| Irving A. Greenfield
The Man With the Tattoed Back Harry Bloch turned his sea green BMW into the Bridge View Diner's parking area at 6:10 in the morning. It was dark. The street lights were still on. The people he passed were either coming from or going to work. He saw them every morning. A few he even recognized. Now and then, he'd see a new face -- a young one, or an old man or woman. Over the years those who had once been young had become old, the way he had. The diner had been his morning stop from the first day he had started teaching at Fort Washington High School, twenty-five years ago come the September term. A quarter of a century of teaching English to teenagers who'd rather drink, do drugs and fuck, than make an attempt to read, let alone understand what they have read. A tall, slender man of sixty, Harry got out of the car slowly. The early morning air still held the bite of the winter cold though by the calendar it was April -- almost time for the Easter vacation. He shivered and hurriedly made his way up the steps into the diner's lobby where he saw a bear of a man with shoulder length blond hair tied in a queue and a tattooed back, most of which was visible through a black tank top. He also wore chino pants and dirty black sneakers without socks. The man was talking on the telephone. Because of the way he was turned away from him, Harry could not see his face. He was greeted by the night manager, who finished his twelve-hour shift at eight. This morning, it was Nick. Tomorrow, it would be Pete. Both men were Greek, but Nick had the ethnic look. A heavy set man, he sported the black moustache and had the black eyes to match it. Pete was a better dresser and looked more like an American business man. Both men had slight accents which some women would find charming, even exciting. "Cold out?" Nick asked. "Yes. But it will warm up later," Harry answered taking off his wide-brimmed hat and shearling jacket and laying them on the booth bench opposite from the one he sat on. When he first had started coming to the diner, he had sat at the counter. Then, he had smoked a pipe and cigarette smoke hadn't bothered him. But after he had given up the pipe, he couldn't tolerate the smell of cigarette smoke. Without him having to ask, the waitress, a short, skinny woman, brought him a bran muffin, a small paper cup filled with margarine, a cup of coffee and a small glass three quarters filled with milk. When he'd finish the coffee, he'd have another cup. Because he preferred the top part of the muffin, he always left the bottom part of it uneaten. Harry was a meticulous man. He took the necessary time to butter the top part of the muffin evenly. His colleagues accused him of being finicky --of demanding too much from the Hispanic, Arabic and Greek students who made up most of Fort Washington's population. Though he was a fair teacher, he was absolutely merciless with any student who crossed him. He had his rules: courtesy and honesty. Live by them in his classes, make an attempt to do the work, and you'd survive. Violate his rules and you were, as he'd put it, "dead in the water." He knew his colleagues spoke about him behind his back. They knew he was wealthy, and had a source of income other than teaching. And though he never spoke about traveling, he knew the best restaurants, night clubs and other places to visit in most of the countries in the world. More than once during his twenty-five years at the high school he got the impression that collectively they thought there was something sinister about him. Harry drank his coffee slowly and thoroughly chewed each bit of the muffin before swallowing it. When he finished his first cup of coffee and was waiting for the waitress to bring him his second cup, the man with the painted back came in and sat in the booth directly in front of Harry with his back to him. His original impression changed from a bear of man to a Neanderthal-like creature because the man appeared to lack a neck, had a jutting jaw and the sloped forehead peculiar to that species. As the waitress came down the aisle, the Neanderthal stopped her. "I want two orders of bacon and eggs, a double order of toast and coffee with cream." Harry smiled. The order met his expectations of what he'd guessed it would be. The waitress nodded, came to Harry's table and as she filled his cup, she rolled her eyes. Harry answered with a nod. That was more communication than they had in the several years that she had been serving him breakfast. The second cup of coffee seldom tasted as good as the first and this one was no exception. The second cup reminded him of his life. He was tired of it. The five years until his retirement seemed like an eternity. His hair was gray, and getting up in the morning had become a Herculean effort. He took all of this into consideration. All the past and the present didn't add up too much of a future for a man who had lived a portion of his life on the cutting edge. A school teacher and, in his opinion of himself, something of a scholar. A restless man, who like a chameleon changed from what he appeared to be into an enforcer -- a Company gun whenever the call came to make a hit. A strange career that had started in his senior year in college, when he had been recruited by his professor of Russian Studies for the Agency. But now he was the man sentenced to death. The oncologist pronounced it with one word -- "incurable." Incurable equals death. An equation of mathematical simplicity. Oddly, it was the unseen terms, the unknowns, that gave him nightmares. He'd faced death, or the prospect of it, too many times not to accept it as his traveling companion -- and in certain circumstances it would have been a welcomed friend. No, the final zero in the equation of his life did not even cause his heart to miss a beat. But the values of the unknowns terrified him. That bleak landscapes through which he would have to travel made his eyes burn with fear. To think of himself as helpless as a child without a child's future plunged him into such despair that its weight crushed him into emotional pulp. The waitress came out of the kitchen holding a brown tray with two orders of bacon and eggs for the Neanderthal. She set them down in front of him and asked if he wanted his coffee "now" or "later?" The blond head bobbed up and down. "Yeah, now," he answered. Harry could tell that he spoke with his mouth full and he guessed that he held the fork and the knife in the grip of his fist rather than with his fingers. Definitely a man without class. Harry pursed his lips. He would have chosen someone with more personal appeal, someone more like himself. But he had to take what he could get, especially since he had to go through a middle man. Though the choice wasn't his to make, he found little comfort in knowing that, just as he found little comfort in the massive social changes that had occurred over the years. Changes that seemed to be dedicated to the destruction of beauty everywhere. The Neanderthal's tattooed back -- depicting nude women with snakes writhing between their open thighs and over their bare nipples -- made him wince. He couldn't imagine that man making love to a woman, or for that matter, having the capacity, the sensitivity to love one. Yet he had. In his life he had loved many different women. Given them pleasure and was given pleasure by them -- physical, psychological and even intellectual. But the equation now governing his life would bring an end to the relationship he now had with his wife. She would become his nurse, his keeper. And that was totally unacceptable. . . . Harry finished eating the last piece of the top of the bran muffin and drank the remaining coffee. All he had to do was ask the waitress for the check. He did exactly that. Now, he would have to wait until the Neanderthal finished his breakfast before he would learn whether or not he would hear the shot before the bullet struck. It was a question that had hung in his mind for years . . . |
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Copyright © 1999 Irving A. Greenfield All Rights Reserved |
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