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Among the patrons were Lionel and Phil, together for the first time since their disagreement. They had been friends for nearly twenty years, their paths first crossing not long after Lionel's arrival in New York. A difference of opinion augmented by circumstance and alcohol could not seriously jeopardize such a weathered relationship. So they uttered terse regrets about their previous encounter and it was disposed from memory. This done, Lionel began to speak freely of the matters most pressing on his mind.
"Used to be my word was law in that house, like it oughta be. Not any more."
As the result of many years of steady drinking on Lionel’s part, inebriation no longer arrived swiftly. His body had grown accustomed to the onslaught of venom and now digested it like water. He would regularly down one drink after another, waiting for the kick he always expected to come, only to be perpetually disappointed that his state of awareness would change without notice. At some point during any given binge he would come to realize that sobriety was long gone, that once again, the invisible line had been uneventfully crossed.
"Even Caren is getting into the act. Now that she's got a little job and I'm out of work, it's changed her. And I guess I can’t really blame her. Why should a woman respect her husband when he isn’t supporting his family like he ought to?"
Lionel slowly poured the liquid fire down his throat. It should have helped him forget. Instead, he saw with greater clarity.
"Is this what I've earned for years of hard work and sacrifice?" He peered into his glass as if it was a crystal ball. If any answers were contained, the glass was keeping them to itself.
Phil wanted to console his friend with nuggets of wisdom, or at least an appropriate cliché, but at the moment he was as stumped as the glass.
"I did the right thing," Lionel said. "I should have been rewarded by now."
The two of them took simultaneous swigs. They usually drank at about the same pace to begin with, but as Phil began to wind down, Lionel would just be starting to pick up steam. Phil promised himself as he routinely did that he would cut down on the stuff. Besides being Phil’s closest friend, Lionel also served as crash dummy, a three dimensional example of what must never be allowed to happen.
Lionel checked to see if any of the small but devoted group of regulars were listening in on the conversation. As usual, they were lost in their own little worlds, trapped in their own private hells. They gave as much of a damn about his life as he gave about theirs. It was Lionel's kind of place.
"The strike's going to end soon," said Phil, having settled on a line of hollow hope to dispense. "Everything will turn out for the best."
"You just don't get it, do you?"
Phil gestured for their empty glasses to be refilled. Lionel needed the liquor to keep talking, Phil to stomach listening.
"Any white man with my experience would be running that place by now. I know the operation like the back of my hand.”
Phil nodded. Once Lionel got going like this, a minimum of encouragement was required to sustain his stream of consciousness. The slightest gestures and a bottomless glass were more than adequate support.
“I've got a mountain of bills waiting to be paid. You know what that means, don't you? I'll have to start kissing some white ass. And what thanks will I get?"
A man wearing a conspicuous blue pinstripe suit walked into the bar. He sat two stools away, ordered a vodka martini, and withdrew a cell phone from his breast pocket.
"Then you got these guys."
The newcomer was a cocoa colored man in his late forties with salt and pepper hair and mustache. He briefly glanced at Lionel, but found nothing of interest so turned back around to listen to his phone messages in peace.
"They get it all because of what guys like me gave up."
When no response to the goading came, Lionel stared at the mirror before him. It was not his present self reflected back, but his past. The next topic of conversation was one that frequently emerged when he was drinking himself back in time - his brother.
"At our mother's funeral, Manny stood before everybody and talked about how much he loved her. Never mind that he had deserted her. I kept waiting for someone to tell him off, but the only thing people said was how proud Mama had been of her college boy. All was forgiven because he was successful."
Phil knew the story as well as if it was his own. He could have done without hearing it again, but knew Lionel needed to heave the burdens from off his chest like a shot-put. Perhaps he believed if the tale was told often enough, its outcome could be revised. But neither the recapitulation of his existence nor the way Lionel felt about it would ever change.
"After the service he asked me how I was. He destroys my life, then has the nerve to ask how it's going." Lionel repeatedly flexed his fingers from open palms to clenched fists, as if unsure whether to slap or punch at his ghosts.
"I just walked away. I couldn't think of any words hateful enough."
Lionel and Manny had not gone out of their way to keep in touch after that day, but were unable to avoid each other altogether over the years. Their younger sister Angie had proven herself quite proficient at baby making. Each christening brought about another rejected opportunity for Lionel and Manny to make peace.
"Dwelling on stuff only makes it worse," Phil said.
Lionel did not heed the caution. He refused to forfeit his right to rail against an unjust world.
"Men like him get more and more while I get a whole lot of nothing." His eyes were focused again, but not on Phil, or the mirror, or his drink.
"Now Tony wants to be one of them. He wants to go so far from who he is that he'll hardly ever be reminded. I know he's not thinking that way. He just wants to do better for himself than his old man did. I don't blame him for that. I want it for him too. But the things he wants have a way of changing a man. He'll start thinking that the money and the white man's learning are all that matter. He’ll get himself a college degree and a paper pushing job, and he won't have to sweat and strain to make it from one paycheck to another. That's a blessing. But he'll take it for granted. He'll feel ashamed that no matter how different he acts and thinks and feels, he'll be seen the same as the rest of us. The same as me."
Lionel paused as if waiting for what he said to be refuted. Although he was met only by a sympathetic gaze, he went back on the defensive.
"Don't tell me I'm wrong. It happened to my brother. We came to the light of day one right behind the other, and for a long time we saw things as if with one pair of eyes. But once Manny got the so called good life in his sights, he couldn't see nothing else. He pushed me aside so he could take it all in for himself. He shoved his whole family out the way."
Lionel drained the whiskey far too rapidly for his taste buds to take notice. No matter, since it was not being consumed for their benefit.
"I know how it feels to aim for the stars only to end up in the gutter. I also know what happens when you do get what you want, because you didn't allow anything else to matter. If Tony is set on what will fill his pockets but empty his soul, I'd rather blind him now than let him look at me one day the way Manny does. I won't help make him into what I hate. I ain't sacrificing nothing for nobody no more."
Lionel smacked his hand on the bar to get the attention of the stranger he had been glaring at. "Tell me something, buddy. Did you ever so much as say thank you?"
The man looked at Lionel curiously, regarding him as someone who was possibly deranged, most likely harmless, but definitely too close for comfort. "I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about. And I don't believe I want to." This said, he swiveled back to his drink.
Lionel stood up. "Don't turn your back on me. What the hell are you doing in here anyway? Shouldn't you be hanging out with your white friends in the Hamptons? You think cause you're some hot shot who's slumming for the day, that gives you the right to disrespect me?"
The man showed no fear, but also no inclination to carry things further, nor to explain that the Hamptons were not frequently visited this time of year. He took a casual sip of his drink. Phil was impressed by the show of self-restraint, but knew it would be ineffective. Lionel's mind was made up. The formally attired gentleman embodied those who had profited unfairly, while equally unfairly, Lionel had been held down and pistol-whipped by life.
"I take your silence as a request for an ass kicking."
"I wouldn't bet on it," the man said, not bothering to look in Lionel’s direction. His statement issued a vague threat, but it was the lack of acknowledgement that was most insulting and challenging.
"Oh yeah." Lionel managed to say no more than these two syllable before doubling over. He grasped tightly onto the barstool with one hand while clutching his stomach with the other, groaning through gritted teeth. His antagonist looked on in disgust. Then Lionel began to vomit. Phil had never known him to throw up from drinking before.
"Couldn't you make it to the bathroom?" the bartender asked, summoning for the mess to be cleaned up. No one else in the bar noticed the disturbance, or if they did, they weren't disturbed very much.
The man in the suit was now finally in a state of agitation because some vomit had landed on his shoes and the hem of his pants. He chided himself for not realizing that entering this shanty of a bar would be a regrettable choice.
"Teach your friend how to hold his liquor," he said to Phil. "And tell him he's lucky I'm not going to make him pay my cleaning bill."
He looked down at and on Lionel before walking out. "These are the fools who make certain we'll always be seen as niggers."
Moments later, the brunt of his pain having subsided, Lionel rose cautiously, reacquainting himself with gravity and the earth's rotation. Phil expressed concern and Lionel assured him that he was fine, though worse for the wear.
"Must have been something I ate for lunch. It felt like I got kicked in the gut by a mule. Damn. I was set to clock that guy."
"I know you were."
"Just one more break for him," said Lionel, shaking his head in wonderment at the utter lack of parity amongst God's creatures.
