A Dali Portrait

Our Fearless Leader

Chuck told the cabbie he wanted to hear jazz like he was mainlining angel dust on chatter Bill Evans had the trio back together. Cabbie nodded -- tacit engagement -- took a minute to register maximized distances. 

Northside Tavern amp volume seared a blue gash on my consciousness. It nullified my taste for draft beer.  Chuck smoked and John chortled in silence only visible.

Headless beers all around. The waiter withdrew the tray behind his back like a butler. Chuck beamed-in to deliver to his captive audience, “I’m taking my son-in-law to his first machinery show in Atlanta. Now, where do you say we go to get my son-in-law a blowjob?” 

His hand-holding-cigarette gesture afforded a virtual aid for this nostalgic convention ritual. Toss-up, most likely, between fixed locations and mobile practitioners; opportunity cost factored into maximized encounters categorized by requests from eager beavers or some linear program.

Bowing, the waiter abetted this muddled conspiracy, bobbing in the affirmative beyond requisite bobs, formulating a response not quite cowardly. “Well, I’m going to have to ask around. Have to get back to you. Not sure who’s on-call tonight.”

“Just put it on the check,” I said loud enough for the next table to hear.

Chuck’s noxious laughter left out traces of cigarette smoke. He spit in his beer like a freshman, “Let’s order barbeque and fries.” The humidity in the next room sweat all over the alto sax.

In Le Bleu Flame Lounge the wicker prop chairs came to a peak atop their woven backs. You could just step over one without grazing your loin. The stripper spiked her lethal heel on the wicker seat, her thigh liked just missing the peak. The second stripper seemed to warm up to the idea, maybe, she could gently spike herself with it. She gave it her full attention.

Once plot-layers pulsed to climax, the denouement resolved backstage to a regimen of deep yawning. As cardiac blood flow settled, from the wings, the strippers emerged at the bar. 

“Salut.” Chuck raised his beer, “What will you young ladies have?” 

The strippers worked their way over, breasts filled crannies at our elbows. Intimate perspiration pollinated personal spaces. 

“I’m so dog-tired,” her drawl trolled for the weakest link. “But now I feel like some ‘sham-pain!’” 

Two syllables swelled like pucker fish between consonants. Four glasses per bottle. Chuck, swami of hand blessings, kept it pouring. He held his cigarette for a Dali portrait. If you want to see what happens next, you can read my mind.

“If you need a boost, you could sit on my son-in-law’s lap. Why don’t you take something off?”

“No thanks,” On my feet, dignity, as if lit by fuse, aspirated to a fog of vented ignominy. “That is some absurd bullshit.” 

If this were a movie, the script injects farce for the son-in-law, processing events, his role, well afield of Thanksgiving table guest, willing participant without car keys. His new wife, back home, sleeps charmed by the knowledge that Daddy has taken Hubby to a national convention in the big city. All the stories of drunks and whores are convention lore; just Daddy’s way of adding color for all those making poor choices. 

Ours was an ultra-modern hotel because Daddy told marketing we got to win those travel vouchers or my name ain’t Chuck. Travel wasn’t coming out of petty cash, but no-doubt it comingled with Meals and Entertainment treated as a debit to income. 

The exit resembled a subway egress. You were released to the sidewalk where motion was mandatory. The club faced a busy street that allowed southern visibility to downtown Atlanta. Maybe a mile. The street-hike was a workout, the blood pounding my frontal lobe ironed out details, as I knew them, not all details were clear, and some would be entirely missing or penetrating out of range, missing only to me, nothing there to explain. 

Primal instinct animated nocturnal habits of nighthawks in city light that want only to feed and breed. They spill glimpses with dignity, a minor concern, tossed to the hopper. Recent history transcribed by credit card receipts crystalized a dissociated visual record to what expectations held at home.

The streetlights never failed, sidewalks gave way to tight shoulders, but eventually the city acquired a more customary geometry. 

Peachtree Plaza Hotel was a beacon among beacons blazing a salient marquee. Its composite key cleanly stamped without needless detail was counterpart to wrought concrete, glass, and steel fused together from a treasure trove of plans-and-specs. 

The hotel lobby was a machinery carnival. I found the elevator recess and engaged familial service. The key worked perfectly without hesitation. 

Can’t all be saints, a solitary life for comrades-in-arms, you might say, a tough row to hoe, but that’s not my worry, basting in the splendor of hundred-dollar bills too splendid to count, happiness up-for-grabs, cash due upon receipt. 

The window wall faced a southern exposure to brighten all day while the night sky negated the visible with graphics outlined by convivial sparks. No external beat offended the eardrum, most of the hum circulated by electricity in motion. 

I slept unmemorably well. 

Next morning, at the breakfast table in the hotel coffeeshop, our fearless leader dictated to our daily sales journal: “First order of business is forgetting last night. Nothing more to be said.”

Chuck took a cigarette and pinched his lips to hold the filter that shaped an emerging thought. Professional diction labored in the telling.

“We need to bone-up on our competition. Even though we sell what they sell, we want to build onto market share. Keep a step ahead. We hustled like shit farmers to build this company long before you got here.”

Low-overhead payroll not matching depreciation. Two-percent inflation raises, all around.

John leaned over the table, “I saw Henry Summers in the lobby last night. Drunk as fuck. Somebody said he wiped the bar with a hundred-dollar bill and threw it on the floor.”

After a breath I interrupted, “I’d have picked that up if I’d been there.”

Chuck wheezed with laughter then struck a match to light his cigarette leaving the burnt remains on the tabletop. 

“Are you looking to take on new vendors, expand our product line?”

“Possibly, we’ll have to see what’s new. See what we want to sell, shell out for inventory. Where the hell is the coffee?”

Super-oxygenated blood serves well when your brain is forced to improvise. This is the improvisation.