See
Eddie left Hilda with a new spring to his step and entered the high-ceilinged barroom of the Bull & Bear Tavern where a large oval bar dominated the space. It had been salvaged from a fancy brothel in The Tenderloin, Manhattan’s sin-loving, red-light district in the 19th. Century, and retained the shiny brass shoe rail that allowed customers to rest their tired feet while they cured their thirsts and discussed world events. Large brass spittoons filled with green ferns were placed in open areas for aesthetic effect.
Beyond the bar is a well-appointed dining room with an enormous stone fireplace and large stained glass windows. It has many nooks and crannies you find in older spaces that make the room seem larger than it actually is. Turn-of-the-century gas lamps provide the only light there as Hilda feels they recreate an old world atmosphere of grace and civility. Women customers strongly prefer sitting in here because the pale yellow glow makes them look as lovely as Ingrid Bergman in the movie Gaslight.
The stock markets had been closed for three hours and there was a decent crowd for a Tuesday. Quite often the mood in the bar reflected how the markets performed that day. On this particular evening, the tone was pessimistic and downbeat. All the TVs circling the barroom were muted, however, the closing stock prices streaming across their screens showed the sizable losses incurred on the major exchanges in Europe and the USA. The markets in Asia, where it was already tomorrow, were also down sharply at the open.
He approached a porcelain pretty, raven-haired bartender. “Hi, Julia.”
“You’re looking poorly, Eddie, I’d say you could use a little hair-of-the-dog.”
“Make it a single, not my usual double. I’m a man on a mission and I’ve got to do some heavy-duty conceptualizing this evening so I’ll need my wits about me.”
“Whatever you say.”
He scanned the room while she mixed his drink. To his dismay, most of the patrons were on their smartphones, all attentions fixated on the small, luminous screens in their hands. Workers are always on-the-clock now, at the beck-and-call of the boss, no matter the hour. In his day people used to converse with each other in bars; which is why you went to bars in the first place, to make new friends and enjoy a convivial chat, maybe even learn some worthwhile information as well. Now we seem to communicate more but we have less to say in face-to-face conversation.
His interest shifted to a couple seated at a table in the dining room. The young man and woman, each texting away furiously, were together but alone, ignoring each other. What kind of a dinner date is this? Where is the joy in being with your lover? What happened to the warmth of human contact?
Someone told him recently that 20% of all divorces today are blamed on Facebook; he accepted the startling statistic. People have love affairs with their electronic devices now instead of with other people. The Internet hasn’t brought us closer together, he thought, the opposite is true; we’re more isolated now than ever before; we’ve lost our sense of community. Technology advances are making us less human; the whole world needs to unplug and power down. They should pass a law requiring service providers to shut off the Internet for two hours each evening during ‘Family Time’ so parents and their children would be forced to talk to one another at the dinner table without distractions or interruptions.
Julia delivered his drink.
“Thanks.” He raised his glass to make a toast: “L’chaim!”
She reciprocated with her Poland Spring water bottle. “To life!”
“So what’s new and exciting with you, Julia?”
A sigh. “My landlord wants to raise my rent to $2,150 a month.”
“That amounts to a lot of tips.”
“Tell me about it.”
“But it’s a good price for a one-bedroom in Manhattan; isn’t it?”
“Maybe but I’ve got a tiny studio in Brooklyn.”
“Oh.”
“Back home in Boston, we call my apartment a closet.”
“Well, Julia, they say that New York is a city for the rich and the young.”
“I’m young, at least.”
“I’m neither,” he confessed, “but I’m still here.”
“That’s good, Eddie, because this place wouldn’t be the same without you.”
He put down his Jack & Coke in an effort to make it last longer. “How’s the painting coming along?”
“My art school teachers tell me I’ve got real talent.”
“A person would have to be blind, Julia, not to recognize that.”
“I hope you’ll sit for me soon, Eddie, so I can paint your portrait.”
“Nah, I’m too unimportant to have my portrait painted.”
“Your face tells an interesting story and it should be recorded for posterity.”
He shook his head. “I’m thinking it’s a sad story, Julia, and one without a happy ending.”
“Maybe in two or three hundred years, Eddie, people will gaze upon my portrait and wonder about you.”
“I wonder about me all the time,” he said, showing her the ghost of a painful smile.
“Be serious.”
“I am, Julia, I’m very serious.” He stirred the tawny liquid in his glass with a swizzle stick. “I wonder where all the years went; I wonder why things worked out the way they did; I wonder how come I’m still alive when others, much more deserving, died way before their time.”
She made no response.
“Sorry to be so morbid,” he apologized, raising his head, “I can’t think what came over me there for a second.”
“That’s ok, Eddie, bartenders down here in the Financial District hear that kind of gloomy talk all the time when the markets are tanking.”
“Anyway, Julia, as I was about to say, I’m also too ugly to sit for a portrait, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Art isn’t about beauty; it’s about truth.”
“I read where Andy Warhol once said that making money is art.”
She frowned. “I disagree.”
“Besides, Julia, I get palpitations whenever I take the subway out to Brooklyn. I’m strictly a Manhattan guy.”
“Then I’ll bring in my oils and canvas and paint you in your apartment.”
He blanched. “Um, that wouldn’t work, Julia, the light’s not good in my place.”
“Ok, then I’ll paint you here in the Bull & Bear.”
“Hmm.”
