Leo belongs to Aaron Sorkin, John Wells Productions, Warner Bros., & NBC. Standard disclaimers apply. Please send feedback. Blank Verse Violet
July. New York. An unlit cigarette.
He taps it on the bar with one thin hand.
The faces of old Cold War buddies rise:
A different kind of smoke to watch and breathe.
He turns away from them. "You got a match?"
The girl looks at him like he's just appeared
From empty air. Nobody's in the world
Until they speak to her. She flicks her Bic.
He takes a drag and holds her in his stare.
The brown hair streaked with blonde, the flinty eyes;
She's not much more than half his daughter's age.
She must think he's insane, some kind of creep
Decrepit-faced and sitting way too close.
He thanks her, draws away to clear her air.
"Let me buy you a drink," she says. He coughs
And cups his ear. The hearing's first to go.
But she repeats herself, "I'll get this round.
I'm betting you're a Scotch-and-soda man."
Scotch neat, he thinks. He is, or used to be,
Before he spent a night between two cars,
With gravel and gunmetal in his mouth.
He tastes it now, the whiskey and the steel,
The muddy tang of seven years of guilt.
"No, thanks. But let me get this one for you."
The bartender is huge, a sweaty hulk,
A mountain with a mustache. He destroys
The sleekness of the modern, mirrored room.
A relic, then, from better days, who grunts
And gives up glasses glazed with fingerprints:
Club soda, his, and her tonic and gin.
"You're not from here," she says. He nods and pulls
The nicotine and tar into his lungs,
"Chicago," and he flicks away the ash.
"Oh, I thought Boston." Laughing as she sips,
"I'm oh-for-two tonight." But she's come close,
Much closer than he'll suffer her to know.
He sees the Charles River, and the snow
Around the simple house where he was born.
Decembers, and the day his father died.
The house that couldn't be a home again.
"I like it here," he says, and lifts his glass.
It isn't water--might as well be, growls
the far side of his mind--so he can toast
The city, and its lights. The shadows too.
She clinks her glass with his. "I'll drink to that."
They do. She asks, "What brings you here tonight?"
The truth? He bows his head and looks for it
Between the cryptic scratches on the bar.
He could explain his mission, the two aims:
To raise some money, and to save the world.
He could invoke some names he's sure she knows,
And then she might know his. He shakes his head.
Inhale, exhale. He could invent a life,
A business, scrabbled up from sheer brow-sweat,
Hardware, perhaps, some sons to carry on
The past, the future, and the family name.
He looks at her and can't exactly lie.
"Just came in from the heat. Some weather, huh?"
"You're telling me." She stretches. Her bare arms
Arch up into a halo. He won't look
At how her breasts shift in her flimsy shirt.
She's just a kid. And he's a sick old goat.
"I almost went to Rockaway today,
But it depresses me." Her voice dips down
In confidence. He thinks--but doesn't say--
You shouldn't talk to strangers like they're friends.
"What's wrong with it? The neighborhood go bad?"
He cracks a smile to show her it's a joke,
Sucks down the dying smoke, and lights one fresh.
The girl lowers her eyelids and her arms.
"You could say that. My last boyfriend and me,
We might as well have lived out there last year.
I almost drowned once--" Now she's far away,
Adrift on waves that only roll for her.
He knows the seasick feeling, so he waits.
She doesn't speak. He prods: "You almost drowned?"
She tries to smile. "That's neither here nor there.
It's really just the normal teenage crap--"
Pushing her hair back roughly from her eyes
"--Shit happens. Hey. It's life, you know?"
He knows.
The bubbles burst inside his filthy glass,
Explosions small as pinpricks. And he sees,
Sees bombs descend and bodies catching fire.
The faces of his friends, wisecracking, cool,
A bunch of stupid fucking kids, back then,
As dumbly cheerful as a pig in shit.
The time they had to bail, and glided down
Into a minefield near the Song Tra Bong,
Or lifted wounded soldiers from the earth,
All stoned on morphine, missing legs and hands,
Bones splintered, faces bathed in mud and blood.
Remembers, too, a black-haired village girl
Eyes dull, skin olive-gold, about fifteen,
Her broken English. "I count back." Her hands
Already clasped in front to shield herself.
A little roundness there? "I count. It's you."
He shrugs, he turns away, he doesn't care.
He's heard this story from his friends before,
Can't trust these cunts, they'll fuck a whole platoon
For U.S. dollars, Army rations, soap,
A handout. They're all liars. "I count back."
But even if it's true, it's just a gook,
And little ones grow bigger, big enough
To hold an AK-47 straight.
Remembering, he thinks he understands.
Women and children wanted the same thing
As dying boys, as military men:
Get out of Vietnam. Get out alive.
He did. They didn't. Hey, shit happens, right?
The girl coughs, twisting on her leather stool.
"Um. You all right? You look a little green."
The past goes up in smoke. He sees himself
For real, this time. The mirror shows him pale,
Washed out, worn out, face like a lumpy fist,
A scarecrow's shoulders in a tailored suit.
"I need to quit these things," he tells her, throws
The remnant down into his soda glass.
"Who doesn't, right? I've tried a dozen times.
You could've used the ashtray, though." She points;
He looks. "Club soda's mostly only good
For cleaning out the grill." The barman snorts.
The girl turns up her rosy face to him,
"So let me get you something real, this time."
He wants it like he wants so many things:
Time to go backwards. To be young again,
Have room to do it over. Not to stand
In sunlight, in an Eastern jungle prone
To sudden spasmodic fits of beauty.
Sometimes, he'd stop to stand still, look around
And couldn't see the war was there at all.
For the same reason that, from where he sits,
He looks, can't see Manhattan anywhere.
His throat is dry. His mouth is wet. He wants,
And wants, and wants the things he shouldn't have.
He checks his watch, "I've got an early day."
Again it's not a lie. Five hours from now,
There's Staff, then Cabinet, Security,
A schedule that will be shot to hell
By noon. But that's the way. "I gotta go."
Crumpling a napkin, standing, smoothes his coat,
His back aching, leaves money on the bar,
And looking in the mirror, he commits
This kid's bare arms, her face to memory.
She lit his cigarette, was young, was kind,
Once almost drowned at Rockaway, deserves
A better world. He needs not to forget.
"Goodnight," she says, and offers him her hand,
Shakes firmly, like his father said real men
Should do. "'Night," he replies, and turns away.
Outside, the humid darkness sticks to skin.
Five-star hotels stand just three blocks away
But here, the front line's shifting back and forth
Where classy and collapsing buildings duel,
And he looks back to watch her drain her gin.
She's luminous. She's never seen a war.
He thinks about the sons he doesn't have,
And hopes his daughter's sleeping well. It's late.
He's sober, and too old. The girl is drunk.
He leaves her gleaming in the bar's blue light,
And leads his ghosts out through the summer night.