At the Prophet’s Bar

Apr 302024
 

One night only. Roy Orbison. Written in swooping red neon script on the tired marquee in front of the last roadhouse, where now stands an Outlet Mall on Highway 94 between Chicago and Milwaukee.

It was a Wednesday night. Bitter wild December wind cold. Long, long ago. Back when I did things like stopping to listen without a second thought.

Easing down on the exit ramp and coasting by “The Brat Stop,” a jarring restaurant lounge screaming TOURIST! And instead parking in front of “Bobby Nelson’s,” the quiet red brick cheese and sausage heaven that would provide tonight’s dinner. Buying way too much. Because a pound of this and a pound of that, wrapped tight in butcher paper and torn open as soon as I got back in the car does add up.

Circling back under Highway 94, to the almost empty lot in front of the Roadhouse. The neon flashing like a heart beat. Roy Orbison.

Inside to the welcoming warm darkness, an almost empty room, except for there she was, at the end of the bar, by herself. Eating a chocolate chip cookie. She looked up, smiled, and time stopped.

“What are . . .” I started.

“Of all the gin joints in all the world,” she laughed and winter suddenly was a memory. This was a woman who wasn’t afraid to tuck herself alone in to the corner of a dark bar on a Wednesday night. If there was a good reason to be there.

“I’m flying home out of Milwaukee. Late flight” she said. And you didn’t think I’d spend any more time in Beloit!”

“Hey, there are worse fates. So how do you know this place? Or did you just see the sign?”

“Oh this is the Prophet’s Bar.”

“The what?”

“You gotta get your nose out of the books and pay attention young man! The Prophet! I heard about him back at school from a guy who comes from Kenosha. They call this guy ‘The Prophet.’ Nice old guy. Doesn’t hurt anybody. See him sitting by himself over there with the Old Style draft?” She pointed at an older man I hadn’t noticed having only been drawn to the light of her smile.

“Yeah, he’ll just come over, say something, nod his head politely and leave. He gives these little speeches. He’ll do it before the music starts. Won’t interrupt anything. People around here, the bartender was just telling me, they all expect it. Nod their heads. Say ‘Thank you Timothy’ and he goes on to someone else or back to his beer.

‘Timothy?’

“Yeah, I’m sure he’ll come see us.”

It was an hour to the show. And we spent most of it in that warm corner finishing each other’s sentences.

Sometimes, and if you’re one of the fortunate ones you’ll have this happen to you, you simply connect with another human being. A world without them isn’t a thought you could ever have. Instead there is a history. That slow, steady drum beat waltz leading up to that connection. Then there is right now. A right now so overwhelmingly good that it makes your soul breathe. And finally there is a future. The natural as a summer rain future of the two of you together in some small corner of a green Jersey forest, or a warm wind Carolina mountaintop, or some secluded sun drenched beach along the Gulf Coast. Anywhere. Because there will be a future. Full of work that you will both do in the rhythm of some larger song you can both almost hear.

As the time for Roy Orbison to play came close, I looked down and discovered we were holding hands and I could not remember when we started. We had always held hands. Always would.

As Timothy the Prophet approached, she saw him first.

He cleared his throat. Looked at us both. Blue eyes of kindness and he spoke.

“Don’t be naive. There are difficult times ahead. As the end approaches, people are going to be self-absorbed, money-hungry, self-promoting, stuck-up, profane, contemptuous of parents, crude, coarse, dog-eat-dog, unbending, slanderers, impulsively wild, savage, cynical, treacherous, ruthless, bloated windbags, addicted to lust, and allergic to God. They’ll make a show of religion, but behind the scenes they’re animals. Stay clear of these people.”

When he finished we were all three quiet for a moment. His words settling in to some silent corner of our connected hearts. Devastating words of warning as a prelude to a love song.

Roy Orbison came on alone. Just him. No strings, back up singers or any of that.

Just that voice. Just Roy Orbinson’s voice

He sang “In Dreams.” And we held hands. Like a world without end . . . . .

And tonight. As I shut down the circuit breakers in my janitor’s closet in the outlet mall, reminded myself to stop on my way home to pick up a six pack, wondered what I’d be watching on television tonight; I remembered Timothy’s warning for the first time in years.

I held on tight to the sound of Roy Orbison’s voice.

And I wondered where she’d gone.

Young Carole King

Apr 122024
 

She’s somewhere in her twenties. Traipsing downtown from Brooklyn to the Brill Building in Manhattan where she plunks out tunes on a battered old piano, some kid calling himself Neil Diamond in the room next door, little Carol Joan Klein from the neighborhood thinking she can be some sort of songwriter or something. What’s with the Carole King name? She is little Carol Klein. She’s working as a secretary. Husband Gerry is in pharmacy school. Here is this Carole King person writing a melody, leaving the music on the piano at home with a note to Gerry scrawled “See if you can come up with some lyrics for this one.” Gerry listens, then sits down to write:

“Tonight you’re mine completely

 You give your love so sweetly.

 Tonight, the light, of love is in your eyes.

 But will you love me tomorrow?”

 Then the song actually gets sold to the Shirelles. There is actual money from the song writing now. There is a limousine ride when news of that sale comes through. The young couple hops inside that car and never looks back. She is Carole King now.

But she’s not eighty two. Because I’m still 21, right?  I’ve just come down from Wisconsin to live in Chicago. There were five of us renting the 2ndand 3rdfloor of the old building at Racine and Webster. I had a job. I was a teacher. Special Ed kids. They would make you crazy if you weren’t careful. Which is why it was good that we had rights to the roof of that building. Because sometimes in the summer, she and I would grab the sleeping bag and climb up through the glowing summer prayer of star lit city night. She and I, we’d go up on the roof. Dancing in the summer wind beneath the stars. Owning the world. Everything being possible.

We’d go “up on the roof.”

Like Carole King.

Resurrection Chicken Soup

Mar 122024
 

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Does the golden promise smell of chicken soup wafting up from the street to your third floor landing still linger through the years?

Can that hand delivered memory smell still come streaming back now that your old place on Second Avenue in Manhattan has been blown to kingdom come? Can the smell of chicken soup come back?

I read about that gas explosion last month and saw it was your old address. Made the national news. These days I work for a gas company. So I pay attention. I could tell you the details of exactly what happens when somebody tries to siphon off stolen gas. Let’s just say that chances are, it will not end well. This horror scene on Second Avenue, leveled what, three buildings? Pounded them into dust.

One of those buildings was where you lived. That place where we would write three-word great literature in the frost on the windowpanes. Where three stories up, the radiators would clank and sizzle through the winter and the traffic would rumble and roar outside while a puffy red comforter would wrap us up in all the warmth the world had ever known as we lay still and so alive, after love.

So all these years later, I read the news story of the gas explosion on the 21st floor of an office building in Chicago and once again I could smell the chicken soup. Across all the decades. The mist of broth and time from the Second Avenue Deli. Like some unseen hand, tugging at my sleeve and steering me to stand once more before Max’s holy silver alter steam table. Max, bushy gray moustache and white apron, points at the chicken soup tureen, shrugs his shoulders, says “Oy. For the girl again? Again for the girl?” I nod and look down.

I would take the soup and crackers in the brown paper bag, trudge on up to the third floor landing. Then on a dusty table under a perpetually burned out light bulb, I would leave my little offering.

Which I am sure drove you bat shit crazy. At least for awhile. What a pest I was!

I was trouble. I was not a future. I even had another girlfriend. So why in the name anything that matters should you spend even a second more with me? I was in marketing. What did that even mean! You worked for the same publisher. This is back when there was more than one publisher. Way before amazon dot come changed everything. In the East Village neighborhood joints after work, when people would ask you what you did, you’d say things like, “I scrub editorial toilets.” No one knew what that meant either but it was a much better answer than “I’m in marketing.”

What split us up? I guess there was little stuff. Most of it I don’t remember. We ran with the same crowd. Would be writers. Editors. Aspiring famous people. All of us in and out of each other’s lives. Often so much so that when someone hurt someone else, the story rippled out like a stone tossed in the pond leaving only circles on the water and a stone gone for keeps without even time to say “I’m sorry.” Or maybe “can we try this one more time?”

And that’s what prompted me to start in with the soup.

I had a place around the corner, like the guy in that song you didn’t like but I loved, would sing, “really no place at all, just a hole in the wall.” It was our first spring apart. Just before Easter, which overlapped with Passover that year. So the soup thing was kind of a interreligious meaningless gesture. Resurrection Chicken Soup.

You had come down with a horrible case of mononucleosis. Everybody was talking about how you literally couldn’t move. And there was nothing I could do about it.

Drove me fucking crazy. You got sick. I got crazy.

I knew you’d be fine. I knew the stories you sent spinning out our Second Avenue pond would be extra sharp. Extra funny. But there was nothing I could do to ease your troubles.

So I started leaving the soup. No words. Just the soup.

As you got better, you eventually lost the job scrubbing editorial toilets, but every time I heard news of you, I’d leave the soup. Every time something big would happen in your life, I’d bring the soup. I told Max I was sure I’d be bringing soup to your wedding.

You never mentioned it to anyone, I’m sure. Love is not the opposite of hate. Love is the opposite of indifference. I assumed your indifference. Probably a good thing that we never made it too many steps outside that that puffy red comforter, keeping us warm in the New York City winters. All that indifference can get old.

Of course you finally left the big city and so did I. One of us off to warmer winds and the other off to even colder winter winds. The night before you were set to leave town, I left my last brown paper bag on your third floor landing.

And down through the years I’d hear bits and snatches of stories of your adventures in the world of what happens when none of us are young anymore. So I’d dream up another serving of that soup for you. A ladle full of hope that your spirit was still shining.

Right on up to that big explosion, a couple weeks ago, that leveled your old place on Second Avenue. The explosion that brought back the smell of that chicken soup.

That soup I once again placed, like a story,or a birthday present, right outside your door.