Everybody's
Tired
by David Francis
A man comes in,
sits at the bar. Apropos of nothing, he says:
“I’m so tired.”
And he does
look tired.
The bartender
returns: “But how are you doing?”
“No
complaints,” he says. “I have no
complaints,” he says with glee.
The bartender
says, “I’m tired…it’s been
busy today.”
And he looks
tired: his jaw is set, some spark is missing, he
is going through the motions. Gravity sits on him
like a fat woman squeezing him around the neck
with her legs.
This is
contagious, the man at the table feels. He
almost sees currents of eviscerated air flag from
behind the counter. Psychedelic ribbons wave like
streamers.
“I hate
doing this. I hate doing this every day.”
“What are
you doing?” says the relief bartender.
“Squeezing
lemons, making lemonade and limeade for the
kitchen.”
I wondered
what he was doing, thinks the man at the table.
What, he thinks with annoyance, are they
staring at?
A couple at a
table are staring directly—there is no doubt
about it—over his head. This is too
absurd. To acknowledge it is out of the question.
They’re way off the flight path of the three
perched TV’s. One side-glance, as cold as a
lizard’s eye. It’s a ceramic cow, stood
up on the ice cream counter. A hideous thing,
painted like a Dalmatian with a garish pink and
blue udder. The couple are transfixed by and
commenting on that udder. It’s a
curiosity, a novelty.
Holidays. You
look forward to them, you die to reach these
holidays—and everybody’s dead and bored.
This is a law of far more authority than anything
Marx or Hegel dreamed up. It feels as if
one’s living inside a deflating life raft
with a single undetectable hole that no one cares
to remember, the search is so ancient. Everyone
is crestfallen. A too-passionate word for
blah. Everyone except for some kids who
haven’t learned about the hole yet.
The manager is
on his cell telling his wife about obstacles
encountered on the way to work. “Train
crossing” is heard and then, emphatically,
“another train”; trains crossing
freeways seems oddly bad luck to the man at the
table.
“You’re
off?” the bartender asks.
“Tomorrow’s
Good Friday,” says the man on the barstool.
“It is?”
“Aren’t
you Catholic?”
“I
don’t care.”
From the
barstool to the manager standing at the salad
smorgasbord: “I’ve got to go to church
all day tomorrow.”
“You
better come back with calluses on your knees.”
“Oh, I
can do that.”
The man at the
table notices a pigeon walking on the wrought-iron
fence to the patio. Suddenly it takes a dive,
in the same gravity-bound mood as us, he thinks,
and reappears alighting from one cafe chair to
another before it again flops.
The bartender
slings his shoulder bag, dressed in his white
uniform, trim and petite, and without glancing
back walks out the door.
He didn’t
even say goodbye, the man at the table says to
himself.
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