Three balled up dollar bills flew over the balcony. Fez and I snickered as the bills sailed down. Two of them hit Mike and one hit the bar. All four heads came up at once. Fez waved.
Mike shook a fist and shouted through a pirate face, “You’re an idiot!”
“Hey,” I shouted down, “From up here you could see down every blouse in the joint!”
Ten minutes later I was back at the bar. “The Fez apologizes for our behavior and asked me to tell you that I’m not allowed up there anymore.”
There was a small, smirking, fidgety pause among the group. “He’s kind of a scary guy, The Fez…”
Jen burst out laughing.
I grabbed my second vodka tonic and took a seat on one of the available overstuffed lounge chairs to the side of the bar. It felt good. The first vodka had gone down well. I felt like a freshly laundered gym sock when you give it that big stretch to loosen it up.
“That was super!” announced Jen.
“Super Duper!” added Mike.
I laughed. “That’s me, Super-Duper!”
“Super duper dummy!” said John, half-seriously. “Where’s the bartender, I’m telling him we don’t know you…”
I turned to Carly. “So, let me get this straight. Because I make a leap of faith I’m creating loose ends?”
She nodded. “That’s right.”
“But, where’s the leap of faith?” I asked. “I know where I’m going. It’s just the human mind at work, doing what it does best. I’m being logical, as best I can. Logic tells me that the train goes from Brooklyn,” I marked the air with my finger, “along a specific route that I can see on a map. It makes stops on the way and Bingo!” I poked a hole in the air, “There I am in Manhattan!”
John came back from the bar with large tray of shellfish over ice. He took the overstuffed lounge seat on the opposing side of the table. We were slowly migrating to the low ground at the periphery of the bar.
“Yes,” John said, resuming the discussion. “But don’t you see? That train could have taken you anywhere between stops! You trust that it follows the same route, at the same speed, because you end up in the same place, more or less at the same time every day. But what if the train went along another route? What if the train and the city were both moving around, in cahoots?”
I wanted to break John’s head.
“What do I care?” I said, “As long as I end up at my office I couldn’t care less where that damned train takes me!”
Mike smiled. He took pleasure in my annoyance - he took pleasure in anyone’s annoyance. He pointed a shrimp at me. “Lighten up, Bert.”
Carly said, “This is important. You have to understand that. Of course the train’s not going to Maine, and the city is staying put, but you don’t really know that for sure. That’s all. Unless you choose the path yourself, you’re taking a leap of faith, whether you like it or not. Deductive reasoning gets you through the day, but deep down, the animal in you wants to know what’s going on, it’s not satisfied and it takes your time away from you in an undercurrent of worry and confusion.”
“Now we’re talking about animals. Why are we talking about animals?”
Later, Mike and I stumbled around Chelsea on our own and worked our way downtown to late-night spots. In one particularly dark bar I found myself thinking of what John had said. Mike was tipping a beer into the general vicinity of his mouth.
“What about it - this ‘leap of faith’? Am I wrong for not caring?”
Mike used the rim of the beer bottle as a pivot to turn to me. His eyes were pointing in different directions. “Maybe true, mostly crap.”
“That’s what I figured.”
“Witchcraft!” Mike pounded his bottle and slurred, “What’sis name, the cat in the box…” he leaned nose-first with a slow wobble through the drunken space between us. “Humdinger!” He smiled.
“Schrődinger.”
“Yeah, him! Cat’s alive, cat’s dead… I say to hell with the cat!”
John and Carly had been knocking on a door that I’d already briefly opened in the past and as far as I was concerned, it wasn’t worth the effort. I’d leave the big ideas relating to the ‘ifs’ and ‘uh-oh’s’ of determinism and the likes to the big boys.
“Einstein was a bore!”
“To hell with Heisenberg!”
“The only probability that I can see is the one involving a hangover!” We tapped our beer bottles together and Mike fell off his stool.
I found myself crossing through Washington Square Park alone at four-thirty in the morning concentrating, not on ghosts, but on those few blissful moments up into the secret nest at Birdy-Birdy when I felt like a little criminal.
The next dozen or so nights started out the same way, in Birdy-Birdy, with strong, expensive drinks and crew of friends willing to give it a go. Birdy-Birdy became my port of departure for discovering the decadent joys of the city. More often than not, Mike was there to help lead the way. He knew the city better than I did and he had a healthy appetite for booze and music and good food.
I had found the dark carnival. When the sun went down the carnie lights came on and the attractions pulled me in.
By August the party was over. The carnival had taken its toll. I was tired, pale and bloated. My work was suffering.
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