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Table Talk
I waited for a table at a crowded vegetarian restaurant and seated next to me was a man
who uncoordinatedly beat his feet on the floor while rubbing the stub of his ring finger
with two digits missing.
“Rousseau took walks to think. I tap,” he said. A table freed, he asked whether I
wanted to share a table. “I don’t have HIV.” Energetic words lowered
meant for my ears only, not other patrons. We sat across from each other.
“My name’s Sue. I drive a taxi,” I said. He massaged the stub.
“Call me Len. I’m new in town. You know, I never had a job.” How had he supported
himself, I thought, sipping my smoothie as he said, “Prosit”? He clicked my glass. “I
dreamed about smoothies in the slammer.”
“Prosit,” I echoed. The soft, electronic harp music and ocean waves played on the
sound system swept away my qualms. The bright, colored framed images on the walls,
diners comfortable conversations, and the expectancy of untainted food shoved Len’s
convict status off the table, so to speak.
He said, “Good German word, ‘prosit’. Rid the world of lice, where would we be
without Germans?”
Alice, my Jewish partner, would have a sharp answer for that. I pulled my chair
closer to the table, and him.
“I can squat one hundred pounds five reps.” He stared at my exposed muscular leg as I
lifted up my trouser leg.
“It must put hair of your chest and lead in your pencil.” Prison turned minds into
clichés.
“That’s a guy thing. What about you?”
“About what?” The waiter placed the orders on the table. I asked Len, “How much in
your pencil?”
“Before my trial, I wrote a blog. I don’t ejaculate anymore. You’re safe.” Interjecting
sex had not jelled with organic food. Too conventional.
“Why the trial?”
“See this? A groid cut most of it off in the joint. I survived but he caught a cold.”
“What’s ‘caught a cold’ mean? You meant black man, don’t you?” My voice rose and
diners turned their heads. “Alice and I usually eat at that table by the windows,” I said,
pointing with my fork.
“He got killed by a whitey, but not me. I didn’t want to do a backdoor parole and die a
natural death inside.” Prison slang didn’t bother me. I had all kinds of fares.
When I’d tell Alice about Len, she would say I should have told him he was a
thug and kick him hard beneath the table.
“I marched for gay rights and got arrested but they released me after three hours.”
It also took mass movements to fight racism. I might arrange for my black weight
trainer to put terror into Len, get him the hell out of this laid-back, cool town.
“Protesting is a dead end.” He picked at his bad teeth. “Dentists are torturers in
prison.”
“Who’d have you in their demonstration anyway.” I hoped my digestive system would
not complain at that snide remark.
Sometimes police infiltrators joined us during protests for gay rights. But, the march
continued. Avoiding enemies was impossible.
I could make my dinner a take-out and escape from Len. But, I’m stubborn and
suffered difficult people willingly.
I ate slowly. Len slurped his soup and chewed maple glazed walnuts, goat cheese and
roasted beets, the Shepard’s pie eaten in a hurry. He then reached over and snagged half
my spinach salad, stabbing with his fork the grilled bosc pear and sautéed tempeh.
“Save some for me, dammit.” Diners fell silent a few beats then resumed conver-
sations.
“Lebensraum my dear, I needed more food and the Germans in the thirties needed
more land.” After Len’s pillage, what was left of my dinner had a paranoid undertaste.
“Ever listen to music, Len,” I said, searching for a soft spot.
He squinted, brought both fists on the table, and then flicked the severed finger at me.
It was like brandishing a weapon, but he quickly relaxed.
“I listened to Sabaton, my sister sent me a CD.” Prison guards lenient to white racists, I
supposed. “Metal songs about German warfare.”
Most persons would have left him by now but I would not leave the non-dairy dessert
uneaten. The restaurant was as much my territory as Len’s. I allowed all persons
admission under the big tent. Each of Len’s hostile syllables tested my tolerance:
inclusion the price of human differences.
“Peace is better that rehashing old history. Metal bands thrive on fear.”
“Fear motivates me. In Florida, I was so scared of a black man that I shot the sucker. I
didn’t kill him, though.” His body vibrated as he spoke.
He brought out a folded red bandanna, lifting one side on the table to reveal a gun.
“An over and under .38 Derringer,” he said. “I bought it online. With ammo.”
“Why show it to me?” He pointed it at my head.
“Maybe I hate cab drivers.”
“They’re others here. The waiter wears a mobile.”
“I’ll let you be in my death if you’ll let me be in yours.”
“I’m not too good to die,” I said.
“I seek righteousness, not goodness.”
“I’m in love with a black man. I’m bi.” His finger trembled on the trigger.
“As in goodbye?”
“He’ll track you down, wherever, even in prison. Connections, you know.”
“Death’s like throwing off your overcoat and walking through a door,” he said.
“Too late for similes, isn’t it?”
“Watch me,” Len said, wiggling the severed finger at me, and walked out of the
restaurant, Derringer in hand.
I sat alone. Minutes later, I heard shots and sirens.
Soon, a detective sat down across the table.
He said some people are rotten and deserved to die.
I told him we hungered for death, its not being there terrifying.
George Sparling has been published in many literary magazines including Tears in the Fence, Lynx Eye, Hunger, Rattle, Red Rock Review, Rattle,
Paumanok Review, Lost and Found Times, and Potomac Review. He has had many jobs, such as a welfare caseworker in East Harlem, a counselor/reading instructor in
the Baltimore City Jail, and a scuba diver for placer gold in the Trinity Alps of Northern California for two years.
He tries through fiction and poetry to give all dark things the light they require to exist unconditionally.
The tension between persons living in pain and the struggle not to fail as human beings also concerns him.
Email: George Sparling
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