Page 75 - WTP VOl. VIII #6

care to keep it as far away from himself as possible. He pulled out the trash from underneath the sink and deposited the carcass and the newspaper in the bin.
They were disgusting creatures, and it was all be- cause of neighbors who were less than tidy. Neigh- bors he never saw and didn’t care about. They were probably the same neighbors who had complained to the landlord about him last fall. When he was loading his truck for a hunting trip, he’d left his guns out in the hallway and they had scared a child who didn’t know why they were there. The guns weren’t loaded, of course, and they were only there for a minute or two. Maybe three minutes at most. It was a huge
fuss over nothing, but they complained anyway. And now, as he remembered the events the morning, he felt that same resentment billowing up in him like a
"Now, he was free from everything that had
tormented him so much over the past seventeen years."
windstorm, even though he was in the center of town now, far away from his apartment, and those neigh- bors were gone. He kicked the large dead bug out of his way with the tip of his hiking boots, put his chin back up towards the sun and continued to walk.
~
He passed Dimillo’s Restaurant, the ferry terminal, and gift shops that sold lobster trinkets and Welcome To Maine! bumper stickers. After about a half mile, he was in front of Frise, one of Portland’s newest restau- rants. The owner promoted it as a wine bar though
it served liquor, too, and expensive food. Seymour never spent much on food. It was a waste. It came out of you as easily as it went in. The door to the restau- rant was open and he could see inside to black-and- white tile and chrome with hints of red. The smell of air conditioning and specialty cocktails spread onto the sidewalk, as did the fusion jazz. Keyboards, guitar and drums pulsating with new, unfamiliar rhythms.
A saxophone echoed the melody. Coolness on a day where everything was warm. He wouldn’t normally go into a place like this, but it was a new era now. A
time for new experiences.
At the bar, two men in polo shirts sat on either side of a woman in a flowered dress. He nodded at them but took a stool on the other end, far away.
The bartender was a fat man. His cheeks were pink, flawless, stretched balloons. He placed a small red cocktail napkin before Seymour. Two televisions were playing, one on either end of the black and white wall above the bar. Golf on the left, boxing on the right. The barman handed him a menu of cocktails with ex- otic names like “The Italian Puzzle” and “The Dapper Juniper,” but Seymour said, “Bourbon, straight up.” He adjusted his position on his stool, which was tall with a chrome back and a plush square leather seat.
The barman looked at Seymour over his large cheeks and nodded when he handed him the drink, but Seymour thought there was a little contempt included with the nod.
The woman and the two men at the other end of the bar were drinking green beverages in martini glasses, green leaves peeking from the top of each glass. It
was not a chance encounter. Maybe they had left work early and decided to stop in for a drink. To get cool.
To have a good time. One of the men tapped his hand on the bar in time to the music as he took a sip of his green drink.
Seymour looked at the boxing match. He didn’t rec- ognize the men in the ring. They were large and muscular and wet, almost sexual in a way. They seemed to be embracing one another, hugging each other in a test of wills, of strength, of perseverance. This dance went on for several minutes until one of them collapsed onto the floor of the ring and the referee began counting.
The barman picked up a remote next to a stack of glasses behind the bar and changed the station. It was a news channel now. An anchor woman was talking but the sound was off. For a few seconds, Seymour watched her lips move.
“We might be bombing North Korea,” said the bar- man. “Did you hear?”
Seymour nodded his head. He noticed the barman’s eyebrows. Even that area of his face was overstuffed. He must have been obese as a child, one of these people who never got into shape, who’d been fol- lowed around his whole life by fat taunts, and now he worked in a restaurant where he could sample
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