“You like my coat?” They were huddled close as they could be against my back. One leaning over the other leaning over my right as I sit sidelong at the bar, spooning helpings of porridge past my numb lips and letting the hot salty stew heat me as I stare out onto the soft falling snow just outside the glass of the front window. I can hear them nodding and murmuring in agreement.
“Yeah? Then you’ll love the story of how I got this one.” I lift the spoon full from between the two hardened cubes of beef fat, another spoonful of rice and the thick broth flavored with garlic and ginger and green onions. Let it seep past the throbbing of my bleeding gums and soak the smoke racked walls of my throat.
“Wasn’t more than a couple days ago I was out there” and with a nudge of my spoon I indicated the train station just a few doors down the road. The roofs were thick with fallen snow.
“Nothing but a jacket just as you two.” And when I gestured with the spoon again the porridge spilled and seeping down the front of my coat.
“Ah shit.” And they tsk tsk tsked from over my shoulder and I turned to look back at them.
“Don’t like it so much anymore eh?” And I forced a laugh past the blood in my mouth and swallowed that metallic taste of iron back. They laughed like rats.
“Nothing but my sleeves out there and then I saw a man come up to me dirty from the beard down to the tips of his pointed shoes shivering as he was over his cigarette and he came up to me and asked if I had a light.” And pulling from the inside of my jacket I handed him the handled matchbook and watched him search as if tearing through pages of some holy book for a light unbent by the stuffing my hands as they sought for warmth in the thinness of the linings. And there it was, my last match, bright as day before him and he watched the thing draw up before his face like it was the last ten piece in his wallet. And he brought it up to strike at the end of the broken cigarette and I watched as he inhaled the ember quickly as it had come and the stale burnt end took and he puffed a few times on the stogie before handing me back the matchbook.
“Thanks.” Just then there was a clearing of a throat and I turned over my shoulder to see that squat box of a woman with flat lips and a perpetual scowl tapping her foot with her hand on her hips. Was she asking for payment.
“Don’t worry I can pay, you want me to pay now? Here.” I dig my hand into my coat pocket and rifle through the coins and crumpled bills and let it spill onto the counter. It’s barely seven and sixty three but the coins are all a mess a system of three and two and five cents I think there’s a twenty in there and the one rolls and rolls and rolls on its side before spinning to a halt leaned up against the crumpled side of the five note. I look over at her.
“It’s enough.” And I hear them snickers over my shoulder. She speaks in a language I don’t understand and I can tell that she notices I don’t get it so she grabs a menu from the kitchen counter and taps two fingers against the image of the broth with the cubes of beef fat thick and still with meat hanging off the bone and I can’t help but smile in an effort to dispel her hard nosing. That must be enough. Was there even still meat or bones in what I’d gotten and I gesture to the honey combs of seeping tallow as it blends with the porridge. I lift a spoonful as if to show her the absence of meat. She says something again, with more force now and I must visibly recoil because the laughs from over my shoulder aren’t just snickers now, they’re full on chortles struggling to make it through the nose getting caught in fits of snorts and—Did he just clap his shoulder? What are they brothers now? She taps the menu indicating the ten or the twelve in the top right corner of the picture of the porridge with the cubes of beef fat still on the bone with real helpings of flesh and I stutter something about how I know I left the house with the right change which isn’t true. I know it isn’t true because I don’t come from the home as a matter of fact I can’t remember where I came from that room up the stairs and through the drawing room of the family up their ladder and a back set of steps to the attic connected to the roof and what are we, six stories up now? And that’s when I pull the ring from my finger and let it roll on the counter top. The red-stone inlays clattering as they wheel across the grooves of the wooden counter top. Titter-patter tap-tap-tap .. tap She raises an eyebrow at me and did her frown just soften. At least take the ring it’s all I’ve got.
“All he’s got?” Shhhhh
“What?” My voice is definitely just like that.
“What did you just say?” And I turn this time pushing up from the bar and I can feel my feet through my boots the blood is definitely there, just making its way and I notice that maybe I can’t feel my toes and the coats doing real work the way it drapes around me, but the ears the lips the yes my hair, cold like they’ve never been warm before and the porridge in my chest—I turn to face the round cat faced with that dead-eyed grin— patchwork goatee and beard framing his face, turning the wooden rosary over his fingers and he’s pretending like he’s not looking at me but the one over his shoulder, glass eyes floating back and forth like he can’t take my stare.
“Son of the mayor, side-stepping as a lush, can’t pay a debt to save his one good hand. Rings all he’s got? I’d say take him for what he’s got inside and lock that door while you’re at it missus.” He stands up now, impossibly tall thin like a slice off a block of the most mild cheese. I watch her eyes flick back and forth from me to them and back again. And then she locks eyes with me and then to the door. Done. I push up from the way I’m angled in the stool and the spoon clatters and slips and I catch it and watch another splatter of the rich fat porridge stain my sleeve. They all look at me for a moment and I feel far far away from my feet like my legs exist on another plane and all I want is to sit back down and finish my porridge down to the last meatless sip and I don’t care that I can’t feel my cheeks anymore or that the whole sensory experience my body seems capable of is just the tip of my tongue and tired muscles twitching at my spine. But I push back and stumble and catch myself and hit the metal bar handle of the door pressing against the howl of window that seeks to seal me in. I hear the rats jittering in their excitement now and it couldn’t be farther from my mind as my shoe slap against the stick stones of the street and I slip and skid as I turn around the glass edge of the restaurant catching their eyes following and their teeth showing full as I finally give them their chase. I pass a heart clinic and an orthodontist and a fake flowers shop and rows and rows of trinket stands with shop-keepers barely noticing the snow or my scrambling. I pass the church and out of the corner of my eye I watch the bell-keeper marching creaking wooden steps to do its ringing and pasting snaking alleys that diverge just when they get too narrow I feel a catch and pull at my neck and shoulders and I’m sure they got the best of me and I tell myself I won’t look back but I do and see the vacant tendrils of some twisted lightless lamppost holding my coat and I take turns so I don’t remember and spot the darkness of an alcove where I slip and slam and trip down polished stone steps and there I am. Staring at me from behind the reflection of a thick glass door that won’t budge under my weight I see myself. The tousle of my hair and the way my face is covered now with a beard I can’t remember. I see the fine woven pants and fitted shirt with the paisley embroidery and the curls and wrinkles of my leather shoes from too much walking. I see the bare mess of my form beneath clothes with no overcoat catch my eyes and take comfort in the behaving of my chest. I ring the buzzer to the side of the door and hear it click as I walk into the waiting area. There’s a chocolate fountain flowing down its cool painted porcelain and on the white table-cloth table I see spreads of freshly cut fruits and sweet-breads and elegantly carved treats that I cannot name. The woman tending to the table doesn’t seem to notice me standing there in the waiting area so I set down on the bench and wait. The glass against my back is cool. I reach in my pocket for the ring but it’s on the table in the restaurant, it left to pay for the porridge and maybe now the coat—that damned coat they’ll find me by where I’ve left it and I’m sure my footsteps are marked all through the snow. There’s an impatient clearing of a throat and I turn to see his face finely mustached and brows plucked clean.
“Sir, do you have your ticket?” I produce the light jade card with my number on it and he reads it and nods and holds the door for me. Inside at the party it’s full of people I know who can’t remember me. I can’t stop thinking it’s the absence of the coat. I play along and take a glass of sparkling at the bar table with servers who smile but never say a word. The bubbles float and pop and glisten as they reach the lip and I can taste it now, sweet and cool. The sun reaches through high windows perched from the top of tan marble walls.
“Is that you?” I look up and it’s Dacha. Haven’t seen her in years and how different she looks with her hair down and not in work clothes her smile with the four flatter front teeth off-white against the fairness of her skin. I speak her name.
“How did you recognize me? It must have been years, decades since we’ve seen each other.” She sits next to me and folds my hand between hers still smiling not noticing at all how cold I must be how shrouded by the snow.
“It’s the way you hold yourself, you know everyone’s got a way they do that. You haven’t changed a bit.” We sit for a while and remark about who we see. I hear the bell strike once…twice and again again, it’s metal hollower than I’d expect.
“Well, don’t you think it’s time we go in then? I think the ball is just about to start.”
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