Lárus waited patiently while the man studied the menu.
The eggs, please, the man told him. And the meat sandwich, and the potato salad.
Would you like ham meat or potted meat in your sandwich?
What kind of meat is the potted meat? asked the man.
Potted, said Lárus.
Yes, I know. But what kind? What kind of animal?
Oh, said Lárus. Many, perhaps.
I’ll have ham, said the man.
Ham meat?
Yes. Please.
Very well. Lárus held out his hand and the man returned the menu to him. Lárus replaced it beneath the bar and then unfurled a linen napkin in front of the man and set a place there with a pewter charger. He disappeared through a small door padded in a quilted pattern with green vinyl or leather. The man looked across the bar at the Japanese couple, who were staring at him. They were both very beautiful, with their small clean faces and dark shining hair. Could they be brother and sister? The man smiled at them, but they looked quickly away from him.
The man picked up his glass of schnapps and sipped from it. He loved this schnapps; it was like nothing he had ever tasted. He wondered if he could buy a bottle of it and take it home with him. Home seemed a long time ago, and far away. The comfort of thinking of home seemed almost illicit, like the comfort or pleasure that comes from picking at a scab, or the thrill of pornography. But nevertheless the man pictured their faraway home, their snug apartment, full of books and paintings and old rugs and quilts. And the tiny guest room that had been transformed into a nursery the first time the woman was pregnant, and had been empty, with the door closed, ever since.
Lárus reemerged and placed a white ceramic plate upon the pewter charger. He said, Egg, sandwich, salad, pointing at the three things in turn, although there could be no mistaking one for another. None of them looked particularly appetizing but nevertheless the sight of them, of something to eat so close at hand and readily available, delighted the man and he ate all of it hungrily and with great pleasure.
As soon as he was finished Lárus cleared everything away. He picked up the almost empty glass of schnapps and said, Another?
Yes, the man said. Please.
Lárus fetched the bottle and poured some into the man’s glass and then returned to his post at the far end of the bar.
The Japanese couple was speaking very quietly and seriously, their heads bowed close together over the votive candle. They were both dressed elegantly and entirely in black. Suddenly the woman was crying, and the man reached out and grasped her arm, shook it gently, and said a word, again and again, that sounded like her name: Mitsuko, Mitsuko. She leaned back from him and wiped at her eyes with her hands and then stood up and left the bar. The man remained. He sighed and pushed forward his empty glass in a way that made it clear that he was not dismissing it, but asking for it to be filled. It was scotch he was drinking, and Lárus poured a finger or two into his glass.
What was wrong? the man wondered. What had happened? It is very difficult to witness the public and incomprehensible sadness of others. In New York, he often saw women crying in the streets, walking beside men in double-breasted suits with flamboyant hair. Of course there was nothing one could do.
He lost track of time for a little while and when he returned he realized that the Japanese man had also left the bar. Had he fallen asleep? Lárus remained at his post, gazing implacably at the beaded curtain, which occasionally shuddered ever so slightly, as if a subway train were passing in a tunnel beneath the bar, but the man knew the beads were responding only to the tension of the world, the fraught energy that leaked from him, from the Japanese couple, even from the seemingly implacable Lárus, for who knew what drama, what passion, what sorrow, what joy his stoic countenance concealed?
It had always been a dream of the man’s to be a regular at a bar, to be served by a bartender who knew him and liked him well, but since he rarely drank and hardly ever visited bars, this dream had forever eluded him. But perhaps,