number two man

THE ACTOR was at the bar, but seated a few stools down, and on the opposite side. He looked as he usually does, in fact, I can’t say he’s aged a day in 20 years. Longer hair, tucked behind his ears. A blue shirt open at the neck. Features that I suppose could be called both masculine and beautiful. Women loved him and men hated him. I had nothing against him, I just thought he was a fool. Just another fool. He had been drinking and the alcohol had loosened him up, he said, “And that’s why she left him, you know. He can’t kiss as good as I can in bed. She said he’s too soft, she needs a firmer, masculine kiss.” At this, all of the other men at the table laughed.

I turned to her, as she was also seated at the bar. She was dressed in some kind of Western-themed cowboy getup, like she was taking part in a traveling play about Annie Oakley. Saloon garb. Her golden hair was curled around her shoulders. She looked at me and she blushed.

“Is this true what he says?”

“Well, there are probably some things I need to tell you. I could show you.”

I fainted and fell from the bar stool. I ran out the saloon door into a dusty street. She came after me. “You need to calm down,” she said. “I’m sick of all your drama. Besides, I spoke with him. He said that he likes you, but that he knows that you don’t like him. So he just keeps away. Isn’t that nice of him?”

“I hate him.”

“But he doesn’t hate you. In fact, you’ve got a lot in common. He’s a creative, you’re a creative. There’s an apartment that came up for rent. It’s a cellar apartment, but you can both afford it. You boys could room together. And whenever I am back in town, you can both share me.”

“This situation destroyed my life.”

She looked away when I said this. Since when did I wind up in Tombstone or Yellowstone or The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.? Maybe I had just been watching too many cowboy movies. Maybe this was just another dream. Nightmare dream of evil women. She came close to me, put her hand on mine. “Don’t be mad at him,” she said, stroking my hand. “You’ll always be my Number Two Man.” At that I took off down the street into the night. I ran and I ran and I ran.

lost in translation

AFTER A LONG period of blackout silence, I heard back from Dulcinea. She didn’t care how I was doing or feeling, but wanted me to translate something for an essay she had written, either for an employer or university. Actually, it had been translated already, by her or ChatGPT, but required a native speaker’s touch. It was just four or five sentences about some humdrum topic. I wondered if I should even touch it given the way she had treated me. The blocking, the ignoring, the side-eye, as they call it, did she even deserve my attention?

I walked away from her. She stood there, as if emerging from a gray alleyway, in a beautiful dress, with her hair all gold. I kept walking away but then something pinched me from within, and I turned around. Fine then, you’ve got me girl, I thought, as I walked back toward the rather sullen young woman. For life! I made quick work of Dulcinea’s translation request.

It didn’t help that Putin was in town with Kim Jong Un. There was a motorcade and ensuing security conference. The secret police were out in force. I led Dulcinea up a series of back alley stairs into a room where others were sheltering. Outside, it had begun to snow. I could hear the security police coming up the steps, and noticed that just outside the window there was another staircase. The window could be opened wide enough for us to escape. All we needed to do was jump and we would be free for a while. All we needed to do was have the courage to make that first big jump. “Don’t you want to be rescued?” I asked. “Don’t you want me to save you?” She had already befriended the others in the room. She didn’t want to go.

other swimmers

COLD OCEAN WATER, clear, so clean I can see the sand and pebbles through the waves. I wade in in all of my clothes, a black, button-down shirt, khakis, belt, they say it will keep you warmer and the other swimmers swear by it. Lea’s father up in town keeps promising he’ll find me a good job, a steady job, something in tech. He sits on his stool at his favorite coffeehouse and makes these kinds of promises. But now I am in the water, floating around in my clothes.

Later, Brynhild arrives and descends the wooden steps that lead down to the ocean beach. Platforms of steps built into the dunes and cliffs. Brynhild’s wearing her blue bathing suit and looking like an Estonian incarnation of Penny Mordaunt, the Conservative British MP, who is also famous for filling out bathing suits and is leader of the House of Commons. Step by step, Brynhild descends, ocean wind in her hair. I’m terrified to see her but just keep swimming.

traditional music

I ALWAYS KNEW they had rooms for rent, or stay, in the cellar of the Pärimusmuusika Ait, or Traditional Music Center, but I did not know they had these kinds of exclusive suites, or that a woman had been living down there for some time. I didn’t even know how I happened to get into that room, or into her bed for that matter. We were lying together in a queen-sized bed, with messy beige sheets. The frame of the bed was made of a darker wood, and there were some shelves across from us lined with vinyls and compact discs of groups and solo performers supported in one way or another by the center, plus thick compilations of runo songs collected from various rural municipalities over the preceding century and a half.

None of that matters though. What matters I think is the quality of those kisses in that basement bed. She was a younger woman, she had a round face, freckles, blue eyes, and inside of those eyes was kindness. In situations like these, you don’t even need to kiss, you don’t even need to touch, you can just look at each other. It’s better than a kiss. There we both were, beneath the blankets, perched in some kind of euphoria. The young lady said, “Mother was right about you. She said you were a good kisser. And so good in bed.” This of course was fluff to my ears, and I almost found myself adopting a Sean Connery accent, “Yes, yes. Of course, Domino. Of course.” But that word that preceded it, mother, made me sit straight like a rock.

“Who is your mother?” I asked the beautiful girl. “You know very well who she is,” she said, in a playful way. “She’ll be here soon.” But didn’t even know that she had an adult daughter, and still was confused about it. Sexual anxiety throbbed in my veins. I pulled my trousers from a chair, buttoned up my blue shirt, and ran upstairs, the girl’s warm kisses still all over me. In the garderoob or coat room of the center, a number of folk musicians were arriving, among them the mother. She was so busy talking to a guitar player though that she didn’t see me as I grabbed my things and was out the door. I felt bad for her. I felt bad for everyone. I felt like I had done something wrong. I hoped that she would never know about this. She should remain blissfully unaware of the cellar tryst with her daughter. And it was still a loving experience.

You can’t deny that.

encinitas

I TOOK MY YOUNGEST daughter cycling around California on my black Adriatica. We were up in the East Bay Area when we got lost looking for our Airbnb. We took a long road into a forest that was inhabited by large white birds with gastrointestinal problems, apparently. I thought it was raining, but the rain was white. Soon we were soaked in bird shit. I couldn’t believe how much of it came down. It didn’t smell like anything really, but it was collecting in puddles on the forest floor. This was the Bird Dung Forest, I later learned from a map, populated by storks with IBS. After we left the forest, we pulled up a driveway to the apartment we had rented.

THE APARTMENT was in a postwar split-level suburban house. The owner was nice enough, an older fellow with graying hair and a Dead Kennedys t-shirt. We talked about the Bird Dung Forest, and how to get to our next stop, Encinitas. He told me that we were currently in Oakland, but said it in an odd way, almost the way the New Zealanders say “Auckland.” Maybe that was some kind of local Oakland accent. “Encinitas? Yeah, I know Encinitas,” he said while getting us some drinks. “But that’s kind of far away. Why do you want to go all the way there?”

TO GET TO ENCINITAS we had to take the Pacific Coast Highway, he said. The next morning, we cycled out to pick up the route, and I rode up a hill, only to look down at a precipitous drop. It just didn’t seem that my bike could handle an incline like that and I cycled back down the hill and began to look for other options. A large wooden ferry had just arrived from San Francisco on the other side of the bay, and cars were disembarking. Then I noticed that there were a set of smaller ferries voyaging farther south. Some went as far as Encinitas, they said. My daughter was very tired by then, and clinging to a teddy bear. She yawned as we boarded the ferry. Later, I recalled that Encinitas was a familiar destination. I had passed through there once on the way out to the San Diego Botanical Gardens. But that was a very long time ago.

periphery

A PERIPHERY, a wilderness, a place of doom, fog, and thick dark forests. There was however a settlement nearby on the margins to which I was exiled to live in a small house. The woman in the neighboring apartment had been there for a long time. She was about my age and had red hair and a black dress. She was an attractive girl and covered in freckles. Her bedroom had old-fashioned furniture, and there were pictures and mirrors hanging on the wall. A lamp glowed in the corner. “Why am I still here?” she complained to me. “I hate this place and I’m still here. I’ve been stuck here forever. I want to leave.” She kicked at the air and turned over.

IN THE MIDDLE of the settlement I later overheard a quarrel between two older women who had been exiled there. Both of them had gray hair. One chased the other down a muddy alley until she subdued and overtook her, kneeling over her with a dagger. It was some kind of disagreement over a decision of the architectural review board, but the garden club and historical society were also involved. Small-town grievances. The rivalry had been going on for some time, and I even was shown footage later of a Memorial Day Parade in the year 2000, which was increasingly looking, in perspective, like a really creepy year. The two old women were much younger then, just going gray, and were interviewed in the local news media. Two community activists (who really hated each other). Such things happen in every small town.

NOT LONG AFTER THAT I arrived to a cafe in Tanzania. I suppose it was along the waterfront of Dar-es-Salaam. It was getting dusk and the city was smoggy, and I could see the jungle trees and big birds flying between them, their black silhouettes against a sinking orange sun. Jerry Seinfeld was there, trying to sell books to some local merchants. He took offense when it turned out these African merchants were also doing brisk trade with Newman, whom he called his arch foe. “Newman,” said Jerry. They were all seated around a table except for Mr. Seinfeld, who was standing. “I don’t think I have to remind you how unreliable Newman is. He’d sell his own grandmother.” Somewhere in the distance, the audience laughed. The African merchants, in crisp white linen shirts, conferred and shared a water pipe. I couldn’t understand their weird language, but I could hear them say, “Seinfeld, Newman. Newman, Seinfeld, Newman.”

It was like a form a Morse Code.

AT LAST THE TRAIN arrived to the Baltic Station in Tallinn and I disembarked with my two youngest daughters. It was snowing and dark, and we stepped over the tracks. We decided to go get some dinner at the Baltic Station Market, which is open until 8 pm. But the way was obscured by a new hockey rink. Who had put a hockey rink in the middle of the Baltic Station? I thought about skating across, but there was a game on. That might not be the best move. It could get violent. How to get around the rink? There had to be a way. If we just walked deeper into Kalamaja, we could get around it. It had been a weird adventure and I was very hungry.