My cigarette lit in a blaze of match fire held up to its tip. The funeral had been long and awkward. Old women standing around patting each other’s wrinkled hands, loud kids (God knows whose) running up and down the red-carpeted room that felt more and more like a grave the longer I was there. The flowers would’ve made Eddy laugh, had he seen them lined up all along the walls in a pastel mess that made me feel nauseous.
“Some kinda pansy, that’s what they think I am, eh?” Eddy would’ve grumbled under his breath.
The smoke writhed like a gray snake in the air before me. Well shit, I thought. Eddy Sullivan, no longer stomping around on this earth with big, jean-clad legs and workman’s boots. Strange to think that. I’d never again see him at the counter, second seat from the last. Shuffling cards and gulping lagers, no matter what time of day it was. Back in college, it could be counted on that if Eddy wasn’t at work or fighting with whatever girl he had chosen to love that week or riding the subway with a newspaper tucked under his arm, he was in that seat. Sometimes sober, often not. Shouting stories, doling out advice, whispering poems into the ear of any girl who walked into the joint, poems memorized just for that purpose. And sometimes he had messages for us; the man was a walking answering machine:
“Hey Jimmy, your brother was in here the other day. Said you owe him some money for some wild night you boys had with jazz and whisky and other sorts of devil’s deeds. Better get it to him, boy—he looked fierce!”
“That sweet broad you been goin’ after was in here the other day, Vinny. Askin’ bout you, she likes you, you know, you’re some kind of lucky bastard.”
“You boys wanna play gin? You too, hippy, unless the man’s got you too far down today. Haw haw haw!”
A heart attack. No surprise there. The man lived on baked beans and sausage, French fries and onion rings. He’d dive into them like a starving wolf before the bartender could even set the plate before him.
“Hey, gimmie a grilled cheese. A man’s gotta eat, a man’s gotta eat!”
Eddy, gone. And where were the others? Jimmy, married, holed up in Long Island with a nine to five, a mortgage, and two daughters. He sent letters to me, but never came to visit though he longed to get the hell out of there for a while, and we both knew it. Stormy, selling his soul piece by piece to an advertising agency because he had a knack for making people want things they didn’t need, and in return he spent vacations in Aruba and had a backyard bigger than any city-grown kid could ever dream of. Anne and her pale art-school friends, who knew?
Ah, how it all settles, he thought. How the tea leaves sink to the bottom so that you find the future hidden in the contrast of white china and earthy brown.
The bartender came over, almost shyly, carrying a stack of plastic cups. He set them in front of me and hurried away before I could say a word. I sat back, confused, until he returned with two frothy pitchers of Guinness and placed them on the table. He began to arrange the cups, lining them up one by one until they covered the entire surface that lay before me. Although I questioned him, casually, two or three times, he stayed silent as he carried on his task.
He then carefully poured the beer into each of the cups.
“What is this, man, hm? What are you doing?” I felt somewhat more anxious. He glanced down at me, and I stared up, my mouth slightly open, jaw heavy with questions, eyebrows raised. But he looked down and continued. I sighed and watched him. I could think of nothing else to do.
When he finished, the room seemed to fall into a hush. It was as if everyone had just been talking for the sake of the comfort of noise and the passing of time as the bartender filled the cups, like an audience as the orchestra tunes. It was sudden, their transformation from idle barflies into church-goers at sermon, clutching drinks like rosary beads, throats silent and the air still with the weight of importance and respect. The bartender finally spoke to me.
“Eddy Sullivan was a good man, an honest man. Any friend of his is a friend of ours, you see, and all who knew him here wanted to buy you a drink. And well, everyone knew Eddy…” his voice trailed off and he offered the beginning of a smile, like an enemy offers an olive branch, with trembling fingers. I smiled back, dumbfounded in the spotlight that had suddenly shone onto me, sitting in a big booth with tall red seats, surrounded by cups of beer.
“Well I can’t drink it all myself,” I replied. “Why don’t you give the bar a round, and we’ll all have something to honor Eddy with, hm?”
And with that, everyone who had been at the counter stood and came to get their drink from my table. I must’ve spent 20 minutes sitting there, watching them pick up cups and nod at me, solemnly, or grin at me, knowingly. Once and a while someone leaned an arm on my table and told a story about Eddy: a joke he had told and offended some businessmen or a girl he had brought in and danced with all over the bar like a madman or that time that Eddy got smashed and stood up on the counter to recite Poe. They were young, old, workingmen, brick layers, cab drivers, musicians, law students, sons, daughters, husbands, wives, loners, lovers—New Yorkers drinking on a Sunday afternoon at The Gemini, who had known Eddy, had shared a laugh or a story or a good, unexplainable cry with him, had taken a load off with him for an hour or two. The whole thing was sad and beautiful and powerful. This life, it’s sad and beautiful and powerful, I thought, nodding and smiling and sharing this moment with everyone who came by.
When the last cup had been taken, and when I was once again alone, though less alone than before, I made a silent toast. To Queens, to Dublin, to all the women I’d loved and the books I’d read and the dinners I’d eaten off of chipped plates and all the tips I’d left for tired-looking wait staff. To all that lay ahead of me, wherever the hell that was—all that the tea leaves spelled out. And I toasted Eddy, who sat second seat from the last and told the punch line loud so that everyone could hear.
