NICKELS THE BAKER

A true story

Part one of two

1.

Nickels says to the Fool: I know what you did, everybody does and we all know why. Teach me how to punch a man in the face. Action.

The Fool obliges: turn your whole torso, hold the elbow like so. Imagine you’re hitting something behind my face, hit all the way through. 

Like this? 

Yes. 

Nickels, subconsciously: this is complicated, important, a way of expressing emotions and resolving conflict. Motivation.

In reality, Nickels is merely punching a man again and again, then shaving his head, and thinking, this is a good way to live I guess. This is me doing a good job.

She calls him plainly, almost friendly: idiot cur. Hopes to feel catharsis, cleansing, anger even, but is mostly only nervous to punch right and impress. I want to be thought of as the kind of person who punches good. And Nickels does know that a different angle would hammer and split him bloody, a real punch, but is obliged to punch polite. Stunt. Do it calmly, methodically, only leave a bit of swelling. Don’t break Fool’s nose. 

Get down, she says, and with clippers shaves his head clean of hair, long, vain, ridiculous. But Nickels herself is shaved bald anyway so who cares? Twin fools then. Casting.

The Fool, without compunction, sorry only to have been caught, is at least now marked with her dignity when he walks out the door, she tells herself. And almost believes it, until the Fool says: I respect you so much right now. Script.

Just get out of here, man. Cut.

She is falling asleep on the mattress on the floor as the sun rises, rag tied over eyes, body smell wafting upward and she sinks once more into those daily dark and oily dreams of vomiting a river of poison. Awash in hot black blood and bile coming up and out, slick and then sticky between the lips. The sun rises high and covers her tossing body, stretched sheet smelling of old skin and damp with sweat. A fitful sleep in a summer apartment, that stinking box, as the yellow sun touches and colors everything, the broken white plastic coffee maker, the orange dish soap, the beige strip of laminate that claims to be a “kitchen,” the tall black leather boots burning, wagging tongues and tangled heaps of laces, heavy canvas pants stiffly crumpled on the floor, shining like leather with a patina of filth. Sun reaches everything but her eyes, sockets stuffed with ink-soaked cotton. A festering sleep, dreams bursting with hot black blood-grease pouring from her mouth and nose. And just beyond this nest the straight-world wakes and begin to churn. All Of That, Out There. She sleeps right through it every day.

This spell is broken when she is awakened by the evening breeze. Another day, which is the night. Hauls a rickety bicycle down the apartment stairs. This particular prize was found in a lot of broken up asphalt and stringy weeds then stalked for three days to confirm its neglect (because bike thieves burn in hell, but this is fair game). The tires needed patching and maybe it isn’t the ten-speed it claims to be but the brakes mostly work and it gets (to where) the job (needs to be) done. Heads downhill to an ostensibly Irish bar where the Thursday night crowd is coasting too, locks up the crunchy thing and orders a coffee. There’s always coffee, because an “Irish bar” has to serve “Irish coffee”. Of course. 

She’s at the counter, a stolid lighthouse surrounded by the battering winds of blowhard drunks, barely lighting up but feeling stronger as the coffee slurry brewed while she was deep asleep makes its way through her walls and workings. Silt from the coffee sinks to the bottom of  the cup (you know that cup. It’s the same mug every single diner in America uses, not-white, ceramic, smooth, mass-produced and thick enough to split a skull) and the silt isn’t even brown, it’s truly and sincerely gray, more like something from a gutter or ashtray than a riverbed. 

Just like every time she can afford it, she finishes the second cup, considers the whisky, decides against it, and leaves an oversized tip. It’s the same big tip that circulates among every service worker in the city. I got a good tip, paycheck, a twenty from my grandma for my birthday so I’ll leave you something good because I-know-how-it-is. That tip makes it’s way across counters across the city passing across across across, left under the empty pint glass or coffee mug over and over and over, and a bigger tip than the better-off ever leave. It isn’t even cash anymore, it’s a solemn nod.

Throws her leg over the bike out front, deep breath. Night traffic isn’t made of individual cars so much as one long angry glittering snake occasionally turning its head (go) and other times tries to strike (careful). Make a move, pumps her legs, the alley is good, back streets are good, pedal through the pitch-black park, all the places that would be red-flag maybe-deadly on foot she sails through feeling powerful and free. Muscle, power, dumb youth, Nickels never learned to drive and doesn’t know the traffic rules other than what she’s gleaned by trial and blessed error, and hides her ignorance and fear behind a mask of haughty indifference. It’s easy to disdain every single driver in the city when you despise “the city” and cannot see their faces in the dark. Even when she shoots dirty looks at drivers, it’s at the headlights, not the windshield. 

Full-speed crazy coast down Roanoke- can I do it without brakes? Let’s see. Careening lunatic in the dark with no helmet. Then when the road levels out before the bridge, a series of crunching sensations. Nickels pulls over on the bridge, flips the bike upside down. Sets it there on handlebars and seat as drunks headlight past her in the night. She imagines them catching a glimpse of her out here, imagines they’re impressed, yeah, cool. Nape of neck. Shaved head. Sweat. Capable. Delicately places the chain back where she thinks it probably? maybe? belongs and nods like some kind of bike sage instead of what she is: an idiot groping in the dark.