Nearly drunk and bored, and standing with his hand holding the firm back of a bar stool, a man (he is Felipe) smiles coquettishly to the air above the chatting people’s heads. How are we feeling tonight? he would ask with a pursed smile to an acquaintance who wishes good evening or buys him a drink. But no one passes by—the collective patrons exude a thick hum and push ceramic plates with freshly cured olives, pumpkin seeds and oily fish along the bar. Felipe hears blurred clinking of glass and dishes, and looks groggily around the room.
(Having recognized a woman standing at the end of the bar, this balding man, roughly 45, nods his damp head toward her dark curls and partially visible pink cheek as if she had called over to him. The man lurches forward and approaches with half-open eyes, placing his hand gently on her arm. As she turns, he speaks as if mid-conversation).
"Que sería tu opinión," Felipe asks for her opinion, this woman 10 years his junior, whose family knew his family in this town.
The woman ignores Felipe but her friend turns to a conversation with others along the bar’s edge. Finding herself alone with Felipe, she drinks her red wine and watches the bartender slicing pieces of jamón serrano from the ham hock hanging behind him.
If I were to buy us both beers, Felipe continues, undeterred, "una para mí y otra para tí y nos hablamos un rato," later, if you buy second drink for yourself and offer me a sip, that would be rude, wouldn’t it? he says, recollecting the friend who didn’t reciprocate a drink. The woman waits, sips her wine, knows he is not waiting on her. "Te lo digo algo," I’ll tell you, he says smiling, body wavering, as he holds his pale glass of beer in front of him, elbow at side, at that moment, this person is no longer my friend.
You’d lose a friend over not buying a beer?, she asks, turning her head to face him.
"No," he said, "Lo no haría yo," he brings his glass to his chest to point to himself, but he did, he says, and smiles and rolls his eyes like a middle-aged Broadway star in makeup, his eyelashes brushing the traveling business friend from his memory.
What does Felipe do next?
Graciela smiles to the waiter and places bills and coins on the bar to pay for her drinks. Felipe doesn’t seem to notice.
"Esta mañana," Felipe says, I awoke and went to the bathroom, and looking into the mirror, I began to comb my hair. He reaches to pull an imaginary comb across his moist head to recreate the scene. "Yo estaba peinando," he smiles as he continues pretending to comb his hair, and looks up toward the ceiling. He mimes that his comb can’t move the hairs. His face tightens briefly with frustration. I was combing, and combing, "pero nada, y al final lo dejé," he says smirking as his hands awkwardly drop down to his sides as he gives up.
Felipe, what did you do today, before you came here? How did you spend the day?
"Sabes porqué no podía peinar estos pelos?" he asks, wondering if she could guess why he couldn’t comb the hairs. They weren’t real hairs. My buddies had drawn them on my head the night before. He purses his lips and smiles broadly again. He pickes up his beer and takes a drink.
In the swirling buzz of chitchat such as in this bar, Felipe is an experienced navigator, calling out to people but drifting, obliquely.
"Yo no lo entiendo, Felipe, de veras," I don’t get it, Graciela says in her parallel conversation. Felipe smiles, looks across the room, tacking another course. Graciela’s friend turns, looks at them, turns back.
Graciela sighs. "Bueno," I’m leaving, she says with renewed energy. "Tu cabeza está limpia esta noche, Felipe, nisiquiera un pelo que sobra," your head is clean tonight, not even one extra hair, says Graciela, standing. She smiles though if knew how her dark eyes usually look, you’d notice that they aren't revealing any feeling. She turns to say goodbye to her friend and leans to kiss her on the cheek while pulling her purse strap over her shoulder. She pauses to kiss others on her way to the door.
Felipe calls out, "Un placer, come siempre," as always, a pleasure. He smiles and holds up his glass as if he were enjoying their toast and she will look back to see him in farewell. She walks out the door without turning.
What does Felipe do next?
"Bueno," Felipe says, sitting on a stool at the bar and smiling as if someone had just told a good joke. Health, he says, raising his bottle and finishing his beer. "Mi amigo," he says to the bartender, "una más."
The bartender sets a dish of pumpkin seeds next to a couple at the end of the bar and comes over to Felipe. He stretches out his arms and leans against the bar with his hands on its edge. What will the next give you that the last couldn’t?
"Será el punto al final de esa frase," the period at the end of the sentence that was Graciela leaving.
The bartender stands up and gets another beer while reciting from Niebla, "como una sombra, como un fantasma, como un muñeco de niebla, sin creer en su propia existencia," like a shadow, a phantom, a mannequin made of fog that doesn’t believe in his own existence.
Felipe tells many stories but the one others tell of him isn’t about him but his father who died in a hospital in a neighboring town nearly 10 years ago. His death was a surprise, first to Felipe and then to others. Actually, first to others, then later to Felipe when he understood that it did happen and on such an ordinary day. That Felipe drove his family’s car drunk that evening was not usual, but that his father who was walking to the bar to retrieve him, his olive-colored cardigan cupping his back against the wind, met Felipe that way, with the car’s body striking him, was not ordinary.
If someone believes there is nothing, nothing at all, and then something is lost, what happens? Does he find in his regret that he was wrong (since losing means there was something, not nothing), or is the loss merely a change?
Felipe knows if he were to go home early, have someone drop him off and come back for the car the next day, it would make his mother happy. He looks at the clock behind the bar and closes his eyes to see her turning off the light in the white tiled kitchen and opening the wooden wardrobe in her room to take out her nightclothes. He feels he must stay in the bar and consume it—the alcohol, the sounds, its clarity of purpose—until he’s forced to leave. As soon as he’s home, he’ll think only of going out until it’s late enough that he can leave again. He feels a force of change and its equal, opposite force, so he makes himself dissolve as the compromise.
Felipe senses that someone has taken a seat next to him.
He turns to see his mother. He doesn’t say anything to her. He faces forward and drinks his beer.
"Hijo mío," she says. She presses her lips together and looks at the side of her son’s face. She turns to face forward, as well. She doesn’t take off her dark coat. The bartender comes over to ask if she would like anything, and she shakes her head no.
Felipe turns himself around in the stool counterclockwise to look around the room. He sees many familiar faces but he doesn’t find anyone to approach. He smiles and drinks his beer a little faster. He knows she walked here and she won’t let him drop her off at home. He can’t drive home and leave her here.
Felipe purses his lips and sets his bottle on the bar. He opens his arms toward the bar patrons and begins singing from Los Panchos, "Ya es muy tarde, para remediar todo lo que ha pasado, ya es muy tarde, para revivir nuetro viejo querer," it’s already late to fix what’s happened, it’s already late to revive our old love. The people closest to Felipe watch him cautiously while others further away laugh or go back to talking. The bartender moves closer. Felipe’s mother pulls at his coat to have him sit down. Felipe turns to her and continues, gesturing as he sings, better that you forget the past, it’s already late for you to try to return, that can’t be.
Graciela’s friend pulls her cell phone out of her purse and dials as she walks toward the door. Felipe’s mother shakes her head and covers her face with her hands.
Felipe continues humming the song and approaches a young woman sitting at a table with a couple. He extends his hand to her to dance. She fears being embarrassed and shakes her head no as the male friend puts out his arm to block Felipe from her. Felipe smiles with half-open eyes and shrugs, and steps back. He raises his right arm and hooks his left arm in front of him as if he were dancing, and begins dancing alone.
Graciela’s friend comes back inside the bar and sits down. Felipe continues with the lyrics: Many times I looked for you and at your feet on my knees I begged, don’t insist now on reuniting your life with mine, it’s already late if you’re trying to return, resign yourself to lose. His dancing rearranges the pumpkinseed husks and thin napkins on the floor. The small video game near the entrance is blinking lights and making sounds to attract people who walk by it.
Graciela returns to the bar. She steps inside and waves to her friend, and watches the scene from the door. She thinks, this place feels much as it did years ago but it’s not the same. We’re not the same. Felipe isn’t a young drunk man. He’s an old drunk man. This is not the passion of youth.
Graciela goes over to Felipe and taps his shoulder. When he looks at her, eyes still half-closed, she nods toward the door and starts walking toward it. He smiles and bows to her though she’s already several steps ahead of him by now, and dances in that direction. Graciela gets outside and holds the door open as she waits. Felipe spins and steps side-to-side toward the door. Every few steps he turns too quickly and starts to lose his balance, and then recovers just in time before he bumps into someone. He crosses the exit’s threshold and Graciela lets go of the door so it closes.
"¿Qué haces?" what are you doing, she asks, her brow furrowed as she gestures toward the space on the other side of the door.
Dancing, my beloved. Isn’t the night beautiful?
Felipe, you have made many people very angry in the past but this is a disgrace. Your mother needs to be taken home.
"Gracias, Graciela, del cielo llovida," he says, picking up her hand and kissing it. You as always are my angel. You know the way to take her. I’ll be home later.
Graciela fells tension spread through her. I am not taking her home. You need to go home with her.
Felipe half-closes his eyes and starts to hum.
"¡Felipe!"
He stretches out his arms and begins to sing a made up song, "No es posible, es horrible…"
What are you going to do?
"¿Qué voy a hacer?" he says, opening his eyes and looking at her. He spreads his arms open again and says, I am going to do that which I do whenever I do it.
How will you resolve this? It cannot be this way. Think of your mother. Think of your father.
"Quizás," Felipe says, holding his finger up toward Graciela and swaying with the imbalance this new position causes, maybe I’ll find "como el pobre Augusto" that I am no more than a product of fantasy, in my case, the imagination of my parents, and they’ll wake up, my father there (pointing over her shoulder toward the town’s cemetery), and my mother there (turning and gesturing grandly toward the bar), and realize that the son of their fantasy never existed.
What are you saying?
Because what is certain is that they have a fantasy, Felipe says, swaying, and then puts his hand on his chest, and I am not it.
Graciela puts her hand up to her eyes and pinches the top of her nose. "Bueno, de acuerdo, lo acepto. En eso ya no voy a meterme nada más," she says, accepting whatever happens and resolving to not get involved anymore. As she says this, they hear men yelling inside and the sound of stools sliding across the floor and falling down. One man shouts to call for an ambulance, and someone runs out from the bar. Graciela watches the man run off and goes quickly inside the bar. Felipe smiles and enters casually behind her.
Two tables have been pushed together and Felipe’s mother is lying on top of them. Her eyes are closed.
Felipe walks out the door. Graciela joins the others by his mother and asks, "¿Qué le ha pasado?" The bartender is checking for a pulse and begins mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. A heart attack, has to be. She suddenly collapsed, says a man holding her hand. The man who left earlier runs back to the bar, passing Felipe who’s outside leaning against a car and smoking, and goes inside to tell everyone that the ambulance is only a couple of blocks away.
The sirens approach the building. As the ambulance pulls into the gravel parking lot and two medics set up the stretcher and pull it into the bar, Felipe feels relief in the possibility that his mother’s pain has ended. He also fears that he might never change because to do that now would be too late, he thinks; it would be an insult to his parents that they were not reason enough.
Felipe drops and crushes the cigarette into the ground and the bar door opens. The medics wheel Felipe’s mother over to the ambulance, each looking over at him as they pass, and hoist her inside. The driver gets back in the front seat and turns on the siren as they return to the hospital to deliver her to whatever outcome she will have.
Felipe gets into his car and drives back home to sleep and carry on with whatever comes of it.
THE END
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