The strip-mall bar

The ceiling fans whirr furiously, humming, rattling, buzzing, their pull-chains quivering, dancing nervously in the artificial wind. The blades could detach from the ceiling at any moment, decapitating swathes of luckless punters in a beer-soaked bloodbath.

A forest of taps bristles behind the bar. Bartenders dart like bees.

Pastel clumps of polo-shirted men in golf visors cluster around low tables, their smart phones on the table. Lone, puce businessmen loosen their ties, lowering themselves onto bar stools, exhaling. Car keys on the counter. A woman sitting at the bar has lost a flip flop; it slumps, forgotten, on the floor.

A doctor orders a beer. His scrubs are branded with ‘Hermann’ on the back of the neck. There is a barcode on the seat of his pants.

Flat, stucco ceiling, wood paneled walls festooned with vintage drink advertisements. Glenmorangie Single Malt. Guinness Is Good For You. Cabinets full of old beer bottles. A nod to the old country, some old country, any will do.

Outside, shoppers pull up to the strip mall in glinting trucks, air conditioning roaring.

A meaty man, neckless in a black shirt, a silver chain glinting on his swarthy chest, faces two women sitting across the table from him. His hands are big, splayed on the table. They lean towards him.

‘Yeah, I was a boy scout. This one time, we were handed a rabbit and told, this is your dinner.’
Exclamations.  ‘Did you have to kill it?’
‘Sure did.’ Dee-id. ‘They gave us a hammer. Had to look it right in the eye, and boom!’
Gasps from the women.
He nods slowly. ‘Uh-huh. Ate it, too. Skinned it, cooked it, whole nine yards.’ He pushes back from the table, shirt buttons straining. Leans back on his low stool. It squeaks in protest.
He shakes his head, looks out the window.
‘Yeah, my buddy couldn’t do it. We were, what, twelve years old, right? So I says to the scout leader, I says, give me a rifle. Give me a rifle and I’ll shoot it from twenty feet away. You know? Be easier that way.’
Murmurs of assent.
He takes aim with an imaginary gun, squeezes his trigger finger. ‘Easy.’ Shakes his head again.
‘But I guess they didn’t have guns at camp, so I had to do it with the hammer.’
He slaps his meaty paws together. ‘Boom!’ His eyes shine. ‘Boom,’ he says again. ‘Right between the eyes.’

The woman sitting at the bar is wearing a sheer shirt, which veils a tattoo of Chinese symbols in a row all down her right side. They disappear behind a black bra strap, emerge again further down.

Two men arrive together, carrying bicycle helmets. They are both texting furiously as they navigate unseeingly, silently, to the bar.

A pear-shaped man, grey hair sitting lank on his collar, waddles in behind them, sandals slapping on the floor. Pigeon-toed. He wears a check shirt and check shorts, a pair of sunglasses hooked into the open collar. The shirt is the same colour as the shorts, but the pattern is slightly smaller, giving him the air of an optical illusion. He tilts his head back to squint at the beer menu over the counter, wrinkles his nose, open-mouthed.

At the table behind me, the conversation has moved from boy scouts to the military. It would appear that there is a career path from one to the other.

‘Well, I didn’t have the GPA to be in the back room of a ship. Taking care of the engines, you know. I mean, I was like, oh okay’ – arms wide, elbows bent, a booming Messiah – ‘it’s not like I spent my entire career trying to get to this point or anything, man.’ Pulls his chin back into his neck, wouldja believe those guys.
One of the women makes a cluck of sympathy. ‘That sucks.’
‘I know, right? But hey,’ he plants his pint glass down on the table for emphasis, ‘it turns out I do have the GPA to sit in the back of an F14 fighter plane.’
‘Right.’ The women look at each other, eyes wide. ‘Go figure.’

The Hipster Den

The hum of air conditioning and industrial fridges fattens the middle of the frequency spectrum. The chirruping of mouse-clicks and clinking of spoons takes care of the top. Mismatched chairs, G-plan style. Low-slung coffee tables. Bare ventilation pipes on the ceiling. Cracks on the lino floor.

Three Warhol-style prints of Lindsay Lohan stare at me belligerently from the back wall, daring me to form an opinion. Beneath them, an evenly-spaced row of silent punters. Each one is seated behind a softly glowing Apple logo. They gaze expressionlessly at their screens, limbs arranged in various attitudes of distraction. Some legs are crossed, some are planted square on the lino floor. Some flip-flops have been discarded, feet tucked under buttocks. Their faces have an unhealthy, electric pallor. White tentacles snake from plugs in the wall at their feet.

I order a coffee and a banana from a square-faced hipster with an intimidating black beard. I sit down by the window, opening my banana from the wrong end. The American end. It turns out to be the better end to open bananas from, after all.

Ba-nee-ah-nah. A lot of open ‘ah’ sounds have a diminutive ‘ee’ stuck on the front of them, like roadkill on the grille of a truck, screaming past, squealing its last.

The clientele sports an array of full-sleeve tattoos, unkempt and sun-streaked hairstyles, interesting eyewear. With the exception of two men in polo shirts and belted chinos, both of whom have identical wraparound sunglasses perched atop their balding heads. They wait to order, clutching their iPads defensively to their chests. One of them jingles coins in his pocket. They glance around them warily.

All around, the hipsters watch, wait, concealed inside shrubs of facial hair.

Motown classics shimmer on the stereo. Across 110^th Street… I am nostalgic for 1970s Harlem, despite being white, being Irish, and not having been born until the 80s.

The square-bearded barista, now revealed to have a tattooed foreleg, comes in from the car park. Parking lot. He clears his throat, glances around.
‘Anyone own the white Camry parked outside?’
A slim Asian girl in high-waisted shorts looks up, puts down her coffee cup. Stands up hesitantly. ‘Uh, yeah.’ She pushes her dark fringe out of her eyes.
‘Yeah…’ he wipes his mouth with his hand, in a downward motion past his chin, makes a rueful moue. ‘It’s being towed.’
She gasps. Hand to mouth, echoing his gesture. She races past him, short steps necessitated by her flip-flops. He steps neatly out of her way, stops the door from slamming shut.

A wave of schadenfreude ripples through the café.

A girl in front of me sits down with a cafetiere of coffee. A French Press. Short butter-blonde hair, the suggestion of dark roots beneath the unkempt curls. Heavy black eyeliner, red lipstick. Plain grey backless dress. A pair of vertiginous, ungainly suede heels invalidates her otherwise-viable hipster credentials.
The Wikipedia page for ‘cerebral blood flow’ is open on her browser. She opens a PowerPoint entitled ‘Central Nervous System Summarized’. Her coffee cup is already ringed with crescents of lipstick.
She opens Spotify. I see Boards of Canada. Conspecific, though the heels gave me pause. I crane to see what else is on her playlist.

New barista on the till now. He regards the waiting customers from behind heavy-rimmed black glasses. A suggestion of stubble on pale skin, delicate features. He has an improbable shock of hair, tight black curls rising in a cliff from his forehead, giving him the vague appearance of a bespectacled Poodle.

Having placed her order, a woman in a short black dress toys with her locket, staring into space. Black biker boots, loosely laced, with black socks pulled up inside them. Short red hair. Lots of lipstick.

Behind her, a man in basketball shorts, grey marl t-shirt, close-cropped hair, with ‘Doc’s kid’ tattooed just under the elbow of his right arm in blue pseudo-Celtic script. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, glances back at the door. Checks his phone, puts it away. He’s chewing gum. Blinking a lot. His eyes are a vivid aqua, his teeth disconcertingly white.

Outside, sunlight bathes the trees across the street. A squirrel runs deftly along a power line. Thunderclouds are gathering, the sky deepening to a dark, velvet grey. The billboard on the laundry next door, black letters on yellow, proclaims that it is TIME TO GET CLEAN.

A saxophone screams a high B, at the apex of the solo. I accidentally kick the metallic leg of my table. It pings. The same B.

All is right with the world.

Societies' Day

‘Are these free for the taking?’
They’d better be, as the t-shirt is already halfway into my bag.
‘Uh, yeah’, says the guy behind the stack of shirts.
‘Great’. I smile, turn away. Quick getaway.
‘So, do you know what this is about?’ He leans into my field of vision, gestures vaguely at other students with lanyards around their necks.
‘No’, I say, smiling brightly. I half-turn back to the table. ‘What do you guys do?’

I make for the hall, skirting past two gawky Asian teenagers grappling apologetically over a large stick. They are presumably affiliated with the nearby Aikido stand. I pass a stand with decks and big speakers, blasting beats. A girl is leaning across the desk towards the DJ, who keeps his headphones pressed against one ear.

ARE YOU JUST A DJ, OR ARE YOU GUYS SOME KIND OF MUSIC SOCIETY?
WHAT?
WHAT DO YOU GUYS DO?
WHAT?

I begin to make the rounds, weaving in and out between knots of hesitant freshmen. According to their poster, The Muslim Association is ‘committed to celebrating the Muslim faith, and to offering a supportive and welcoming environment to all Muslim students on campus’. They offer baked goods as an enticement to their stand.

I can’t help but feel that brownies were an unfortunate choice.

I put my name down for the running club, secretly relieved that the hardened athletic types manning the stand are already occupied with enquirers when I do. I imagine the tanned figure on the left looking at me doubtfully, lips pursed.

So you do some running, huh? And you wanna sign up? Okay, well…        
He looks at his wizened companion, who nods, barely perceptibly. Turns back to me.
Yeah, we’re gonna have to see you do a few laps of the quad first. It’s just procedure, don’t worry.
Well… okay. Cold sweat. Why do you have a baseball bat?
Oh, we’re gonna chase after you with this. Ha, ha. All part of the fun, y’know. But you’re a runner, so we probably won’t catch you, right?
The other guy smiles. It doesn’t reach his eyes.
That cool? You ready?
Smacks it on his fist. You get a cookie after.

I’m accosted by a girl handing out shortbread biscuits in the shape of an owl, with a little shrub of feathers drawn on in brown icing, below the owl’s waistline. The effect is striking.

‘Did you make these yourself?’
‘No.’ She laughs. Our leaders made them.

I picture a cabinet of government ministers and generals, concealed in a bunker beneath the White House, clustered around a conference table. A solitary telephone in the middle of the table is illuminated by an overhead light. The edges of the room are in darkness. They all bend over trays of cookies, squeezing piping bags with care, tongues stuck out of the corners of mouths.

A middle-aged man presides, shirt sleeves rolled up. He leans menacingly over the top of the conference table.
We can’t afford to hesitate, sir, advises a bookish underling with a name badge. Our frosting supplies have fallen below the critical level.
He tugs at his collar, shifts his weight to the other loafered foot. Swallows audibly.
Well, don’t just tell me about it, for Chrissakes. Do something!
A fist smash. Glasses jump together, ice cubes rattle. Around the table, bespectacled figures blink in fright. Icing spurts from piping bags.
He starts pacing. Goddammit, those owl butts won’t frost themselves.

‘They’re very impressive’, I tell the girl.
‘Oh, thank you!’ She beams.

The medical student societies have huge professional posters, displaying pictures of anonymous white-toothed professionals along with images of globes and handshakes. Tall young men in polo shirts hover nervously with clipboards, offering free branded pens.

I eye the cereal bars invitingly fanned on the next table. I reach to grab one. The keeper of the plate raises an eloquent eyebrow. His gaze slides towards the sign, head unmoving. Society for Black Engineers at Rice.
I withdraw my hand.

The next few are Christian fellowships of varying stripes. Earnest looking white males smile at me, blinking furiously, proffering Skittles and other indulgences. Their posters are handmade, with pictures of sunrises and handwritten messages of hope and inspiration.

Behind the desk, two of them are hugging. One of them breaks off, sees me, lunges in my direction.

In my panicked retreat, I accidentally join the South Asian choir.

Disorientation Week

I’m waiting for my cappuccino in the Brochstein Pavilion. Brock-steen. The menu advertises various American mysteries, such as sliders, heros and root beer. The air conditioning is set to Siberian winter.

‘Latte,’ barks the barista. Somebody scurries forward and swipes it off the counter, before retreating into a corner, in order to consume it at a safe distance from predators.

There is another girl ahead of me, waiting for an order. She’s wearing baggy denim shorts, practical rubber sandals and a striped t-shirt. Her thin blonde hair is coiled on top of her head in a neat topknot. There are goosebumps on her pale arms.

On the sound system, a warbly soprano with bad Italian diction sings a familiar melody. She is accompanied by some nebulous string-orchestra sounds, punctuated by intermittent episodes of classical guitar-twangling. The occasional clave plinks. There are no hooks, or countermelodies, or clarity of any kind. But I do know the melody.

It’s Whitney Houston’s ‘And I Will Always Love You’. In Italian.

Your favourite popular hits, as you’ve never heard them before. Perfect for relaxing at home. Add a touch of class to your dinner parties, or ‘soirees’, as they say in Paris, France.

Slight swell. Pause. The soprano heaves. Key change. Still no cappuccino.

I rub my forearms for warmth, glance at my watch. Here comes the octave leap. I clench involuntarily. The soprano hoots gamely.

‘Americano.’ The blonde girl leaves.

The General MIDI accompaniment hovers at a fermata, and the singer navigates the final flourish carefully. She sings the melisma as a set of exact semiquavers, before landing squarely on the tonic, like a matron lowering herself into a chair. The strings squelch their way to an unimpressive final cadence. There is a brief moment of silence.

‘Cappuccino’, shouts the barista. I grab it and make for the exit. The strings groan into life again behind me; the singer gives an introductory moo. I close the door firmly.

I take a seat on the patio outside. The heat makes my throat constrict. The air settles on my skin like a wet cloth.

The door is flung open again. An orientation guide crashes onto the patio, roaring at his frightened charges, who follow him mutely. They arrange themselves into a clump around him, avoiding eye contact.

He is short, square, blocky, with a lanyard around his neck. He stands with his feet shoulder-width apart, his head held slightly back. Barrel-chested. His face bears the scars of recent teenage acne.

‘The coffee here is very expensive,’ he yells. He drags the ‘very’ out for at least two seconds, widening his eyes. Inside the glass, the staff glare at him from behind the counter. I look dolefully at my cup. ‘But the sandwiches are awesome,’ he adds, inserting a glottal stop before ‘awesome’ for emphasis. He pinches his thumb and forefinger together, hand close to his lips.

The final orientee to exit the pavilion closes the door after him. ‘Yeah, now that we’re outside,’ he bellows, ‘I can tell you that there are better places on campus for coffee.’ One of the baristas, inside the glass, rolls her eyes.

He’s backing onto the lawn.

‘Welcome to the second academic quad. By the way, squirrel!’ He points at a squirrel on the grass. It looks up, alarmed.

Somebody giggles. A middle-aged woman with a greying bob starts visibly. She looks at the squirrel, looks back at the guide. She frowns, confused.

‘Squirrels are awesome, right?’ He looks around the group. Nobody responds.

‘So anyways, this is the second academic quad, and it’s got some cool sculptures and stuff’ – he pronounces it ‘sculptors’ – ‘cos every so often an artist comes and goes, wow,’ – he throws his arms out wide – ‘it’s so pretty, I wanna build you, like, a thing,’ – the word ‘thing’ gets an audible capital T – ‘so Rice goes, cool, knock yourself out, and they build stuff, and it’s awesome, and that one over there is meant to be some kind of study area I guess, it’s like two seats facing each other, except it’s abstract and stuff, but I’ve never seen anybody study there, and I’ve been here a long time, like two years, so I’m not sure what’s going on with that, but I guess maybe they’re just not very comfortable, since it’s art an’ all, but anyways…’

As he holds forth, he’s leading them across the lawn, walking backwards, beckoning, as though luring them into a trap. His charges shuffle reluctantly towards his retreating form.

By now, my computer keyboard is hot to the touch. The fan roars into life. My shirt is already beginning to stick to me. I retreat into the café. I consider whether it’s worth sitting down, or if I should get back to work.

Il Divo take a deep collective breath before launching into the shirt-button-popping, vein-engorging Italian-ised climax of ‘My Heart Will Go On.’

The library it is.

The cockroach

OHMYGODWHATINTHENAMEOFCHRISTISTHAT.

It darts out from behind the draining rack, waving its antennae lazily. A dirt-brown invader, an aberration, a hideous blemish on the white surface. It crouches in the middle of the worktop, facing me with its blind, truncated, pincered front.

I can’t move. My throat constricts. My skin crawls. I swallow a wave of nausea.
It can’t be a cockroach. It can’t be. It’s bigger than my thumb.
Oh Jesus.

It lifts a leg, puts it down again. Suddenly, horribly, it clatters up onto the tiled wall, clackclackclackclack, vanishes behind the shelves. I hear a faint crunching sound. It’s eating something. I think I’m going to be sick.

I’m still rooted to the spot. I can’t see it now. But it’s getting closer and closer to the larder. I picture it crawling over my apples, burrowing into my porridge oats. Tracking the dregs of whatever cesspit it calls home across my fresh tomatoes.

I know that something must be done. And I have to be the one to do it.

I dive for the cupboard under the sink, scan the arsenal. I grab a can of Raid. It trembles in my fist. Here we go.

It skitters down the wall again. OhChristit’shorriblegetitawayfromme. I extend the can towards it, every muscle in my body clamouring for a hasty retreat. What are you doing, run away, run AWAY. I’ve stopped breathing.

I squeeze my eyes shut, and I spray, almost driving the button into the canister with the force.

But it’s too late. I missed. It’s gone.

It’s in amongst the dishes on the draining board now. The clean dishes. I was going to eat my cereal out of that bowl.

Crunch. Oh Jesus.

Here it comes, out from under the tray, skittering on its hideous little legs. I spray it, bullseye this time, yes, yes, die you bastard, DIE.

The cockroach skates blithely, elegantly, through the pool of Raid. It leaps onto the tiled wall in a feat of super-cockroach agility.

What manner of creature is this? That a faceful of poison doesn’t even check its many-legged step? Can it even be killed?

They say they’ll outlive us all. These vile survivors of prehistoric deserts will forge, invincible, through the furnaces of any future hell, watching with their eyeless faces as humankind perishes, screaming, in the flames. Sparks will glance off their armoured phalanxes; they will ford the Styx itself. Nothing else will survive.

What manner of land have I stumbled into? Where such hellbeasts as this roam unchecked across countertops, in larders? It jumps off the wall again, crouches on the counter. It knows that it has won.

Not this time.

I lunge for the kitchen paper, rip off a sheet, wrap my hand in it and bring a thunderous fist, a mighty and terrible fist, down on its cringing form. Crunch, squish, BAM. And again. BAM.

An antenna spasms feebly, a leg jerks. And then all is still.

Your move, Texas.

The casino bar

The bar is empty when we get there, lit with blue lights and technicolour slot machines. Huge TV screens show identical silhouettes of a dancing naked woman (is she definitely naked, or does she have underwear on? Ah no, she's naked all right I'd say. Sure look at her. Ah there's definitely no knickers there), against a block colour background. Every so often the scene changes, to another naked silhouette, this figure gyrating enthusiastically with an electric guitar.

The guitar isn't plugged in, though, I observe. There's no silhouette of a lead. Unfortunately there is no way the naked woman is actually playing, I inform the others. They nod sagely.

You can't see someone's face, in a silhouette.

The barmaid wears a tiny sequined mini-skirt and a bondage-style leather bustier, with studs on the cups. The back of it is mostly straps. A lot of evenly-tanned skin is on display. It's 'ladies' night', so we each get a rose, handed to us by another scantily-clad barmaid. Our drinks are half-price. The men in the group are indignant.

It is poor recompense for the ongoing mass exploitation of my gender, I explain, as I consider the cocktail menu.

We pose for a photograph with our roses, brandishing them like swords, grimacing. Somebody breaks theirs in two. I shove mine into the back pocket of my jeans. It sticks up behind me like an antenna.

We ask the DJ to turn up the music. He looks at us, looks at the empty dance floor, weighs up the odds that we will attract punters. Considers my antenna rose. He doesn't turn up the music.

We go back to the bar. There are games machines built into the counter, flatscreen panels with a credit card swiper at the side. I press some buttons experimentally, waiting to be served. Most of the men in our group sit with their backs to the animations. They keep their eyes firmly on the counter as they order their drinks. What's with the studs on her boobs, somebody mutters.

The girls scrutinise the animated silhouette closely for anatomical accuracy, make crude jokes, giggle uneasily.

I'm still waiting. The barmaid laughs with a male punter. Eventually she turns to me, her studded bosom still pointed at the men, like cannon on a warship. The smile evaporates. 'What can I get ya', she states. I hesitate. She takes a step back, time is money, whaddya want. I hurriedly order a margarita, immediately wish I'd got a martini, say nothing. She slaps it down in front of me without a word, takes my money.

I wonder if my fist will fit into the tip jar. It's not that far to the door.

Later, I signal to her for a glass of water. She ignores me. I wave. She glares at me, waves her hand at me. Her fingernails have elaborate designs stencilled on them, with some kind of black and gold stripe drawn between the quick and the white. It looks like her nails are dirty. 'I know you want a drink, but there's a line,' she says. Gathers some glasses together, bashes them about. 'I have to serve all these people over here.' She gestures at the two men at the other side of the bar, who are at that moment deep in conversation. 'It's no good yelling at me.'

She turns away from me, her glittering rump an emphatic full stop.

The girls waiting to be served spin on their barstools to face me, open-mouthed with indignant delight. 'You didn't even say anything!' They withdraw from the bar, put their wallets back in their bags. We engage in some collective harrumphing, stomping righteously in a pack as far as the door. We gesticulate angrily with our roses. Where does she get off. There's just no excuse for that kind of rudeness. What a massive tart.

The drinks are half price, though, somebody reasons.

We slink back in.