Matt Liebowitz
Let’s Go In This Together
When I come up from the bathroom there are two women looking at me, at us. Dam and I, sprawled you could call it on the fake leather loveseat, a fraying yellow afghan clumped as a pillow. Cork coasters in a tower on the low table; quiet synthesizer frequencies coming from a tinny speaker above the coffee bar. Scones, day old muffins. I feel the blood coming back toward its source and my feet tingle. I feel day-old. Two older women sit straight in chairs opposite us. Gray hair, not glaring, but close. I know that look, this isn’t the first time, ok. And listen: I get it.
Dam’s short for Damon. We went to high school together, were together a while, got our lives off track together. I fixed up after college in Ohio, he stayed behind. That was years ago, but last November I heard he was in trouble, so I came down from Rutland and I’m still here.
We share a small black coffee and get up to leave. Going outside, in this part of the year and northeast, requires preparation. We have gloves, see, but only one hat between us. Dam puts it on, doesn’t offer, so I pile my hair into the hood to keep my neck warm.
I’ll go back soon, to Vermont. I’ve got a thing with a guy who says he’s a flight instructor, and I’m behind the counter a few days at a motorcycle shop. Small wallpapered apartment on the top floor of a place on Howe Street so I can walk to work, the grocery store, the video place.
I was doing well, right, until I heard about Dam. I liked my job enough, ate decent, let up on smoking, moved away from pills and people giving them to me. You can’t see that, all that progress, when I’m gathering my things to leave this coffee shop. How could you? How could you see potential, even squandered? It’s about the look, and I know what you see, now. But if you could see before, or soon. Just not right now, ignore this.
You see me again, rushing back in to grab my canvas backpack, but this is only a part of the whole. Do you see my diploma, my paycheck, the carrots and cauliflower in my refrigerator? Do you see me at the motorcycle shop, black shirt black ski hat, smiling? An almost full snack drawer, two cats.
I don’t know much about bikes, but I’ve got the right clothing, and the right look, my boss said, and it’s always about the look. Has Darren, my boss, ever been on a motorcycle? I don’t know, he shows up in an off-red Camry around 9:00 every morning. He can talk about bikes all day, though, and the tattoos up the arms to the neck help, at least around here. Look the part, he tells me and the other girls who work the register.
I take Dam into a strip mall a few blocks left. We’re near the college but not that close. Cooking supplies, liquor, Goodwill, graphic tee shirts, a vegetarian soup place. But it’s the second floor above the sports resale store where my uncle’s whatever works as a tax lawyer. His stepbrother, half-brother, brother-in-law, something. His wife’s something? My mom, years ago, told me about an account in my brother’s name. In case of emergency.
I tell Dam to wait in the building’s lobby or check out duffel bags or cheap bikes, but there he is, behind me as I head to the second floor, a sheepish dog. We look the part, but it’s not the part to look.
So ok, here I am, I think as we walk up the stairs. In case of emergency, here I am. Behind me Dam looks light and full of promise. His skin also appears translucent, his eyes fried. His look, my look, without us saying anything, is, Here we are and we need help, help us.
My uncle’s whatever is working at a matte black IBM laptop atop a thick light wood desk. On it sits a vase of fake lilies and an hourglass full of bright green sand. He asks how he can help us. Oh, man, man, man, what a question.
He turns his nose up. Really. Outside who can tell, the air dissipates the reek of our clothes and bodies. We’ve hit a bad spot, we know that, you can see that, but we’re not Marcus by City Hall, or Jan with the Pregnant and Hungry sign year after year. We don’t piss ourselves. We sleep inside. Inside this small accounting firm, though, it’s enough to turn a nose. We smell the part.
“I’m Taylor,” I say, hands on hips. “Taylor Martin, Jeanette’s daughter.” A clock affixed to the wall ticks, ticks, ticks.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and begins to stand. He gives who must be the secretary – how did we not notice her – a stunted look. Is that the word, stunted? Like he’s unsure what he wants to say to her about us, but it’s something, he just can’t figure out what angle to take. Stunted. Or like, this is a stunt. Is this a stunt? I imagine him thinking, saying. Am I at the center of this stunt?
“Taylor. Martin.” I repeat slowly, quieter. It always made me pay attention more when teachers, bosses spoke quieter. “Jeanette Martin’s daughter. From Glastonbury?”
He pushes his chair in and crosses his arms. He’s smiling but it’s an unusual one.
“I’m sorry, I don’t recognize the name,” he says, politely enough for what is turning out to be an uncomfortable back and forth.
“Jeanette Martin,” I’m kind of screaming, “from Glastonbury. Taylor Martin.”
Taylor and Martin, both guitar makers. Big companies, beautiful acoustic instruments. I learned this from the guy after Dam. This was Ohio, 2001, three weeks into September. I don’t remember his name, honest, but right when we met, in the kitchen of one of those party houses with the columns out front, that’s the first thing he told me. He repeated my name like it was important, and wasn’t everything important then?
He’s ushering us out. I want to scream. The clock on the wall is ticking, somehow, still ticking, and I can hear it, ticking ticking. All these sounds are magnified: the scuff of shoes, my necklace beads, the secretary’s gritted teeth; I can hear plant leaves wilting in the radiator heat.
“Dam, can you –” I begin, but how can he help? An hour ago we were on the café basement’s bathroom floor, nodded off, tiles smeared with shoe dirt, and what, an hour later we’re here. Why I would ask Dam for anything doesn’t make sense. But how does any of this make sense? How could it?
When I take it all in, now, with some distance, maybe the thing with my tax attorney uncle was the next week, or another strip mall in a different town months later. It doesn’t matter.
Downstairs the day is darker, unnaturally. Low purple clouds appear near the communication towers atop the mountains to the west. Wind sweeps leaflets up, down, up. The door to the used sports goods store has a bell that rings as we open it. Dam looks lost, but not puppy lost. He’s falling apart, not even pretending to pretend he cares anymore. I’m going back to Vermont soon, really, but I can’t leave Dam like this, a crumpled mess of packing tape.
In the motorcycle shop, in Rutland, there’s a framed picture below the service department calendar. An old guy and his wife, I guess, each on a Yamaha Road Star Midnight Warrior. Or Stratoliners, some kind of cruiser, shiny. Ahead of the riders it says, Let’s Go Together. The words kind of trail off down the road, getting smaller, ending near a pink and orange horizon.
Looking through the sporting goods windows, what I thought would for sure be sheets of rain seems to have passed, and the city outside looks peaceful enough. Not quite quiet but something to be a part of. To go into together. I hook my arm around Dam’s. Let’s go.
