The Apartment A Novel(44)

I went out to the smoking area with my beer, and stood in a huge, drunken mass of handsome young people. To find a comfortable place to stand and smoke, I had to go all the way to the barrier and lean my arm over it. It seemed to me they could have moved the barriers two or three feet further out, though that would probably just bring more people out. All over the place, propane heaters burned orange and hot, and people took turns standing under them. Beyond a few metres the heat evaporated, and where I was standing, trying to light a cigarette with my gloves on, it was frigid. Saskia had said it was going to hit minus fifteen that night, which was a whole lot colder than it had been. I got the cigarette lit, and was just standing without thoughts, a little tired, when from out of the bar and into the smoking area came two American guys and one girl. I heard them a long time before I saw them. I thought of Schmetterling and the violin, and the way American accents rise above all others – that if you put a hundred nationalities in a room and asked them all to complain about the lack of customer service, the overweight woman from Ohio will be the one that shatters the nearest chandelier. The three Americans who walked into the smoking area were bad enough that I could hear every word they were saying. I figured they might be exchange students. The girl had short, ice-blonde hair. One guy wore glasses and had a beard, and the other wore a baseball cap. They looked about twenty, each of them. At twenty, I might have been even more conspicuous, I reminded myself. I tried to ignore them. I had about half my cigarette left, and I wanted to enjoy it by returning to my lack of thoughts – but just as I had been forced to the spot where I stood, they were being forced to the spot where I stood, and there was not a whole lot of room. The guy with the baseball cap wore a black leather motorcycle jacket. The girl wore a blue anorak. I don’t remember what the guy in the glasses wore. I remember the leather jacket because the guy in the glasses kept calling him Hard Core while the girl kept calling him Brian. I remember the girl well because she had such large teeth, such a large mouth, and when she spoke it seemed to me like a huge monster gobbling up calm. Hard Core said something to me. I told him I spoke English. So he said, Fucking cold, right? I must have been shivering. I didn’t say anything back. I didn’t think I was supposed to. But it pissed him off. He said, mumbling, turning back to his friends, Asshole. I guess that was why his buddy called him Hard Core. The guy in the glasses said, Fuck that guy, Hard Core, forget it. You’re right, said Hard Core, then he laughed – a flustered laugh – and said, Whatever, try to be fucking nice. It was hard to say nothing, but easy to see how irrelevant responding would be, how pointless it would be to have an argument out here, or simply skip to reconciliation, go straight to the bit where he buys me a beer, says I’m the coolest guy he’s ever met, and reveals that he is the opposite of hard core, he is just afraid and young.

I finished my cigarette and tossed it beyond the barrier. I didn’t feel like drinking my beer any more, so I put it on the ground and left it there, and went looking for the bathroom. You had to walk back to the front, go down a staircase of wet and mildewed concrete, into a little maze of corridors. I found the men’s room and had to stand in line for the urinal, which was just a trough filled with ice. I saw Zaid ahead of me in the line, reading the screen on his phone. Someone behind me recognized him, and yelled his name. He turned around and saw me, and for a moment looked as though he thought I was the one who had called out to him. Then he saw his friend. I looked back and the friend was pointing at me. They spoke. At that point, everyone in the line turned around and looked at me. I said nothing, did nothing. I only thought that this night, the eve of a life that I hoped would represent the entombment of the violence I have witnessed or imposed upon the world, seemed headed for violence. I pictured myself picked up, thrown in a urinal full of ice, and beaten by everyone in the bathroom. I thought of Hard Core coming in after it was done, finding me half alive, and urinating on me. I remember thinking, Oh well, because I did not really care. But as soon as everyone had turned to have a look at me, they turned back, and it was over. Zaid went back to his phone, and pretty soon it was his turn at the urinal, and a little later it was my turn.

And then I found myself back at the pool table, where Saskia and Manuela and the man with the moustache still had not finished. It had become something of a spectacle, and a large crowd was standing around the table. The guy was so drunk, Saskia explained when I made my way to her through the circle that had formed around the table, that they kept having to explain which balls were his, and that he had to hit the white ball first. Manuela said, We’re going to win. I watched them for a little while. They didn’t hold the cue correctly, or stand correctly, or eye any angles, or hit with touch, or understand a single physical concept about the game that could have helped them. I thought that was pretty damn funny. So did everybody else. The guy with the moustache kept telling them he was about to start taking the game seriously. Saskia missed a shot – everyone cheered loudly, because it was an easy, easy shot, and she had missed badly – and came to stand beside me. Why are we so bad? she asked. Who cares? I said. Yeah, except I’m not having fun any more. When it was Saskia’s turn again, I stood beside her and talked her through it. The guy with the moustache objected. He wagged his finger. What did he say? I asked. Saskia did not know. I told her to point to where the ball needed to be hit, then aim to hit it there with the cue ball. Okay, she said. Now, I said, bend your knees, and hold the cue as flat to the table as possible. Like this? she said. Don’t grip the cue, I said, just let it rest there. She released her index finger. Just like that, I said. She hit it. She potted it. The whole place groaned. But Saskia was happy. She said, That was easy! Manuela high-fived her and tried to high-five me, but I said, I don’t high-five, and shook her hand. The guy with the moustache, who everyone had stopped paying attention to, must have felt we’d broken some rule, because he shouted something, and when we looked we saw he had the cue ball in his hand, and he threw it at us. I don’t know which one of us he’d hoped to hit, but he hit Manuela, in the back, between the shoulder blades. And Manuela dropped.