***
It's seven o'clock and I haven't had anything to eat except a Snickers bar since my lunch with Russell. I need food and I don't feel like eating alone. I run through my options.
Stephen’s out of the question. I don't want to hang out with people who have bigger problems than me - the person needs to cheer me up, not the other way around. Mike’s stapled to Joanna and I'm 99 percent sure he won't be able to come, so I'm not even going to bother calling him. Russell again? No way, I got enough of him at lunch. Don't I have any more close friends? Can I really count them on one, feeble hand? Wow, that’s kind of… sad.
Then I come to think of Karen, my sister, who I haven't talked to in weeks, although she lives in the same city. My little sister and I don't have a very good brother-sister relationship and I think part of her actually resents me for never being the caring big brother I ought to have been because of my one-track mind focused on success. I don't really know if Karen needed any brotherly assistance though, like our mother she grew up to be pretty tough and independent in a family where everyone's his or her own island. The Reynolds were never Family Ties material (you know that show with a young Michael J. Fox where everybody says they love each other all the time?), we were all occupied working on our own projects, hobbies and careers, something that of course meant there was little quality family time. I'm actually not really sure what family time means.
I never thought about these things until my mother passed away four years ago from lung cancer. 40 years of smoking at least one pack of cigarettes a day did that to her and in the end her throat was red like a stop sign, and the cancer looked you right in the face as you talked to her.
I actually thought my mother's fight with cancer would bring the family together, because death should do that, right? But although we all cried, drank and talked about her, we quite casually went on with our lives afterwards. My father moved from his beloved Boston to start a new life in Miami and Karen and I stayed in New York, where we quickly drifted apart again.
I have recently started to wish we were different.
“Hi sis!” I say, trying to sound energetic.
“Hi,” Karen's voice is low and slightly wooden, I can tell she didn't expect this call, but that doesn't mean she's overjoyed about it either.
“So, what's up? Painting?” I sound stupid of course. This timid, “what are you doing”-talk, is not really me and my sister knows it.
“No, I'm waiting for Dylan. We're going to watch a movie.”
Dylan is Karen's band-playing emo-boyfriend (you know, guys who think life is against them from the start, listen to depressive music and try to cover their face with hair), and I can't stand guys who play in bands. He's far from the type of dude I’d hang out with, which means he's probably a good match for Karen.
“What are you watching?”
“A Spanish drama, not really something you’d like.” Karen’s right, she knows I'm not very interested in small European films.
“Aha, okay. I just wanted to check on you. Everything's good?” I'm grasping at straws here - the idea of the loving and caring brother is something I could have sold ten years ago maybe. Not now.
“Yeah, I guess. I sold a painting a few days ago, through my blog. It's great to get some extra money. And Dylan got a few more gigs.”
These gigs are usually played at half-empty bars in out of way-locations and I'm pretty sure Dylan isn't destined towards musical greatness, but what do I know?
“Okay, that's good. Progress!”
The word progress is a heritage from my father, his life motto and the one word he really wanted us to believe in.
“Yep, some progress, I guess,” Karen says.
“You heard from dad?”
Our father is a standard item of our conversations. Neither Karen nor I are good at calling him though and he's not world champion at staying in touch with us either.
“We talked, let's see, maybe three weeks ago? He told me about his new girlfriend, a girl he's been seeing for a few months now. She’s young, about my age and her name is Melody. Can you believe that? It's probably some porn star or something.”
Karen’s obviously disgusted by the thought of our father dating girls half his age, but he has always been a ladies man and he's good looking for being 60 with this “permanent” tan (he has his own tanning bed in the basement), a good physique and a thick wallet. So I'm not really surprised he's met someone named Melody.
In the background I hear a door slam. It's probably Dylan, back from a “gig”.
“Ha-ha,” I laugh, “you know how dad is. You got me curious now, I should call and check on him.”
“You do that, Jack. I'm going to start watching this movie now, but we can talk some other time, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, sure. I'll call you. Take it easy, sis.”
“Sure, I will. Bye.”
“Bye.”
The silence after that bye is a long silence. I don't know what I’d hoped for, but grabbing a beer with my sister wouldn't have been too shabby.
I look up at the sky and feel the first drops of rain hit my shoulder. Around me people are rushing off to their after-work beers, homes, wives, kids, dogs, roommates, and I'm standing on the pavement holding my cellphone hard like it's the only friend I've got. I must be extremely lonely, because in the end I actually decide to call Russell anyway, as he's the only guy I can think of who would be free to have a drink on such short notice.
“Yo,” Russell replies.
“Hi,” I say. “Drinks?”
“No time for that, bro. Got a date.”
“A date? Why didn't you tell me at lunch?”
“Didn't know about it then.” Russell says, sounding stressed.
“So you just scheduled a date in the afternoon? How did that happen? You walked into someone in the street?”
I say this but think: Shit, this guy is good!
“Yeah, pretty much. No time for details now. Got to go.”
Russell's ready to hang up - he apparently has better places to be than talking to me.
“Okay. Talk later then.”
“See ya.”
Click.
So here I am alone. Everybody's watching movies, saving marriages, and dating while I'm walking around the city in a slight drizzle with a headache and a rumbling belly. I can't recall feeling this miserable in a long time. The rain’s pouring heavier by the minute and I look at the sky in disbelief. I need to get under a roof and run across the street and into a Borders bookstore. I haven't been in a bookstore in a long time. Although they're not really bookstores anymore, they're social interaction centers serving coffee and muffins, which is good, because I'm starving.
I walk upstairs to the Borders café and look around. People are scattered about at small tables, playing with their iPads, typing on their laptops, sharing a coffee or reading a book. It looks like such a lonely place I instantly feel even more depressed.
I stand in line behind an old man in a tweed jacket. He emits a rancid smell and I'm trying to block my nostrils and focus on what sandwich I want instead. Suddenly I'm at the front of the line, but the pimple-faced and pig-nosed girl taking my order doesn't exactly raise my spirits. I order a chicken cranberry baguette, a bottle of still water and a large Americano. I pay and move to the side for my seventh coffee of the day.
The wait is longer than usual for just an Americano and I'm starting to feel impatient when the pig-nosed girl shows up again. With a Cappuccino.
“I ordered an Americano,” I say, holding up my lactose-infested cup for her to see. “They don't contain milk.” I give her a stern look.
“Oh. I heard you say Cappuccino,” she says.
The pig’s apparently deaf and uninformed about the phrase “the customer is always right”. I sigh loudly.
“I said Grande Americano. Now can you please just get me one.”
“Ok,” she says, clearly annoyed and snatches the cup from my hands so fast the cup tumbles over
and a sliver of coffee spills out through the breathing hole (because you can't really drink from that hole) and onto my hand. The piping hot coffee burns my fingers and stains my blue Dolce Gabbana shirt.
“Fuck!” I cry out.
“Oh, I'm so sorry, sir!” The pig’s frantic now. “Sorry, it just slipped out of my hands.”
“I think your job just slipped out of your hands,” I say, while trying to wipe the coffee off of my shirt.
“I'm going to talk to your manager about this,” I continue, squeezing out what could likely be the lamest line of all time. Still, like a reflex, I say it.
I feel the whole room looking at me, but the heart-breaking silence is soon replaced with the background noise of thunder and even heavier rain hitting the window, and that's kind of the drop, if you excuse the pun.
It's the second time that day I want to jump through a window, but instead I sit down with my stained shirt and my tasteless baguette and just soak in all the self-pity and loathing.