Night has fallen again, or maybe the daybreak had been just an illusion, some optical trick shimmering outside the window on the horizon that was merely darkness reentering itself as another blind and interminable phase.
If I had been fooled, I don’t know by whom.
I do not know how he got here. Across from me over the table sits a man in a lumberjack shirt and baggy jeans cinched tight by a belt around a waist that has entered a phase of little differentiation from the fattening belly. It’s as if he wants to prove he still has a youthful physique and is not growing progressively round and out of shape – a thing more difficult to hide, given his short stature.
And he’s not like the well-built older man, who had appeared barely materialized behind the counter in a strange light, but more like the chatty young waiter who had spoken to me not that long ago but disappeared without bringing me my breakfast.
This one I know is definitely here, in the flesh, physical, corporeal, real, in a way I can touch, poke, speak to and be heard and seen and understood and answered. I know he’s here for sure, because I see how the spongy cushion of the back of his seat sinks in from his weight pressing into it.
He’s still pretty young, perhaps not quite middle aged. But where it joins the neck, his chin has weakened with additional flesh that has just begun to hang and double. There is something odious about his slightly wavy black hair in the first stages of thinning, with streaks of gray running through it in places along the sides that look as though they had been painted on by a makeup artist for a silent film.
And indeed, he says nothing, but just continues transfixing me with this amused, wide-eyed, mocking look, clearly challenging me as to my choice of action in response. I don’t know him and didn’t invite him to sit at my table, and with every other table in the place empty, I say:
“What’s the matter, not enough room in this place that you had to sit at this table?”
Silence. Not a word, not even a head nod – nothing, just the same steady mocking stare.
“Hey, I don’t know you pal, so why don’t you just get the fuck out of here?”
I already know his response, which is the very same, and so I look around, but I don’t see that chatty waiter. I look over at the counter, and the large well-built older man is there, sort of in that hazy light I can’t figure out the origin of, and while he’s at least partly looking over at the table, he seems to be seeing and purposefully ignoring this son of a bitch, while not seeing me at all, as before.
‘Hey, I said why don’t you get the fuck out from my table and take a fucking hike?”
I lurch across the table with an arm to forcefully sweep him out, but somehow totally miss. I know it is not a case of my arm going through him, as though he were a ghost, but of him having moved so fast I was unable to touch him.
He just keeps looking at me – amused, mocking, challenging; not nodding his head or anything.
I figure he is not only particularly evil, but has some kind of cunning hillbilly style of fighting.
“You fucking cracker” – I jump out of my seat with as much speed and explosive power as I can generate – concentrated effort; determined – and lunge at him with both arms out to grab the son of a bitch and pull him out of the table by force, but even with his somewhat dumpy, flabby physique, without changing his expression, he somehow manages to hop up on his seat and crouch there before springing up on the table, then straightening out and stepping down to the floor behind me with casual ease. His speed is phenomenal. His expression doesn’t change.
To taunt me, to humiliate me, he turns his back and walks relaxed toward the counter, where there are suddenly a couple of plates of food he is headed for – apparently to pick them up.
I scream in rage and run for him and manage to tackle him from the back and on the floor I turn him over with my gun pointed into his forehead, but without changing his mocking expression, he somehow slips his head away from the gun and overpowers me in some way I cannot describe in any detail, it is so strange and strength-sapping and terrifying, it leaves me completely helpless in his arms.
He sits me down in my place and places the gun on the table right in front of me. His expression is just the same – wide-eyed, amused; not a facial feature twitches or moves.
He turns and relaxed as ever moves again toward the counter. I do not dare to turn to look as he does so, and the reason is something that cannot be explained as fear. It is something else, but I cannot quite describe what it is. It is a kind of fear, but it is not fear exactly. It is something else.
He comes back to the table with the plates of food and utensils, and without changing his expression, begins eating, looking at me as he does so, staring at me, sending his silent mocking laughter through me with his eyes.
The gun is on the table. It’s clear I can pick it up and blast away at him, but I don’t, and he knows I won’t. He knows, otherwise he wouldn’t have placed the gun there.
And I know I won’t, and again, it’s not because of any fear, but because I know I will miss – he will do something, move his head so fast that I’ll empty the gun of bullets and he’ll continue eating, mocking me with that same expression, as though nothing had happened.
Looking at me and looking at me, he finishes his meal, wipes his mouth with a napkin he pulls from the dispenser, gets up, adjusts his pants up around his hips, and finally releasing his gaze looks straight at the door, heads toward it in the easiest and most relaxed manner, hunger satisfied, and leaves.
I sit here, not understanding how any of it had happened.
Jack Step, May 17, 2014