Come Finally to Visit by Andreas Trolf

I’ve been spending my student loans on records, clothes, and alcohol, and now the money is gone. Not just gone, it’s in negative territory. My checking account is overdrawn. The direct deposit arrived like a genie’s wish, and seemed like a lot, but even after you drop out of school and save yourself the tuition payment, it really isn’t. Expenses add up in a way that doesn’t make sense. So here I am, broke. Nothing left for rent even after being Very Careful, words I thought every time I made a purchase. I don’t want to call my parents. That is the last resort. They’d only hassle me about dropping out, which I don’t need. W2hat can I say? School just wasn’t me. 

Someone enters the record store and a brief rush of cool air follows as the door swings closed again. I’m here, I guess, out of habit. The last time, a week ago, the guy behind the counter nodded while ringing up the two records I handed to him. It might even have been a nod of approval, which, obviously, felt good. This guy, the clerk with the prominent throat tattoo of a skeleton’s hand holding a flower, had never nodded approvingly at me before. Not when I bought the first record on my list (I have a Google doc: Important Records to Buy), not even when I’d bought the 10^th or the 30^th, but only much later as I’ve been getting into the more obscure bands on the list and even the more obscure records of these obscure bands. I felt as though the nod signaled some sort of positive trend for me, the graph’s line shooting upwards in direct correlation to my admiration for the increasingly obscure. Now I’m back, only without money, without the immediate possibility of further approval. The next record on my list is right in front of me: an all but forgotten late 70s New York post-punk band. First edition colored vinyl. $48 plus tax. I try consciously to put the record and any ideas about the clerk’s potential approval out of mind and what I’m thinking as I walk out past the buzzing neon sign is that it’s perfect out. It’s mild, not cool at all. A small pleasure that costs me nothing. The few clouds I can see are thin fingers far in the distance. The sky around them is a shade of blue that seems unnatural after the long, dissociative months spent huddled under blankets, under layers, under the winter’s low gray dome of sky. 

I walk towards my apartment thinking of ways to earn some money. Or simply to get some money. Two weeks until the first of the month. Up ahead, I realize, is the bar I’ve walked past many times but still never been inside of. The bar I have been so intimidated by I even sometimes walk home by a different route. Even if I had more than the single five-dollar bill that’s currently in my wallet folded into quarters, I don’t know if I could go inside and order a drink without seeming out of place. Like a fake. A guy who’d mistakenly entered somewhere not meant for him. Or at least not yet. You know who hangs out in this bar? Punks. People with throat tattoos. Musicians from some of the bands near the bottom of my list. It’s very intimidating. I’ve seen them by the front window, garlanded by neon beer signs, sitting in judgment of pedestrians going about the dull slog of their uncool lives. This is, in a way, aspirational. I may not be ready for this bar yet, but I’m making progress. It’s complicated. There are rules. I bought some new pants recently. I have high hopes for these pants even though they sit a bit weird, the inseam invading a tender region of my crotch. But the fact is, despite being broke I feel good and so even knowing the bar is up ahead, I keep going. Perhaps the very real prospect of poverty that I am currently facing makes me somehow more authentic. 

There are two people out front of the bar smoking and laughing loudly enough to upset the patrons of the sidewalk café next door, where heat lamps still stand in contingency of a sudden cold snap. One of the smokers yells “Hey, asshole!” in my direction. I look around but it’s clearly meant for me. I feel the unmistakable flush of panic, and attempt a quick catalogue of possible offenses I may have committed but come up with nothing. Relief washes over me when I recognize my roommate’s older brother. 

Despite having spent considerable time around him I suddenly can’t recall his name. I know that he’s an electrician and lives at the far end of the E train line. He’s even come over to our apartment a few times to criticize the paltry assortment of beers in our fridge. I find it upsetting that I know what he does for work and where he lives, but not his name. People like to compare these small lacks to the shell of a popcorn kernel stuck in their teeth, the important thing gone but leaving behind an annoying, inconsequential remnant. My roommate’s brother is also oppressively normal, so it’s surprising to see him at this bar, smoking and laughing with a girl who is not just goth, but GOTH. Nearly translucent skin, hair dyed the iridescent blue-black of a gasoline-slicked puddle, knee-high crepe-soled boots for which there might only be a specific name in the kink community. I make a mental note to look this up later. 

“This is Lori,” my roommate’s brother slurs when I approach. “She works here and is nice enough to get me drunk.”

Along with half a polite smile, a Rorschach of freckles peeks out from under the curtain of hair that covers one side of her face. She’s wearing a Sisters of Mercy t-shirt. Their album Floodland is somewhere near the middle of my Google doc. She holds out her hand, for some reason the one with the cigarette in it, and I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do so I take just her fingertips and squeeze gently, careful of the cigarette. She laughs hello and I wonder if she thinks my pants are acceptable, if she can tell that the inseam is bothering me. 

I’m unsure whether I should leave or if I’ve been invited into their conversation, so I stand near them but also far enough away so that someone passing by wouldn’t necessarily assume I was part of their group. I try to do this in a way that seems natural. I try not to look at Lori. To see someone like her hanging out with my roommate’s brother, it’s as if a law of nature has been violated. I know there are rules, but it only occurs to me in this moment that sometimes there aren’t. They talk, making reference to people I don’t know, occasionally lapsing into wild fits of laughter. They find somebody named Jay to be ridiculous. I don’t think I could stand it if someone talked about me the way they’re talking about Jay. Then the cigarettes are finished and flicked into the street and my roommate’s brother pushes himself off the wall he’s been leaning against and says, “Welp, that’s it for me.” He gives Lori a loose perfunctory hug, nods at me, and walks off. 

 “You want a beer or something?” she asks me, her hand already on the door handle, unequivocally an invitation, so I say Yeah and follow her in, wondering what I can buy with my last $5. There are a few people inside making what I assume passes here for conversation, beery 40ish guys in leather jackets. I take an empty stool at the far end of the bar. The New York Dolls are on the jukebox. Without asking Lori opens a bottle of Budweiser and puts it in front of me. 

I open my wallet. The folded $5 bill radiates heat. “On me,” she says. 

No bartender has ever given me a free drink before, so I don’t know what the protocol for tipping is. The other customers all have tidy piles of bills next to their drinks. The guy sitting closest to me, an aging punk still clinging to his bullet belt, has what looks like $20 or $30 in front of him. I take out the $5 bill, unfold it, and put it on the bar. Lori takes it and opens the register and returns with five $1 bills that she puts in front of me. Maybe I’ve been intimidated over nothing. She works her way up and down the bar, freshening drinks as she goes, taking from each of the piles what she must feel is fair. I nurse my beer and try not to do anything stupid. I watch her out of the corner of my eye, her pale skin glowing against the darkness of the bar. 

I want to stay for a second drink, to see if she’ll talk to me, but I can’t depend on another free beer. While she’s occupied doing a shot with three guys at the far end of the bar, the aging punk gets up, leaving his pile behind. He waves goodbye to Lori and walks out. No one is paying attention to me, so I inch carefully over and slide some of the bills off the bar and into my pocket before I can even think about what I’ve done. I couldn’t even call it a conscious choice. It feels instantly awful, stealing from her so I can buy another beer and spend a few more minutes in her company, but maybe it would be morally justified if I gave most of it back as a tip. 

“Want another?” I look up and she’s in front of me again. She eyes what remains of the aging punk’s money and then picks it up with a scowl. 

“One more, I guess.” 

She counts the tip, then looks at me again and opens her mouth as if to say something but instead only turns around and tucks the money into her tip jar. She opens the beer cooler and I take the money out of my pocket and slap it down on the bar and mutter Sorry. I’m outside. My heart going breakbeat style. 100-150 beats per minute. There aren’t many breakbeat artists on my list, but despite that relative blind spot I know the usual B.P.M. I’m lightheaded. Does she know what I’ve done or does she only think I’m some ridiculous Jay-like idiot. Through the window I see her talking to one of the customers like nothing happened. I want to go back in and explain. I want, in this moment, to sell my records. To forsake that approval. 

The servers at the café are turning on the heat lamps. Past the glowing beer signs, I see her laughing. I don’t think she suspects anything. I screw up my courage. These are these words I think as I perform the actions, like a little incantation: Screw up. Pull open. Door. Very Careful. I’m aware of how self-conscious this must seem. What if as soon as I step inside, she calls me a thief in front of everyone? But then I hear the sound of screeching brakes. I turn my head and in the street is a woman lying under a car’s front bumper. I let go of the handle and the door, as it swings closed, hits my shoulder, turning me back towards the bar where, through the glass door, I see her approaching, but the glass also reflects the scene in the street, and for a moment it seems like Lori and the woman pinned under the car are part of the same image. I also see myself in the glass, distorted, my face widened, superimposed over everything, like some bland and powerless god.  

I watch as the driver, a very short person in Capri pants, gets out of the car, a Toyota Prius, which at low speeds is nearly silent, and skips or maybe lunges to where the woman is lying, her grocery bag upended in the street. The driver says, “Ma’am, hello? I’m supposed to be somewhere,” but the woman’s only response is a low, animal kind of moan. Some of the bar customers elbow past me and arrange themselves in a row on the sidewalk but go no further, as though they’re waiting for a parade. We all watch as slowly an orange escapes the woman’s bag. 

Lori’s apartment smells of cigarettes. The walls are decorated with band posters, bunches of dried flowers, and family photos arranged in discrete clusters. I’m drunk and assume she is too, which is probably the reason why our first attempt at sex is not successful. We roll around struggling to find purchase but even our muscle memory is impaired. The whole endeavor is objectively comical. When we try again in the morning our teeth have gone fuzzy, and although it’s better there is a moment when she’s straddling me, her knees pinching my ribs, when the sun finds a crack between her black-out curtains and the window frame, and I have to move my head to get the light out of my eyes and I see her looking at me. The freckles on her face look like a constellation, an ancient Greek person says, “Look, it is two people with their backs turned to each other!” It is the opposite of that famous illusion with the vase. She’s not looking into my eyes but only vaguely at the area around my face, like she can’t stand to look directly at me. After a moment of this, she puts her hand on my cheek and turns my head away so that I’m looking at more photos of her family. There are her parents—smiling, middleclass, tan—with their arms around Lori, in full goth regalia, and a boy who must be her younger brother who scowls disconsolately in every photo no matter where they are. Disney, a restaurant, the beach.  

She makes me promise not to tell Alex that we slept together. There it is! Alex. My roommate’s brother name. The shell of the popcorn kernel vanishes. Yet in just these few hours I’ve learned to live with it, and so as soon as I realize it’s gone I also miss it. I ask if he’s her boyfriend. “No,” she says, “just please don’t tell him.” But she only makes me promise this later, hours after we sleep together for the second time, after she cries while wearing a garish kimono—garish is the only word for it—and frying eggs, which burn and set off the smoke alarm because we’ve both forgotten about them because I’m holding her and trying also not to cry while thinking about the woman who’d been hit by the silent car and who it turned out had died, and most likely this had even worked to bring us together, and her kimono is made out of some sort of fake silk, rayon maybe, and my scraggly fingernails—I’m still in the habit of biting them—catch in the fabric as I let go of her for a moment in order to turn off the smoke alarm once she stops crying. Although, no. She hasn’t stopped crying, but is only entering a new stage that consists of slightly less crying, and her sobs fall almost into synch with the alarm, which is going at about 60-70 B.P.M., and this is when I start crying too. And suddenly we’re doing a three-part harmony with an alarm for burned eggs. 

Lori calls her boss after the dead woman is taken away, after the police have taken statements and the driver allowed to leave, and asks if she should close the bar for the night, given the tragic accident, but her boss tells her no and so she pours everyone there a drink of well whiskey, on the house. I’ve been swept back into the bar along with everyone else and stand there holding my heavy shot glass until she’s served us all. Then we raise our glasses and drink our free drinks. No one mentions the dead woman again and Lori never mentions the money. I feel ashamed even though I’ve gotten away with it and for the rest of the night I try to think of ways to make it up to her without admitting what I’ve done. 

Later, as we walk to her apartment, Lori tells me about some of the regulars. A gray-haired man who she sees some nights up the street from the bar feeding deli cold cuts to a horde of stray cats. Another who brings bouquets to an old folks’ home every Mother’s Day and lets old ladies far gone with dementia think he is their son come finally to visit. 

Lori pours me another drink and then pours more drinks for the others. I drink alone, grateful to have avoided any obligation of conversation, and soon it gets dark and through the window I see the glow of the heat lamps and notice they are the same kind my dad sold at his pool supply store. 

I’m there with him one day while he does inventory, the store closed and empty. It’s winter, so the patio furniture and inflatable slides are stored in the back, and alone here, I nod benignly at all that I see: the herds of plastic reindeer populating the aisles, the animatronic Santas waving via tiny whining motors. I am the tiny lord of this domain. I feel, somehow, ownership over all of this. 

Next to the register sits one of those charity cans. The kind people are solicited to put their change into, to help someone fight cancer or to send a disabled kid to camp. I pick it up, give it a gentle shake, and wonder why these other people deserve this charity and not me. Why shouldn’t I have this money? I would use it to do good deeds. As the benevolent ruler of Kaplan’s Pool Supply, I would use it to improve the lives of my subjects. They would understand. They’d be grateful. 

I wander the aisles clutching the heavy charity can to my chest, possessing all that good will, if only for now. The water in the display model hot tubs bubbles serenely all around me and I’m disoriented by the heat. I breathe in the humidity and the chlorine, the PVC, the whiff of ozone from a nearly overloaded outlet. I push myself up on my toes so that I can peer into the water of one of the larger tubs, the vast sea of my realm, and reach out my open hand to pat its roiling waves. From the crook of my elbow, the can slips soundlessly into the water and is lost. I gasp, look up, and wait for my father to arrive with swift vengeance. The steam hangs around my head in a diaphanous cloud, but through it I can see, diffuse and haloed, the crackling neon of the bright red Kaplan’s sign hanging in the window, the artificial snow sprayed around it and, past that, the real snow outside. 

Andreas Trolf’s fiction has been published in The Cincinnati Review, Joyland, Chicago Quarterly Review and elsewhere. He lives in Los Angeles. 

25 August 2023