David says yes, when you force him to. Who’s worst? you say, triumphant. David looks over his shoulder. Black people, he says. Not all of them, he adds, quickly. There are rules and exceptions.
Of course, you say. How about white people? David shrugs. They’re OK. Sometimes they feel bad for us. And Latinos? you ask. Oh, the best, David says. Andreo agrees.
You all look at the wall together, as the bar empties out around you. Isabella, who works in the kitchen, leaves, because she is meeting a man whom the other two don’t know, who comes to pick her up in a car. You wonder who owns a car in this neighborhood. You don’t. You thought about getting one, the two of you, when she was there, sharing the registration, putting your two names on it. You had talked about the places you could drive. Skiing upstate. You don’t know how to ski, she said. A weekend in New Jersey. The Catskills. I’ll believe it when it happens, she said. You rarely plan for anything. It seems nice, you like it best, when things carry you along their way. You were never one for omens. Recently you were walking by a billboard near the BQE, and when you looked up, a young man that you knew from elementary school was staring down at you, a smiling senior at St. Francis College. It was an old poster. Some of the center was showing through, so you could see an ad for Kars4Kids. You know it is that ad, because you’ve seen it many times before. You never get farther than the BQE, but some days, walking by there, hearing the trucks scream by, you think about hitchhiking across the country to see her. It could happen. It could be done.
The smell from David’s pocket is still pungent, and it makes you feel vigorous and safe. What do you do? David asks.
You dismiss this with a wave of your hand. This and that, you say. But then you tell them. They nod noncommittally. Their disinterest vaguely alarms you. It reminds you that you are in a bar sitting next to two people who you’ve never met before. You wonder how long this can go on for. Desperate now, with the pale ale down to its last fingers, and the bartender swabbing the counter with a greasy, heavy rag, you turn to David and Andreo and you say, What are your hopes and dreams?
And they take this question at face value. They nurture it, turn it over in their heads. They mull it like the wine that they are drinking, that they are finishing. Both have double shifts in the morning, starting at nine a.m.
David answers first, and says, I want to work in nonprofits. This you dismiss with your own disinterest, and you say to Andreo, What about you?
Andreo works his hands out of the folds of his coat, and he puts them both in the air, and he says, I want to use these, and he waves them.
What do you mean? you ask him.
I want to be a writer, he says. I want to write news.
And you swell up with a joy that doesn’t make sense at the time, as he tells you about enrolling in classes in the CUNY journalism school. Do you know CUNY? he asks. Of course you know CUNY—who doesn’t? You want to take his name, his number, watch for his byline in the morning paper, or on Internet updates: Reporting contributed by Andreo—, from Brooklyn, Washington, Miami, Kandahar. It will happen, you tell him, you lie to him. It will. And he smiles, and puts his hands back in his pockets, and knows that things will change.
You walk outside and David and Andreo shake hands with you, and they don’t offer to share the sweet smell in David’s pocket, but they confirm that they do go to this bar often, and you think that maybe you might frequent it, on the way home from work, from your office in the city, riding on the black backs of suits and jackets. Maybe you might stop, have a drink, find Andreo, ask him about his work, before going home to the empty apartment, where the only view is billboards.
You walk home. The lights on Pacific Street are all off. All the streets here are named for oceans, as if the ocean might reclaim them, any day. Inside your apartment, you take off the wet shoes on your feet, the wet socks. You take off your black jacket, your sweatshirt with a hood. You look at the pictures on your walls and find that the drink doesn’t help anymore, and you pick up the phone and you make a call across the country.