CHAPTER FOUR (2)

A wretched gust blew suddenly in all of their faces and the girls were quieted and the boys even more sombered. Carlos peered out from the laquered wooden window sill and curiously wondered why in hell those wonderful school girls would stop laughing just because of a little wind. But the moment soon passed and again the chatter raced by the window. Above them the Andes cowered ominously and degradingly, their caps gleaming some unspeakable white against the grey sky and whispering to their sea just out of reach. The beer was beginning to hit him harshly and he could feel his cheeks blush and his ears heat up. Nevertheless, he kept his eyes on the crowd and remained nursing the ever-emptying glass before him.

            A few hours later and a few more beers, it had turned dark outside but the diner remained perfectly well-lighted. Customers went in an out, the crowed varied as it always did. It was always constant, regardless of tribe, regardless of their make or their model. It was almost eight. Eight was when the streets became empty shells of the lively asphalt ridden ways and avenues they had been during that afternoon. Eight was when everyone turned-in, when the entire city of Santiago fell silent and scared. 

            It was at this time that Carlos decided to head up into his portion of the city. He bundled himself in his alpaca sweater and threw on his plastic windbreaker and prepared for the journey – at least to find a cab. As he stepped outside the wind instantly threatened his pores and took his breath from him. Winter in Santiago had always been on the colder side (perhaps because the humidity from the ocean could not extend to the area), but this particular winter in 1974 was especially frigid.

            As Carlos sat in the back of the cab rubbing his gloved hands together to ignite some sort of feeling in them, he maneuvered himself.

            “Barrio Bellavista, Cerro San Cristobal porfa…”

            The cab driver, wearing a pauper’s hat made from steely looking wool, glanced in his rear view mirror. His face seemed condensed like it had become the victim of a trash compactor, and his teeth were few. The salt and pepper hair so inherent to the Mapuche plagued this man, and though Carlos knew that they were proud of this, he despised the fact that his father, too, sustained the mark of Chile’s poorest, Chile’s most ignorant, and most restrictive group to his own political beliefs.

            “Si, señor. Esta desde aca?” asked the cab driver.

            “Si, si, po. Conduzca, porfa.”

            Carlos felt he’d been quite frank with the man, but it was what one must do to his class. The street beyond was dim now, but Carlos could still feel the penetrating wind and deep, humidless chill in his being. His father had walked these streets, his grandfathers had walked these same streets, and his great grandfathers had walked these streets. Beyond that he was ashamed. He dared not recess into his past beyond that point, for he was just like this man in front of him: a man caught between famine and servitude and crushed beneath his government. Below was all that could afford him, and even then he could only go six feet deep.

CHAPTER FOUR (1)

CHAPTER FOUR: Las Latifundistas

           

            Swift, piercing winds swept across the foothills of the ever-snow capped Andes as Carlos sipped on a smooth lager in a dirty glass. The city was filled with sounds of business; impenetrable humming emanated off of the concrete sidewalks where men in business suits and multi-faceted ties walked briskly, but not too briskly, for the severe chill in the wind kept them quite at bay. Their thick dark hair and wild eyebrows blew softly despite the rigorousness of the wind, revealing smooth coffee foreheads and tiny but intense eyes. They all carried briefcases made from genuine Argentine leather and most carried a Lucky Strike between their teeth.

            Carlos watched from inside a well-lighted diner on a corner in Santiago’s business district. Those men, all alike, all alike, would ebb out into the sidewalk in waves with their fancy briefcases and disappear past Carlos’ window. They were faceless; all that prevailed were the dark skin and the bushy thick hair. Every so often one of these might drop his cigarette in the face of wind that was so intent on going against his own path, and then he might stop to pick it up off a muddy concrete square, then proceed on after replacing it between his lips. But after the come-on in high capacity, the crowd would dissipate for the most part, and Carlos would find himself akin with half a beer and an empty window.

            At about five, the men would stumble back in the opposite direction – this time their hair a bit oily and faces a bit sullen. And everything was all just a bit more of this and a bit more of that. Their faces were more haggard and tough like a sinewy piece of steak. The entire visage seemed to be a kind of strange dream to Carlos – men falling back from their nine-to-fives broken or at least somewhat dismantled. But they continued to rear like drones, one after the other while the wind made them squint and silently plead for their penthouses and five bedroom flats and wonderful wives and astute children.

            The flow of men again began to wane, and those astute children replaced them. The tribe of school children flooded rather than flowed into the street. The girls dressed in pleated navy-blue skirts with leg warmers and Mary-Janes. Their cornstarched and heavily ironed white shirts peeked out beneath navy-blue windbreakers embroidered with La Escuela Santa Maria, or Corazón Sacrado, or something of the like. Bright teeth and long black hair, sleekly brushed or tightly platted fought against the wind with youthful vigor. They giggled and played with their red and blue striped ties.

            And the boys watched them if they were old enough. Some watched them even though they weren’t old enough. More somber, they carried heavy loads of mathematic books and copies of Paradise Lost and the Bible. These boys did not smile, but they looked on as their fathers had. Carlos could see in those deep brown irises that there were secrets that were untouchable by a fourteen-year-old’s mind, some untouchable by any mind.  

CHAPTER THREE (18)

Amanda turned from the table and immediately the corners of her mouth turned from fake smile to an intense scowl. Pigs, she thought, and walked over to the computer station to input the orders. As she entered in the last drink, she felt a tapping on her left shoulder. There stood the man with a sunglasses tan and an affinity for gin asking her to please take his credit card.

            “You see,” he rubbed his neck nervously and whipped his head around to see if the other man at his table was spying, “I don’t want my father to pay tonight. Could you just slip this is your little book there and pretend like nothing happened, I just don’t want him to know.”

            “Absolutely,” smiled Amanda.

            “Great.” And just like that the man sauntered back to the little booth that presumably held his mother, his father, and his wife. Yes, he was the responsible child.

            Amanda focused her eyes on the black credit card the man had given to her, the name read in tiny machine printed letters, John P. Babbit, M.D. and below that in the same type, Babbit Chiropractic Care. She smirked and put the card in her book, as he’d instructed, for safe keeping until it was time to pay the bill. Absolutely you can pay, Mr. Babbit, she thought to herself.

            And so, work continued on at the little Italian restaurant Corrotto’s. Everything was warm and swell as if Tuscany’s breathtaking grass fields and deep green cypress tress were floating just outside the heavy mahogany doors. A composure was brought to Carlos, wafting on those famous Italian breezes between ancient, woody, olive trees. A certain equilibrium settled beneath his salt-and-pepper hair as he greeted more and more guests, as he watched his dutiful minions pour out drinks and drop off steaming wicker baskets of bread, as his bank account piled and his corporate superiors above watched over him like benevolent gods who’d just created another Hercules, another David. Yes, this was his restaurant and he was proprietor. This was his Jerusalem, and his restaurant the holy temple.

            But beyond the city on the hill, Amanda thought of the sweet immortality and boundlessness of Tribulations. How sweet, how much sweeter than any known confection created by paltry man, would the body of Christ be as she finally embraced him. How sweet it might be…

            But Mitzi thought only of his perfect half-organic half-machine contraptions that lay waiting for him in his bedroom when he returned. The suck, suck of the water as it nourished though plastic, gossamer tubes as they stuck this way and that out of the body of the whole monster. His heaven would be here soon…

            But Toddy thought only, as he gulped down the remaining drops of a nice bottle of chianti left on table forty-three, how entirely inebriated he really was, and how entirely he liked it that way. Only four more hours until his shift was over, and then, then he could caress the pleasant saccharine fluid of Schwampagne betwixt his tongue and palette and dream about the mischief that might ensure later on. Only then, only then…

            But clearly outside the bounds of sanity, as though it appeared, Squirley swam deeper and deeper into the murky coy pond of paranoia and wondered when exactly it would culminate into Amanda’s ridiculous notion Tribulations. When might all these rules stop? Then, when might he trust a man like Gato or a man like Carlos or a man even like Toddy with his very identity, his very being? Man, he thought, might it be sweet… 

CHAPTER THREE (17)

Amanda had headed to the other side of the restaurant and hovered over her table. Her pink tie, covered in a pattern with tiny white crosses embroidered into the silk, hung dangerously close to the olive oil dish. She addressed her table of four, two couples. The first couple on her left side had to be in their seventies by now; the man sat hunched over and continuously chewed his cud. His fat, purple lips grinded painfully together, but at a sideways angle, lubricated only by what came from the cud turning tumultuously in the throat below. His eyelids drooped; they had given up to the endless fight of gravity and their capillaries exposed red and purple lines. The woman, perhaps ten years younger, seemed weighted down by so many ounces of gold and limitless karats of diamonds. Her scrawny vein-ridden arms sat folded neatly on the table, while a shawl covered her shoulders. Of course she had thinning but well curled short hair but close to the head, and just a dash of blue shadow about her eyelids.

            The couple that sat directly across from them in the booth looked at ease. They were probably in their late forties to early fifties. The man had an expensive light blue polo shirt on to cover his small gut, a leather braided belt that connected with a clanging, metal coverlet, which held up khaki golfing shorts. His hair had just become frail, and he probably cherished every hair that remained peeping out from his reddened scalp. His nose was globular and swollen, a fact most gin drinkers beheld. He had a subtle sunglasses tan from being “at the holes” too often, especially on Fridays, when his chiropractic office closed early at two. His wife was blonde and drenched in too much perfume. Her nails were manicured by a woman name Choi, who worked at the most prestigious Vietnamese spa in town, named aptly, Happy Nail. The woman wore an enormous diamond encased in platinum that hung between two flawlessly proportioned breasts – the work of Dr. M. Goldenstein, plastic surgeon and golfing buddy to her husband. The chiffon shirt she wore to cover them was faintly diaphanous which paired well with her personality. Amanda more than understood that this woman wouldn’t be eating much tonight, or any night for that matter. No, she would stick to either her wine, a Flirtini, or a combination of the two.

            “Good evening folks! How are you doing this fine Friday night?” began Amanda.

            They all nodded and the older man who was too hunched over to look at her muttered something that seemed like, “We are all doing fine.”

            “Excellent. Can I start you of with a glass of wine, perhaps a bottle from our very selective wine list? How about a martini, ma’am?” she directed the message to the woman with fake breasts. “I’ll start with the ladies first. For you, ma’am?” She turned her head to the older woman who could barely lift her neck to address her waitress, due to the onslaught of precious metals.

            “I’ll have a glass of the Veramiente sauvignon blanc, oh, and a glass of water.”

            “And for you, ma’am?” She now directed her attention again towards Fake Breasts.

            “Me? Hmm. I am thinking about either a white zinfandel or an apple martini. What do you think?”

            What Amanda actually thought was this: This woman knows nothing about wine because, one, she is thinking about drinking a white zinfandel with… well with probably a half a meatball, if that. Secondly, she knows nothing about her age because she is also considering a martini that high school girls drink when they have busty little sleepovers. Amanda wanted to tell this woman that her body was, as they say, a temple, and that she shouldn’t be putting a drop of liquor in her already emaciated and adulterated blood stream to begin with. Who knows what the effect of saline stuffed between muscle and major organs added with alcohol could be. Instead, she replied:

            “Go with the zinfandel ma’am, its light and probably sweeter than the martini in comparison.” Plus, the glass of wine was almost double what the martini in price.

            “I’ll go with that, then, thank you.”

            “Gentleman?” coaxed Amanda.

             The drooping man said, after swallowing a little bit of cud though as not to spit any out, “I’ll have a Manhattan… bourbon.”

            “Excellent choice, sir. And for you, sir?”

            “Let’s see… I’ll have a gin martini, on the rocks. Make it as dry as possible. And tell your bartender over there not to be shy, m’kay, sweetie?”

            Amanda nodded and loathed this man.

            “Alright, folks, I’ll get those drinks out as soon as possible. And, of course, some of our fresh bread.”

            The four had already started discussing some other matter – something about the man’s chiropractic business – and barely noticed that she had said her goodbyes. 

CHAPTER THREE (16)

“Young man?” called a lady patron at the table with the Italian soda and perfectly ringletted child.  Who me, thought Squirley to himself, I’m like twenty-eight, lady. But he responded sincerely, “Yes?”

            “My Cindy here is complaining that the soda isn’t sweet enough.”

            “Well, let me get you another one right away Ma’am.”

            Ryan reached for the Italian soda. It’s cream had begun to separate from the watery liquid of the soda water, forming what looked like a sour layer of milk gone bad. On the bottom, a layer of thick raspberry syrup loomed; all three layers had separated and Ryan realized that the concoction needed merely to be stirred again. Shegently took hold of his wrist as he reached for it and eyed him up and down breaking him with a scowl, “Next time, add more syrup.” With total seriousness, she moved not a muscle in her tightened face and looked him directly into his eyes. “You got that?”

            A pause. The hate welled up in him. “Yes Ma’am.”

            He thus imagined a game show as he took the drink in question to the kitchen, with a skinny bronzed aged man in a preened black suit and striped red and blue tie. He held a thin microphone with a bulbous piece of felt at the top and reminded the audience to “spay and neuter you animals.” Squirley often imagined this show, the set embellished with browns and mauves and oranges and turquoise; the set was right from the seventies. Big blocks of color and straight edges formed the furniture and the prizes behind a wheel-of-fortune type deal. The audience cheered for Squirley as he took the pegs in his hands and swayed his body, using all the force he could possible muster, and spun the wheel. The cheering grew louder and louder and he raised his eyes towards the contraption’s title: The Tip-O-Meter. The wheel kept spinning and spinning, and finally began to slow, but the clapping never ceased, the cheering only roared like waves crashing against some sublime cliff. The skinny man with the microphone became larger and larger, and the audience cheered and the wheel’s colors were spinning too fast. As the wheel began to seriously slow, he saw his demise, the flapping peg landed on a “$0” sign and the audience booed, and the announcer sang, “Too bad for Mr. Squirley! Too bad for Mr. Squirley! Too bad, too bad.”

            He sprang out of his thought as Amanda raised her voice to him, “You gonna move or sit there all day?”

            Squirley stirred the same drink without adding anything to it, and sped out of the kitchen through the white flapping doors that shut tightly behind him.

            “Here you are Little Lady,” he set the same drink (though now stirred for the second time) in front of the child. He caught the eyes of her mother and his heart had begun to beat furiously – he feared the beating beneath his tie would give him away.

            “Much better, mommy.” She wiped her mouth with her sleeve leaving a frothy stain.

            The mother’s eyes softened on her daughter, but scorned Ryan’s presence. He walked away with the “$0” sign stuck in his temples.

CHAPTER THREE (15)

His wife probably didn’t even want eggplant parmesean to begin with. Mitzi looked at her and wished he could ask her what she wanted, but that would send him right out of the restaurant on his ass without a job, and Mitzi simply couldn’t afford that. Waiting long enough, he interrupted the man’s gaze:

            “Tonight for soups we have our ever-famous pasta Fagioule, a chicken noodle soup, a rather spicy fish chowder, or the popular minestrone. As for salads, we offer a wide selection of different vinegrettes ranging from balsamic to raspberry.”

            “I will have the chicken chowder.” Mitzi again tried not to wince – the insolence! Follow my words, you fool, he wanted to tell the man.

            “Sir – do you mean the fish chowder or the chicken noodle?”

            The man looked confused. Mitzi turned to look over his other four tables quickly: the stringy man sitting to his left in the next booth needed a refill of water, the booth to his right held a man who was eying Mitzi and pointing his finger to the empty bread basket on the table. His eyebrows formed two pointed arches above his puny, deep set- eyes, saying, I thought you knew how to do your job. Mitzi became extremely impatient and tapped his foot beneath the booth while keeping up with that pseudo-smile. What could he do? This idiot old man was taking forever, taking for what seemed like fifteen minutes, completely unaware of how busy his server was, and –

            “George,” said his wife unexpectedly, “I think this young man is busy enough. Can you move it along, please?”

            “Yes, honey.” He looked up at Mitzi with angry, contemptuous eyes, “We’ll” – he looked at his wife, half-heartedly, “have the chicken noodle and those wonderful mashed potatoes as our side. Oh, and don’t forget a little more bread.” The man smiled, feeling that he had fully punished Mitzi by needing more bread; his wife does not just yell at him without the punishment being adhered to the source.

            “Yes, Sir. And more iced-tea, Sir?”

            “Please.”

            Mitzi calmly took the menus from them and walked with his hands forced straight down right beside his Dickies pants, for fear that he might sock the man. Right, Mitzi though, Next: I have to get bread for table sixty-four, water for table sixty-two, and more bread and iced-tea for this asshole at table sixty-three. Oh – and I must not forget to spit in that man’s drink. An enormous smile broke out on Mitzi’s face, revealing large pearly wake-boards.

            “Hey, Matt. What’s the big smile for?” asked Ryan as he whisked past carrying one too many frothy sodas on a cocktail tray.

            Mitzi smiled on past Squirley and walked quickly with a little extra pizzazz: iced-tea, bread, water…

            Meanwhile, Squirley balanced the dangerous sodas, veering this way and that out of other servers’ pathways. One turn around the corner could be impending doom, and Squirley could imagine the sodas flying all over the place. A coke might land squarely on a woman’s newly coiffed wig, might ruin a man’s freshly bought but nevertheless hideous silk tie, might spoil the leather penny loafers a regular customer just bought as he made his way to the little boy’s room. Yes, it was a risky operation but the fruits of Squirley’s risk would measure up if he succeeded. And so, he waved in and out, his plump buttox moving fluidly with his chunkier hips in some sort of aerodynamic phenomenon. He rounded his way beyond the bathrooms – what he called a high-risk, no fly zone because of the customer traffic – and made it past the first obstacle. Past the bar he waddled, where he had to raise the sodas above his head as a petite elderly woman flew by beneath. Mayhem, total mayhem. Not a drop spilt, though.

            With a twist of his body, a pick and roll past the women and men waiting to be seated, he made it to the first of his tables, dropping of a 100% iced coke and a water, on to the next table where he dropped off two iced-teas, and on to the next where a snotty-little girl with perfect blonde ringlets cried until she grasped the Italian soda that Squirley had pined over in the back of the house preparing. He looked around, after a job well performed, not a black man in the restaurant. Just another Friday night. 

CHAPTER THREE (14)

Bruce, the aging bartender, might look up for a moment. But finding that even if there was foul play at hand, there could be nothing done at the moment because of all of the guests seated around the horse-shoe shaped bar, and remind himself to investigate later on at closing time. By the end of his shift, there wouldn’t be an ounce of suspicion in his mind and the whole matter was thus forgotten.

            “Oh, we just love coming to Corrotto’s,” said an enthusiastic overweight man in his fifties. He could only sit at a table because the coral-colored booths that lines the walls of the restaurant impeded his “growing out instead of growing up,” as was his euphemism. Carlos stood above the table with his hands clasped behind his back, and smiled. 

            “Well I see you here nearly every week, Mr. Johnston! Next time you might even get an employee discount, you are here more often than them!” Carlos nudged the man’s pudgy arm as he attempted one of his acquiescing but altogether dim-witted jokes. It was what got him through the night with these types… The man’s moustache curled up into a moon shape and his non-existent hairline revealed wrinkles trying to push through all of the fat. His wife sipped her Sirah with ancient scrawny fingers, and shrewdly chuckled behind her polished glass.

            The man roared like a deflating bellow at Carlos. The commotion of this squeezed tiny drops of liquid through the man’s pores on his forehead, and Carlos thought he might stroke.

            “Alright, Mr. Johnston. Go ahead and get back to your spaghetti. I’ll leave you alone for a while.”

            “Right-o, Carlos!” The man sopped the sweat from his puffy brow and continued eating. His wife watched, nursing her glass.

            Nearby, a very busy Mitzi dealt with the same type of customers: fat, obnoxious, rich, but cheap. He set down the remaining iced-tea on the table before a couple in their late sixties and began the spiel:

            “And, now, Sir, what can I offer the lady to eat this evening?”

            The man brought his spectacles down towards his thin little nose and studied the menu. “Why do they keep it so dark in here?” he said, straining his eyes.

            “We try to maintain a certain… atmosphere, Sir. I’ll see if I can talk to my manager.”

            “Right,” the old man said condescendingly. “Well, I think we will begin with the crab puffs.”

            “Absolutely, sir. And for your entrees?” Mitzi scribbled a nearing-illiterate “cp” on his server’s paper.

            “ We’ll split” – oh those awful words! To split an entrée meant a disappointing ticket total, which of course meant a disappointing tip –“the eggplant parmesean.”

            Mitzi tried not to wince, and muttered through clenched teeth, “Yes, Sir. Now that comes with a soup or a salad and a side dish.”

            “Yes.” The man looked down on towards his menu again. Mitzi pondered on whether or not the man would actually find the place in which the soups or salads on resided on the main – in plain black-and-white – and then how long it might actually take to decide which one his wife might want.