Lost in Hell’s Kitchen

Reincarnation can’t be so hard to pull off. After all, businesses do it all the time. Especially in the far west side of the city. A little bar recently died and came back to life right in front of everyone. And not for the first time. It started out as a neighborhood bar, devolved into a punk bar, transformed into a sports bar then a gay bar before shockingly becoming a juice bar for a time. Now it was a bar for the third millennium or so the owners liked to describe it even though, given its history, chances were high the current incarnation wouldn’t survive longer than a year.

The bar was gutted then re-imagined as a bar without walls, a bar whose interior was as malleable and mercurial as cloud formations in a violent sky.

The dining area could be two tables or 10. A too-crowded bar triggered mini serving stations for wine and beer to pop up until demand diminished. Even the lounge was fickle. One night an asymmetric couch, a flat-screen television and a few ottomans. The next night an explosion of love seats, coffee tables, over-stuffed pillows, even a day bed to relax on. All of it arranged haphazardly as if the pieces had been shaken up then tossed out of a tumbler.

Each night’s crowd determined how the room looked; more diners enlarged the eating area; if instead more drinkers appeared, the bar expanded, and when a crush of people showed up wanting nothing more than a place to hang out, the lounge and its harlequin-colored furniture accommodated them.

This arrangement the owners thought brilliant. A bar that changed nightly became their raison d’être. So they named the place “Fluid”.

Keane had been to Fluid once but at the moment being there did not translate into knowing where it was.

“I thought it was on Forty-Ninth,” he said as the car he drove cruised between 8th and 9th Avenues. His sister Laura and his cousin Quinn scanned the north and south sides of the street for the bar’s name that might or might not be lit up in blue neon letters, Keane couldn’t remember.

Laura fumed. She punched the entire series of pre-set station buttons on the car stereo cutting off singer after singer mid note.

Keane turned the steering wheel at 11th Avenue and the car looped around the block then tentatively came down 50th Street. A thin trail of smoke rose from the hood of the car, turned red briefly from the reflected glow of a traffic light then evaporated into thin air. Keane stared at the hood as if he could look through it. Underneath was an engine he knew not to trust. Keane sniffed the air inside the car for a burning smell, and not just for some general, vague notion of what could be burning. His nose had experience with this engine, his nose was educated. It could distinguish between burning motor oil and a burning fan belt; one whiff could discern whether the brake calipers had burned out or if instead radiator coolant boiled over and vaporized on the engine block. There was no smoke in the air now, no evidence, but he wondered how long that would hold.

Convinced the future held something detrimental Keane switched his goal from finding the bar to finding something else he hadn’t seen for a while: a parking space.

“Let’s just walk,” he said. “It’s easier to find the bar on foot.”

Suddenly all three looked for something different. Laura stayed with the neon sign, Keane searched for a parking space and Quinn, recognizing hopelessness when he heard it, hunted for an empty cab to take home.

“Explain something to me,” Laura said to her brother, the glare of the city lights flashing across her face. “If you can search someone’s entire vascular system at the hospital and find a blood clot the size of a microbe, why can’t you find this bar?”

Keane braked for a traffic light. “Did you know I stopped looking?”

“Me, too,” Quinn added.

“This cannot be our evening,” said Laura, worried the boys were content to drive aimlessly around Manhattan. “It’s my big night out in the city. I’m supposed to brag about this night to my coworkers tomorrow morning.”

From under the hood came a sharp pop then a hissing sound as if the engine was filled with snakes. Thin clouds of white steam rose in sheets from the grooves where the hood of the car met the windshield.

Keane hit the gas pedal hoping to cool the engine with a rush of evening air. The car sped toward Ninth Avenue as if being chased.

“What’s on fire this time?” Quinn asked from the back seat. He did not panic at the vision of smoke rising from the engine, frankly it wasn’t that unusual a sight.

Keane knew but shrugged. “Could be anything.” The car shot across Ninth Avenue scattering the pedestrians who lagged in the crosswalk. Keane aimed for the only legal street parking in sight.

As the car slowed, thicker, fiercer white clouds rose from the engine. Gauzy, acrid vapor floated in through the heating vents, seeping in ominously like it did into a gas chamber.

“So I guess it’s overheating,” Quinn said.

“Gee, you think?” said Laura.

Keane squeezed the car into a parking space and snapped off the ignition knowing it was the only help he could offer the engine. The hiss of the steam was louder now that it didn’t have to compete with a groaning engine.

Keane unlatched his seat belt.  “Let’s go,” he said but Quinn and Laura were already climbing out of the car.

“That was the worst ride of my life,” Laura swore.

“And you know he’ll make us chip in for gas later,” said Quinn.

“It’s 70 degrees outside. How do you overheat?” asked Laura.

Keane patted his pockets to make sure he had his keys. “Did you lock your doors?”

Involuntarily all three looked at the car. They saw the engine smoldering, the crooked front bumper and the wheels missing their hubcaps.

“You’re kidding, right?” said Laura.

Unoffended, Keane asked again.

“Okay, sure I locked my door.” Laura took off along the sidewalk.

As they walked they succumbed to the distractions of the city: they explored vainglorious store windows filled with silver jewelry, exotic clothes or hand-written signs that promised life-altering tarot card readings; they scanned illuminated menus framed in glass boxes hanging adjacent to the front doors of percolating restaurants. They even, for many long minutes, tried to look appropriately pious as a street preacher standing on an upended milk crate vehemently promised that dozens of sinners would plunge into Hell that very night. It was leisure time they were spending, Saturday night leisure time and though they had a place to go and a time to be there, their obligations were as elastic as a child’s promise to a parent.

At one point along his intentionally aimless route Quinn passed two folding aluminum tray tables, the kind he usually saw only in his grandparents’ living room in front of puffy chairs that faced a television set. The tray tables were a mustard color and had spindly, silver legs. Instead of supporting TV dinners, which was the sole use he could imagine for them, here on the sidewalk the trays displayed incense sticks and three-pronged stick-burning holders made of fired clay the color of dried blood. Next to them were small vials of oils with labels written in a calligraphy script. He read exotic names like Clary Sage oil, Neroli, Coriander, Eucalyptus, names he only vaguely recognized on bottles he could not imagine a use for. Behind the two tables sat a black man with a shaved head and a wide, shopkeeper’s smile. Quinn smiled back as he watched the tendrils of smoke from a burning incense stick rise into the air and disappear. He moved around the side of the folding table and accidentally stumbled over a corner of a blanket he hadn’t seen lying on the sidewalk.

“Careful now,” said the bald man as he reached to steady Quinn. “You don’t want to break anything.”

Quinn looked down and saw a stack of vinyl record albums.

“That isn’t my merchandise, but still,” continued the bald man pointing to the items laid out on the blanket. After nodding and apologizing Quinn decided he might as well do some browsing so he crouched down and thumbed through the albums.

“Check it out,” a voice said. Quinn looked up and saw a pale white guy stepping out from the shadow cast by the stoop he had been leaning against. “Two dollars each.” The guy paused as if catching his breath. “Lost my lease sale.”

The white guy had disheveled hair that stuck out in sporadic tufts on the top and sides of his head. It glistened with hair gel or sweat. In a fashion magazine his hair might pass as stylish, in real life it looked like he needed shampoo.

“Cool albums, some real classics,” Quinn lied. He continued flipping through the covers and for a moment the guy believed Quinn. Then Laura and Keane appeared.

“Why are you looking at those?” asked Laura. “You don’t have a record player.”

The guy behind the blanket retreated to the shadow of the stoop.

“I called Fluid,” Laura told Quinn. “Thanks to me we’re no longer lost. It’s on Ninth and Fifty-Third.”

“It must have moved,” Keane mumbled.

“Right. So let’s ask where it’s moving next week in case we go back.”

No one seemed in a hurry to leave so Keane started shopping. He looked at the few books and magazines on the blanket then spotted a slice of yellow metal on the far end of the blanket.

“Look at this,” he said. Keane moved some magazines and revealed a yellow metal box that had wires dangling from the back. “It’s the coolest car stereo Blaupunkt makes.” He picked up the stereo with a kind of reverence reserved for handling religious objects.

The guy leaning against the stoop once again emerged from the shadows. “That kind of thing goes quick around here,” he said hoping for some fast cash.

Keane ignored him. “I have the same model. It has four channels, Bluetooth and streams all the best music services.”

Laura rummaged around the piles of magazines to see what else they hid.

“I made it sound even better by hooking it up to an equalizer I hide in the glove compartment.”

“And does it look like this?” Laura asked as she held up another rectangular box. She waved the box back and forth and if her arm was a little higher and she was standing a little closer to the street, people might think she was flagging a cab.

Keane looked startled, like his sister had conjured an equalizer out of thin air. He stared at it slowly realizing that the box Laura clutched looked disturbingly similar to the one stashed in his glove compartment.

He stepped closer to the guy from the shadows. “You stole my stereo?”

The guy behind the blanket scratched the back of his neck like he had an incurable itch. “Nobody stole nothing, man.” He backed away from the blanket. Suddenly he saw the downside of setting up shop between the stoops of adjoining brownstones. The buildings behind him denied a retreat and the three now highly unsatisfied customers in front of him blocked his walking away. Yet as jittery as he felt he could not back down.

“Get out of here,” he yelled. “What kind of shit do you think you’re pulling? I didn’t steal nothing so fuck you.” He walked up and down the length of the blanket like an animal caged in a zoo. “Fuck you!”

Quinn turned away from the albums and sat back on his heels. “Did you smash a window to get in? Or just open the car door Laura didn’t lock?”

Keane and Laura stared at him.

“What? Everyone else got to ask a question,” said Quinn.

“Let’s call the police,” said Keane. “My car’s five blocks away. We can settle this in two minutes.”

“Ah now there’s no reason to be calling the police,” said the bald incense salesman. “They won’t settle nothing. And you know they’ll blame the black man.”

“Someone call the police!” Keane yelled. Miraculously some spectator did. Keane heard the notes as someone pressed the numbers on a keypad.

“You’d better be right, Keane,” Laura whispered, though she noticed neither of them released their hold on the stereo equipment.

“I just want to check it out,” Keane repeated to the jittery salesman. “We can go right now, forget the police.”

In the distance they heard a siren; police, fire, or ambulance they couldn’t tell and it hardly mattered. It couldn’t possibly be the cops headed their way. Not this fast. Still the siren electrified all those watching from the sidewalk because it stood for danger, antagonism and the need for third party intervention.

For all Keane knew, the guy with the cell phone was still on the line with the police. If not the police then maybe his girlfriend. Or his stockbroker. People gabbed to anyone on a cell phone.

But to the jumpy white guy behind the blanket this was more than just another siren in an emergency-prone city. To him this siren was the last straw. The city might have many sirens but it had many more cops. Sooner or later they’d be at his blanket. Once there the police couldn’t prove he did anything wrong but then he couldn’t prove he didn’t. It was a tie as he saw it, a tie where the win would not be given to him.

The incense salesman behind the aluminum tray tables stood to assist a few people who decided to shop while waiting for a fight to break out. He pushed back his chair and uncapped a vial of rosewood and cedar oil, claiming it promoted peace and tranquility.

“Prove it,” someone challenged him, pointing in the direction of Keane, Laura and the guy behind the blanket. It is not a magic potion the salesman wanted to say. He feared testing the liquid. After all, if it didn’t work what would he have left to sell?

The alleged stereo stealer rubbed his palms on his thighs while he plotted his next move. He saw the incense salesman’s empty chair and noticed how near it was to one of the stoops that had him cornered. The empty chair gave him an idea. It was pure impulse but he needed to escape and since he was all wound up and ready to go, why not do it now.

In a few quick steps he crossed the alcove and jumped onto the empty chair, landing with both feet on the metal seat before most of the spectators knew enough to look up. Without stopping to breathe he leaped toward the iron bannister along the stairs of the stoop, grabbed the glossy black handrail and leaned his body forward while swinging his legs over, his motion as smooth and practiced as a gymnast flying across a pommel horse. Once over the railing his two feet landed on the fourth step. To his surprise he was not twitching but calm, confident enough to take a short breath before running down the stairs and into the anonymity of the crowded, heedless sidewalk.

Keane saw the guy threading through the people milling along the street.

“He’s getting away,” he shouted.

“I believe that’s the point of running,” said Laura.

“Maybe now we can head for the bar?” asked Quinn.

The crowd around them slowly broke up, dispersing on its own once there was no threat of violence to hold their attention.

Keane took off after the runner. Laura reached out to pull him back, missed, then threw her hands up in frustration and disbelief.

“What’s he doing?! We’re supposed to be bar hopping tonight.”

Quinn shifted off the blanket and stood up, wiping blanket fuzz and flecks of album cover cardboard from his pants.

“Keane can’t let anything go. Not him and not the two million other people on this island. Everyone’s walking around with a pocket full of matches and a millimeter-long fuse. You’d think those relaxation oils the bald guy sells would be as popular as heroin around here.”

Laura shrugged. True or not, at the moment the only fuse she worried about was Keane’s.

“Let’s go get him,” Quinn said then ran after his cousin.

Laura considered leaving the equalizer. But she was certain if it went back on the blanket it would be stolen for the second time that day.

“He left all his stuff,” she said to the incense salesman.

The bald man looked up as if surprised she was speaking to him. “He knows I’ll watch it. It’s not the first time he suddenly skipped out.”

The blanket, though picked through, did not look messy or chaotic. Even with two metal boxes missing there were no gaping holes in the presentation. Looking at it now nothing seemed amiss.

Laura shoved the equalizer into her shoulder bag.

“Here,” she said to the bald man after she reached into her pocket and pulled out some bills. “When the jumpy guy comes back, give it to him. Just in case.”

The bald man pocketed the cash without nodding or committing to anything as if honesty and generosity were just two more risks one took in New York City.

Then Laura slipped into the sidewalk traffic and chased a certain colored shirt, a shock of hair, a face she’d recognize as a member of her family.

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About the author
J.G. Alderburke once won a T-shirt in a writing contest sponsored by a beer company. Other wins include having work appear in White Wall Review, Hawai’i Pacific Review, and others.