— I’m looking for a man who knows me so well he could finish my sentences but loves me so much he keeps his mouth shut.
Never have I had a conversation with a woman that came to such a crashing halt. It would have been gentler to feel my body hit the pavement after she shoved me off a balcony.
I try to lose myself in the restaurant’s ambient noise. I try to tongue-pry a strand of beef from between two molars. I try to detect in the wine’s lingering fruity notes the juiciness our sommelier has warned us about.
The mood vanishes. I’m not in a restaurant anymore; I’m in a lab for paranormal studies. Instead of waiters, men in white coats hover at my elbows, posing questions to rate my ESP powers. Do you ever have the sensation that you’ve been here before, like (for example) after your 3rd wife divorced you? Do you ever experience moments when you know what you’re going to say before you open your mouth? Do you ever have painful premonitions that come true, like when you can tell that a glass of water is about to splash in your face?
— Have you …
— ? … ? …
— How was your …
— Uh-huh.
— We certainly …
— Whatever you say.
I tell her it’s unfair. How can I be expec … ? I mean. It’s only been two dates—three?—there was a second? I don’t remember the—not that time with her isn’t memorable. Just that the sommelier—the extra bottle, yes. And I woke up the next day with a splitting headache and a gum ball machine I’d—Two. Three. Doesn’t really change the point, which is—no, of course I don’t intend to sound demeaning. But there’s logic at stake here. All I mean is for the logic to dictate.
— You … But … Uh …
— See? See what I mean
— I can’t possibly. Not after only—
—You’re not even worth the trouble.
—You want me to read your mind. Call it intuition, but that’s what it boils—
She says I’m shifty-eyed. (What the hell does that even mean?)
The desserts arrive. Gelato for her. Creme Brulée and ice wine for me. Coffee lurks in the background. I hope the pot’s laced with arsenic. Put the both of us out of our misery.
And what next? What after the last dribble of thawed gelato gets daubed from the corner of her mouth? What after the last syrupy drop of ice wine slides down my gullet? What?
Do we have sex? Is there a precedent? I can’t remember the (alleged) second date. Something tells me that if I ask about precedents, there will never be an antecedent. Wrong word, I’m sure, but at this terminal stage in our fledgling relationship, it hardly matters.
Aw fuck it. I order myself a Drambuie. May as well get shitfaced seeing as how I don’t stand a chance in hell of enjoying myself any other way. I don’t think to ask if my companion (what’s her name again?) wants anything until after the waiter is chatting with people half way across the room. She smiles and shakes her head. I figured as much but at least I asked.
I excuse myself to take a piss (though I use more genteel language than that) and I hardly wobble on my way to the men’s room. I find myself running warm water over by hands (for which my mother would be proud) and staring at the mirror. Jacket too tight for his gut. Unkempt hair. Stain on a tie he never managed to knot properly. Pink veiny splotches on the cheeks. What ass is this? (I ask in my head to the tune of Greensleeves.)
If this was a proper restaurant, there’d be cloth towels in the bathroom instead of this post-consumer recycled shit. Then again, if this was a proper story, there’d be a subjunctive mood instead of this modernist indicative shit. I tamp my hands on the paper towel and, as I search for the garbage can, I notice a large hole on the wall underneath the sink. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t bother about a hole in the wall as they’re a dime a dozen these days. But in this case I’m willing to make an exception. There’s a faint light coming from this hole, and the murmur of distant voices. I get down on my knees, careful to avoid a puddle on the tile floor, and peer inside. The things I see are vague, and the things I hear are distant. I draw closer and stick my head into the hole. Still, I can’t make anything out. The lights and voices pull me along, like the smell of fresh-baked bread. Once inside, it’s obvious this isn’t just a hole, but a tunnel, and the further I crawl into the tunnel, the narrower it gets. When at last I shove my way out the other end, I tumble onto the parquet floor of what looks like the anteroom to a private gentleman’s club. Men in smoking jackets. Wooden paneling. Coats of arms mounted above a fireplace. Low lights obscured by a torpid cigar smoke. I nod to the bartender, a red-faced man with handlebar moustache who looks like he sprang from a Dickens novel.
— Drink?
— What place is this? I ask.
— Were you dining in the restaurant?
When I nod, the bartender gives a knowing grin.
— An argument with the missus?
— Just a date.
— Ah, then maybe you won’t be here long.
— Here?
—This is a refuge for, you know, men who’ve fucked up. Drink?
— Uh, please. Single malt. Neat.
The bartender pours me three fingers of an Islay malt while a dwarf sidles to my stool and offers a fat Montecristo. I wave him off saying I’m expected back at my table.
— Very noble of you.
The bartender laughs as he slides my drink across the counter.
— Most of the men here don’t go back until they think they’re dates have left.
The bartender points to a group of elderly men sunk low in their leather chairs. Some have fallen asleep and their heads loll to one side; others struggle to keep their cigars lit and summon the dwarf to help.
—Those men have been here for more than fifty years.
— Well, I’ll never get like that! I empty my glass and indicate through cryptic finger motions that I want another.
— That’s what they all say. But fear does funny things to a man.
I settle in with my second single malt and contemplate life’s mysteries while the bartender fills other orders and hangs clean glasses from the racks overhead. In a spare moment, the bartender leans in as if he has a secret to share.
— I had a dream this morning, he says.
I’m puzzled at the inversion here; I thought it was the customers who made the confessions and the bartender who did the listening. Not the other way around. Even so, I’ve never been in a place like this. Maybe it’s normal here for conventions to flip upside down. I prompt the man with my eyes.
— I was sitting on one of the leather chairs over there. By the fireplace. See the ones I mean? I dropped something on the floor and it—
— What’d you drop?
— How the hell should I know?
— It was your dream. Why wouldn’t you know?
— It has no bearing on…It could be anything.
— How about an alligator? Maybe you dropped an alligator.
— No I…That’s stupid. Why would I be holding an alligator?
— You said it could be anything.
— What I dropped doesn’t…Fine. If you need me to hold something, let’s say it was a shot glass. The point is: whatever I was holding—
— The shot glass.
— It rolled under my chair. I got down on my hands and knees and groped under the chair for the whatever. But I never found it. Instead, I pulled out a mechanical arm. As I held it up to the light, it switched on and grabbed me by the throat. It squeezed tighter and tighter until I was gasping for air. We wrestled on the floor, the arm trying to get a tighter grip, and me trying to free myself.
— How’d you get loose?
— Two spooks in trench coats showed up and they beat the arm into submission. They said they were there to investigate. I said: Good, I wanna know who’s responsible for this.
They said it wasn’t that kind of an investigation. They were from a special branch that looks into ontological and semiotic concerns. Any idiot can figure out who’s responsible for a mechanical arm that runs amok. It takes a special mind to ask: What does this attack mean in its broader socio-political cultural context?
— What’d they come up with?
— Nothing. I woke up.
— So they never had time to explain what it all means?
— Naw.
— Bummer. Guess we’ll never know.
— Guess not. ‘Nother drink?
— Naw. I’d better get back to my date.
When I return, she’s drumming her fingers on the table. Her nails are lacquered and filed to fine points. They look like claws. They look mechanical. I imagine them gripping my throat and squeezing. She asks what took me so long and I explain that men’s middle-aged bladders aren’t what they used to be. I can tell by the flaring nostrils that she doesn’t believe me. Probably thinks I was out back phoning my bookie. Bonking a waitress—not that any waitress would let me do any bonking.
— My turn. She stands and walks to the back on legs that are less wobbly than mine.
I gaze at my watch. Five minutes go by and I gaze again at my watch. After another five minutes, I wave the waitress to the table and order a glass of tawny port. By the time the tawny port arrives, another five minutes have passed. The waitress says she’s sorry for taking so long. Motioning to the empty chair across from me, I say it doesn’t matter. I take tiny sips of the port, trying to stretch it out as long as possible. By the time I’m finished, it’s been forty-five minutes since my date left for the washroom. I hum songs to myself. I stare at stains on the ceiling and wonder how they got there. I try to figure out the safest place to stand during an earthquake. If we were shipwrecked and had a lifeboat that held only one person, would I leave my date on the boat and commit my body to the deep? Or would I yank her overboard and climb in to save myself?
At two o’clock, the waitress tells me she’s tired and needs to go home. They’re closing the restaurant. I look around and realize I’m the only patron left.
— But what about my date?
— She must’ve left.
— She went to the washroom.
— There’s no one in the washroom.
— Not even under the sink?
The waitress looks at me like I’m a lunatic.
— Especially not under the sink, she says.
I have no answer to the mystery of my date’s disappearance. It puzzles me as much as the meaning of a malevolent mechanical arm. Thinking on it makes me feel helpless. I share my cab with a dwarf who offers me a fat Montecristo and suggests, as I step out onto the sidewalk, that an hour luxuriating with such a cigar will set my mind adrift on waters that hold no such cares. A cigar, it seems, is far more than just a cigar.