The Straight-Up Vodka Man
He wasn't annoying
just oddly insistent for someone of 60
that she go to college
and even she
who would never want anyone
to think her naïve
suspected it wasn't a convoluted way
to see the bottom half
of her wraith tattoo
that writhed every time she bent over the cooler.
Yes, there were worse ways to waste an afternoon
than trading shots with the round, unsexed face
piping on
how he'd met his wife in college as a donut-shop
waitress
(she'd come home smelling like powdered sugar)
recounting the sins of dead mayors interred in marble memory downtown
how Zabar's olives hit him like Proust
or like a Southern family pig roast would be for her
and she grinned and pretended to get it
though her dad was only in photos
and her mother brought home Schlitz by the case
and she had bulimia through high school anyway
and Proust who?
plus he'd never been to Arkansas
just Amsterdam
but still he strove to connect
and didn't seem to know he was old
which slightly peeved her
because even when slamming beer cans 'cross her
noggin
she felt that way
He'd bring back diamonds and Delft
and little trinkets for her
and one time a girl about her age
and the vodka kept coming
every day
and when his stomach suddenly bloated
he'd arrive 30 years older
shuffling in minute steps to his bar stool
in a rictus of relaxation
face filed down with the shame of a sickness
any barfly could spot
but no one would speak of
because even she didn't know him that well
and one sweltering weekend he sold the china
and overseas junk
off his brownstone stoop
and legally nullified, packed himself
into a quiet box of a nursing home
out of the neon bar light
with no one's girlfriend around to advise
not even a son to kiss him awkwardly
fate catching him in the liver
after too many years of playing young
stranded amid stale-bread lunchroom smells of
the grudgingly looked after
forgotten
until months later
the bartender
told a straight-up vodka kid
"Don't be like this one guy that used to come in here."
Joe.
Clay Waters
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