In a Kansas Diner – April, 1953
The music ends and a dawning transformation that is almost frightening begins to take hold of the young, short man’s face. In painful stages, his beaming smile, which had almost been a leering grin, disappears. He begins to lower his arms, which had been so theatrically, even mockingly, thrust out to either side, until they drop limp against his shanks.
His clownish expression is gradually replaced by what seems to be embarrassment over his outburst, which deepens visibly as he turns inward to understand… but there is too much to even begin to contemplate what had just happened, let alone understand.
What had provoked the fit? Even a child learns to control such whimsical urges, he thinks, and to treat them as imaginative fancies of the mind to be brought under control and stifled – especially in public – and particularly in front of strangers.
But why had he been unable to stop it? It was as though a powerful wave had swept him into the diner, just as he had been walking by, and, no sooner than he heard the wistful, melancholy strains of “Over the Rainbow,” the force that had gotten him inside impelled him to immediately, even viciously, smother Judy Garland’s words and voice with his own.
The urge had been so sudden and violent that some deeper knowledge, which he calls up from inside himself, tells him he had had no way of fighting it – even if he had wanted to. And he had not wanted to, which disturbs him even more.
“Well,” the young, short man says to Stephan, “I’m an opera man, anyway.”
He takes off his beaten-up fedora and begins to knead it in his right hand, and then he covers his heart with it, as though he is about to swear the most sacred of oaths, tilting his large head up and to the side, and rocking back on his heels.
The gestures and motions work to give him more pluck.
“Loved it since the day I was born,” he says, a smaller, but more genuine smile now forming on his mouth. “The jilted lovers, the jealousies, the crimes of passion, the murders – and those arias – aaahh, those arias.”
Stephan cannot immediately find the words to express his anger toward the stranger. He shakes his head and his shoulders come up around his neck, as he looks through the stranger’s glasses into his large, blue, lamb-like eyes. He raises his hands palm-up in a questioning gesture, which the young, short man interprets as a cue to sit at the table across from Stephan.
“I don’t see how your love of opera gives you the right to ruin a song that was playing for my money,” Stephan finally manages to say.
“Well, would you like me to reimburse you for your lost song?”
“Ah, no, no – I guess it’s not that important anymore.”
“Well, all right then. But don’t say I didn’t make the offer.”
“I’m not going to say anything at all.”
They sit silent for a while. But there is something about the man that disturbs Stephan. He is bothered, among other things, by his large forehead, and the way he seems to keep looking at Stephan, with just the faintest hint of a smile. Somewhat unnerved, Stephan finally says:
“And what’s that mean… what you sang… that you can’t die?”
“Well, I suppose it means nothing at all, there… ah… what’s your name, again?”
“Stephan.”
“Ste-what?”
“I said Stephan; my name is Stephan.”
The young, short man bends his head down over the table to think about this for a while, and then looking back up, says, “Well, okay, then, Stephan. My name’s Josh – Josh Davies…”
Neither extends a hand across the table to the other.
“I thought I heard voices out here,” the large, well-built man says, coming out to the long counter. “I see your friend found you,” he says to Stephan. And then to Josh Davies: “Be having anything? Some coffee, maybe?”
“Oh, yes, indeed, some coffee would be just fine.”
The large, well-built man comes around with a saucer and a cup and utensils, sets them down in front of Josh Davies, and pours the coffee. He says, “Now, I’ll be back in the kitchen, so if you need anything, just give a yell.” Again, the large, well-built man disappears.
“Stephan?”
“What’s that?”
“Did you ever get that feeling, when someone you knew had died – oh, it doesn’t matter, older, younger – except the feeling’s much more disturbing when they’re younger than you – or just young in general – very young – that, well, that it got someone else, but passed you by.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Well, that it left you alone, took someone else off and went on its way. Gives you sort of a good feeling, like a chill of relief that runs through you; one of, oh, I don’t know, one of almost guilty pleasure. Didn’t that ever happen to you? That it took someone else, while you’re still alive. You’ve been given another day – to live. It’s a kind of victory, in a way. You get to live, while someone else has died.”
“I haven’t been around long enough for the experience. I wouldn’t know,” Stephan says.
“Oh, surely, you must have known someone who’s died.”
“No, really, I don’t know what it’s like to feel I’ve been given another day at someone else’s expense, because I’ve never known anyone else in the first place, the second place being this is my first day – me being here before my time.”
Drawing hot coffee through his pursed lips, Josh Davies peers at Stephan over his round glasses.
“I’m not here yet,” Stephan says. “I won’t be until ‘63. Why I’ve been given this at all, and if I’ll even remember it – well, I couldn’t tell you – I simply don’t know.”
Josh Davies bows his head again. He thinks about this for what seems like a long, long time. When he raises his head again, he looks straight at Stephan. He wants to start talking, but he checks himself, and with his red lips slightly parted, thinks some more. But then he decides to say nothing at all.
A long time seems to pass. The two young men sit across from each other, but not another word is said between them.
At some point, which Stephan fails to notice, Josh Davies leaves some change for the coffee and gets up from the table. Stephan just catches the back of a young, short man plopping an old, worn fedora on his head and waddling out the door.
Turning toward the big window, Stephan closes his eyes to feel the strengthening sun warm his face. With his eyes closed, he listens to the sucking sound of boots diminish and recede as they tramp away from the diner across the soggy ground.
Filed by Jack Step, for the Lower East Side Gazetteer, November 30, 2013