves them alone when they’re that young.”

I yawn as I finally sit up in the back seat. Are we still on Ninth?

The driver glances up at the rear-view mirror. “You got something going on I should know about?” he asks me.

“Nah, just some girl I was talking to earlier. Certain bystanders have chosen to exaggerate.”

FPG scoffs. “Pfffffffff. I know what I saw.”

“How old is she?” the driver asks me.

“I don’t know. She’s young; she graduated last year.”

“Niiiiiiiiiice.”

“Excuse me,” FPG interrupts. “What is so nice about it? You were just complaining about Miss Twenty-Two-Year-Old a minute ago. Hypocrite.”

“Naw, naw, it’s not being hypocritical really,” notes the driver. “I’m just saying younger is always easier to start out with. I mean, young girls, they like experience, okay? You can’t be afraid to act on it if it’s what they want. So in general it’s much less stressful in the beginning.”

“Oh my god. How about you pull over right here and I can walk home.”

The driver ignores her and looks at me again in the mirror. “Which girl was it?”

“Eh, it’s not really worth getting into—”

“The one with the short brown hair and the green shirt,” FPG says. “They were sitting together for a while. Brown eyes, kind of short. Did I miss anything, Mr. Sleepyhead?”

Traitor.

“Oh yeah I remember her,” the driver says. “I didn’t really get to talk to her. What’s she like?”

“She’s a smart kid,” I say. “But, you know, she’s in the middle of that still-finding-herself phase.”

“And now she needs your help. Niiiiiiiiiice.”

“That’s it!” yells FPG. “Pull over! I’m serious.”

“Haha. Relax there — we’re just educating you some.”

“I am done with you two. Seriously.”

It’s here where I decide to get back to the plan; the flattery angle typically works best.

“So sensei,” I say to the driver. “You have to explain the darts thing to me. I don’t really get it. I mean, darts would seem to be a major turn-off for most girls.”

“Naw, naw, it really depends on how you play it, see. I happen to be pretty good at darts. It looks easy but it’s harder than you think. You throw one and they wanna try it. And so I teach ’em: I sorta guide ’em on how to do it, and it becomes like this excuse to hold onto something — you got an arm over her shoulder, maybe, or a hand near her hips. That kinda thing.”

“And what was this girl wearing, if you don’t mind telling me?” asks FPG.

“The first one? Well, she’s some manager type who wears executive clothing. I guess I’d call it executive tight clothing. And so I’m showing her how to the throw the darts and I tell her a lot of it is your posture during the throw — which is true by the way — and she’s got her chest out a little, kinda…What? What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” says FPG. “Just finish your stupid story.”

“Why you trying to make me feel bad about it, huh? These girls know the game.”

“If you say so.”

“Look I’ll tell you straight about this girl and the darts. I like her but I’m probably not gonna call her again. She wants a relationship and I’m not into that right now.”

“And so you play the darts and lead her on.”

“I’m not leading her on! I’m showing her how to friggin’ throw darts! She asked me to show her.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Hey it’s not like I’m hooking up with these girls — I’m just meeting ’em, talking to them, flirting with them, seeing if it stays interesting. I like meeting people. It’s fun. But I get bored with ’em sometimes.”

“Out! I want out of this car!”

“Look, it’s not like I drag it out. Two dates is my limit. If it doesn’t stay interesting after two dates, I don’t take ’em out anymore.”

“And what if they want to keep going out with you?”

“Well, I tell ’em I’m busy or gotta work late or maybe we can meet up the next week. By the next week they probably found someone else. They play the game too, you know. But what gets annoying is that they still text me — all the time, it’s ridiculous. All this texting, it gets expensive, man.”

“You don’t have unlimited?”

“Naw, naw, I only have a thousand. And they won’t stop texting me.”

“Poor baby,” says FPG. “Get unlimited and stop whining.”

“I’d rather just get fewer texts from these girls…”

“Okay, okay,” I interrupt. “I think we’ve got the darts girl down. What about the second one?”

“Right — the second one,” says the driver. “So the darts girl leaves, and I see this other girl, Puerto Rican girl, eating dinner at the bar.”

“So you ask her to play the darts too?” asks FPG.

“Naw, naw. I just go up to her and say, ‘That looks good, whatchew eating?’”

“Seriously? ‘Whatchew eating?’ is your pickup line?”

“Hey I like to talk, okay? If I see somebody and I feel like talking, I find something to talk about. I don’t care how obvious it is. I don’t need some fancy line to get started. I was hungry. Her food looked good. That’s enough to start talking to her.”

“And then what happened?”

“And then we hit a few more bars and we drink and we say goodnight to each other. That’s it. We had fun. That’s it.”

I ask the driver if he’s going to see her again.

“I dunno,” he replies. “She’s supposed to text me.”

I don’t have much furniture at home, and there are times when I really miss the kind of sprawl — lying back, hands tucked behind head, legs stretched, foot propped up on an arm rest — that you can only do on a proper couch, which I do not own.

Tonight, however, I get a decent substitute: the entire back seat of a Nissan Altima heading north on Tenth Avenue.

The driver is someone I know but not well; the girl in the front passenger seat knows him better.

“And tell me why we are driving so far out of the way,” she nags him.

“I thought I told you already. I left my ID at a bar on Thursday.”

“Which bar?”

“See, that’s the thing. I’m not sure. But I should be able to figure it out once we’re around there.”

The girl turns her head to look at me. “Comfy?” she asks.

“Very.”

I feel the car swerve to the right. Fifty-Eighth Street.

“I know it’ll be on the right, on Ninth,” the driver says.

“So the bouncer didn’t give the ID back to you?” I ask.

“Naw, naw. The bartender took it. I was playing darts, see.”

“Why did he take it?”

“They make you give it to ’em — in exchange for the darts.”

“Oh, like a deposit,” I say. “That seems…unnecessary. Are there really enough people out there who go around stealing darts from bars that they make you hand over your ID?”

“Yeah, it’s kind of bullshit, ain’t it? Anyway, afterwards I gave back the darts but forgot my ID.”

“You forgot? Or you were drunk and then you forgot?”

“Well, yeah. I was, kinda.”

“And he was with a girl,” interrupts the girl who is not the girl from Thursday.

“Yeah. I was, kinda.”

We pass by Valhalla. “Shit…was it this place?” the driver asks. He pulls over next to a hydrant and jumps out of the car.

“Hey,” I say to the front-passenger girl. “Do you know the girl he’s talking about? The one from Thursday?”

“No,” says FPG.

“Can you get him to talk about her?”

“Um. Why?”

“Because if I ask him, he won’t talk about it. But if you ask, he’ll talk.”

“What are you, a friggin’ spy?”

“No, I just want to see where he goes with it,” I tell her. “All you gotta do is get him to talk, okay? Do it as a favor for me.”

“And why should I do that?”

“Because I’m asking very, very nicely, aren’t I?”

Her eyes narrow. “You know, you have become a lot weirder since I met you,” she says. “Okay, I’ll do it. But maybe I get a favor in return. Later, I mean.”

“Yeah yeah yeah whatever.”

“Hey — you didn’t say that very nice.”

“Okay,” I say. “I owe you a nice favor, and now I’m saying it nice. But you have to make him talk.”

The driver returns without his ID. He sits behind the wheel, annoyed. “I fucking know it was around here,” he says. “It’s gotta be close. I just don’t remember…”

“You could text the girl,” I suggest.

He pulls out his cell phone and chuckles to himself. “I guess I should just text both of them then.”

“Both?” FPG asks. “There were two Thursday girls?”

“Well yeah. There was one I started with, and then it kinda overlapped at some point with the second one. The darts was somewhere in the middle, so it’s hard to say which one was there exactly.”

FPG rolls her eyes.

The driver puts away his phone. “Naw, naw, I’d rather find it on my own. It’ll be quick. We’ve gotta be close. I know we’re close.”

We drive another block and slow down in front of Brickyard.

“All these places look the same to me,” I say.

The driver stares at the facade for a few seconds. “Yeah, I think we mighta stopped in here.” Again he pulls over and jumps out of the car.

FPG turns around in her seat. “So why do you care about his stupid little Thursday night exploits?” she asks. “Taking notes, are we? Jealous, maybe?”

“No, it’s not like that,” I reply. “It’s more that I want to compare. I mean, I’ve heard people talk about him a certain way. They categorize him as one of these afraid-to-commit kind of guys. Maybe it’s true. But I think it’s probably more complicated. So that’s all it is — I want to hear his side of it.”

“Ah, so you’re a sympathizer. I still think you’re being very weird.”

“I know.”

“Still comfy back there?” she asks.

“Yes. Very.”

The driver returns again, again empty-handed. “Fuck. This is really pissing me off now.”

“Text the girls,” I say. “Just park somewhere and we’ll wait a few minutes. It’ll probably save us time.”

“Naw, naw, let’s just keep going, okay?”

We continue our vehicular crawl down the right lane of Ninth Avenue. The driver is muttering to himself. Meanwhile my left leg has fallen asleep so I reorient my back-seat sprawl so that I’m now facing east instead of west. FPG startles us with a scream.

“There! Stop!” she yells, pointing to a red awning just past 51st Street. “The Snug! ‘Music, Darts, Food.’ That’s gotta be it!”

The driver brakes to a halt and jumps out of the car. This time FPG and I wait in silence. I forget exactly how I met her. It was somewhere in Midtown; a friend introduced us, and we all went out for a drink. If I gave myself enough time to think about it, I could probably figure out the details. Maybe I’ll do it later.

The driver returns with a smile.

“Haha! Good call,” he says. “The Snug.”

We keep heading south. I close my eyes once I hear FPG follow through on the plan.

“So tell me about Thursday Girl number one,” she says to the driver. “She cute?”