Creative Writing from
Fairleigh Dickinson University

White Whales

Andrew Condouris

The bartender's making customers laugh.  I ask for a beer and he gives me one.  Then, he asks me why I'm such a Gloomy Gus and I think about grabbing the back of his head and slamming it into the bar top.   Would it break his nose?  I wonder. 
      Instead, I tell him I've got one of those faces.  He nods and leaves me to my beer.  I light up a cigarette and think about where the hell I'm gonna find another job.
      I've just been fired from this uptown nightclub.  I'd been smoking a joint in the bathroom on my break and someone had blown the whistle on me.  Everybody was out to screw everybody in that place; no one loved anybody in that place.  I've been playing the piano there for a year and they kick me out on account of something as stupid as a joint.       
      There's a middle-aged man sitting to my right.  He smiles at me and I do my best to smile back. 
      “Everything good?” He asks.
      “Going well.” I say.
      He goes back to his drink and I to mine.
      There's a middle-aged woman sitting on my left.  She wears a red dress and has wrinkles around her eyes.  She lights a dark cigarette and looks at me.  She smiles and I do my best to smile back. 
      “You come here much?” she asks.  
      “I'm just soaking in the neighborhood.”
      “I thought I'd seen your mug here before.”
      “Been workin' uptown till last week, so...”
      “What's uptown?”
      “I work in nightclubs.”
      “What do you do for a living?”
      “I work in nightclubs.  I'm a—uh--  I'm a piano player.”
      “Any classical music you play?”
      “I try, but mostly just torch songs.” 
      I signal to the bartender for another beer. 
      “Well, what type of pieces do you like to play?”
      “Like to play?”
      “Like to play.”
      “Schubert, Debussy, Schoenberg.  Beethoven when I'm feeling good.”
      “Do you play any Rachmaninoff?”
      “Rachmaninoff, well...  Rachmaninoff is my White Whale.”
      “What?”
      “Never mind.”
      “Rachmaninoff is my absolute favorite.  Eric, my husband, introduced me to him.”
      “You mean you met him?”
      She laughs at this.  
      “Sorry, ma'am.  It's been a long day.”
      “It's okay,” she says, still laughing.  Then, she tells the bartender what I said and he laughs too.  They start talking and flirting with each other.  I turn and talk with the middle-aged man on my other side.  He tries to sell me on socialism and I listen.  Several opportunities come up for me to counter-attack, but I decide to agree.  Why not?  Free housing and medical care.  What else does anybody need?  I make some quip about capitalism being man against man and socialism being the opposite.  He nods his head and lightly pats the bar top. 
      He reminds me of what I'd like to be someday.  His temperance and soft intellect.  His ease as he returns to his own silence, his own world.  His ability to appreciate this ocean of white noise as it drowns his tears.  His willingness to accept the fact that talking is over-rated.     I turn around and I start up a conversation with the woman again. I chatter like she's a tape recorder, like I'm spilling my guts, confessing.  A young woman comes in and sits next to the older woman.  As I talk to the older woman I keep my eyes on the profile of this young woman beside her. What is her name? 
      Where does she work? 
      Does she talk in her sleep?
      “Would you like to come back to my place?”
      “Sorry?”
      She said that, didn't she? 
      No no no, not the young woman, no.  The older woman. 
      “You're not going to make me ask you again are you?”
      “No...  Uh...  No.  The thing is--”
      But I can't find a reason.  There's my shitty little apartment and there's this bar.  Between them is everything.  Between them is nothing. The night is young.
      “Sure,” I say.
      Sure.
     
      We get to her place.  A two-bedroom on 23rd Street. 
      She tells me to take my coat off and make myself comfortable.  But just as I'm about to hang my coat, she tackles me.  Her kisses are angry, determined.  I can't breathe and I can't see her at all.  She reaches down and grabs my crotch, her nails digging into my manhood.  I push her away and she falls to the floor like a bag of tools.  She breathes heavily in erratic rhythms.  The faint dint of the television pierces through all this silence.  She tries to put herself together, but can't quite do it; she keeps breaking out in sobs.  I have this picture in my mind of me rubbing her back and calming her down, telling her everything is going to be okay.  But I don't do that.  Instead: 
      “Lady...”
      “I don't mean to put you in a position,” she says.  “A scare.  Didn't mean to scare.”       “Lady...”
      She takes a raggedy tissue out of her purse and blots her eyes.  I'm standing over her, towering over her with my hands clenched.  I feel a fingernail cutting into my palm.  I open my hands and place my palms against the sides of my thighs. 
      “Lady...”
      “Would you like some coffee, something?”
      “Lady...”
      “I'm sorry.  Oh, I'm sorry.” she mutters.
      “What's going on?” 
      “I'm making some coffee.”
      She gets up and walks down the hall into the kitchen.  I follow her. As she makes the coffee, I look past the pantry into the living room: there's a middle-aged man sitting in a Laz-E-Boy chair watching TV.  He's watching a girl competing in a gymnastics competition.
      “That's Eric in there.  I told you about him right?” says the woman, turning the coffee machine on.  “Eric used to be a construction worker.  He had an accident several years ago.  Steel girder fell on his foot.  Since it's happened, he doesn't speak a word.  The doctors think he suffers from some sort of severe case of post-traumatic stress disorder.  I don't know what to believe anymore.” 
      The girl on the television is doing a wild combination of back flips, cartwheels, and other extraordinary feats. Eric's finger twitches ever so gently on the armrest, in tempo with nothing familiar.  The coffee machine finishes percolating.  Muriel gets up and makes me a cup.
      “Just the other day, I was vacuuming in the living room and he grabbed my arm, my wrist.  He just stared at me like a frightened child, I guess.  And then he started to say that he could remember when he was born.  I didn't really know what he meant.  I thought it was a, whaddayacall, expression?  Then he started to tell me that he really could remember it, being inside his mother.  He said he was there now.  He said the TV was just like it.  The glow of it.” 
      I take a sip of coffee and, as Muriel sits across from me, I notice an upright piano behind her.    
      “Every time I buy him pants, I have to cut the leg and sew it up.  And his eyes tear up all of the time; I have to wipe them away all the time.” she says. 
      “Whose piano is that?” I ask, trying to keep her from sobbing again.
      “Eric's.  He never learned to play a damn thing.  I'm trying to get rid of it.  Do you want it?”
      “Well, lemme just...”
      I walk over to the piano and play the octaves.  It's in need of some tuning, but the resonance is kind.  I turn around and see that Eric is looking at me.  His eyes are glazed over.  It looks like he's trying to remember everything at once; something is lingering on the tip of his tongue.  The girl on the television is crying on the shoulder of a man, her coach or her father or maybe both.  They're tears of joy.  She's in second place. I hear a siren coming down the street, but it's not for us.  For a second or two, it seems like it's not for anyone.  And as the the notes descend, I find myself nodding. What would you do?