The Big Old City

As soon as I stepped onto the streets of the big old city everything reminded me of the wild years I spent there long ago. The neat streets smelled like new summer: hot asphalt, and pollen blowing from the plane trees on the streets and in the parks. Girls were already at it with bare legs and arms and beautiful, cold faces. Savagely insolent. The sexual tension caused men to smoke more cigarettes with their beers on patios. Skyscrapers rose high above the teeming show, huddled along the skyline like giant toy blocks.

Memories flooded in, reviving my past and reconciling me to it. Now I was mature, anchored. I had come with my wife and kids. It was and it remained a great city, and my wife always wanted to visit. She had a cousin living here, and that made it an easier decision. He’s a single guy – divorced – and a successful architect. Tall and polite to a fault. We stayed in one of his empty condos. He took us to popular restaurants for the first couple of nights. We saw some museums and went sightseeing.

Finally, I was allowed some time to myself. The cousin would drop me off at a downtown shopping mall where I’d meet an old friend who still lived in the city. The two of us had already texted and arranged to meet.

The cousin and I drove down the broad boulevards in his Porsche Cayenne. A loud car for such a meek creature, I thought. But it was black rather than say yellow. I remembered out loud the square where we were going, and I complimented the city. It’s a great city no doubt, he says, but he also likes escaping.

“After you guys are gone,” he says, “I’m off for a monastery stay in Macedonia.”

“A monastery stay? Macedonia? That’s a little far.”

“Umm, not really.”

The conversation died off for a few moments.

“It’s a bit of a trend, isn’t it?” I continued, “Are you going to convert?”

“Convert!” the cousin is surprised. “Oh no, no. Well, maybe.”

He drops me off at a broad landing of polished stone in front of the mall. We say a friendly goodbye. I walk over to the entrance talking to myself. “Well, well, well. I’d never tag him as a religious type. Picture him! With black-robed monks singing psalms. And what does he mean Macedonia is not far? Getting a bit cooky living all alone, I guess.”

I wait in the cool shade of a gigantic glass eave at the mall entrance. “He might be gay. A lot of monks are.”

I see my old friend walking in the sun from far away, gliding towards me. Her ink-black hair and her dainty white dress and white legs all gleam in the humid light. I toss away my cigarette. Her big, imploring smile becomes felt and visible before any of her facial features as she approaches me in the shade. We greet with a few words and a peremptory hug, it’s all rather business-like.

The goal is to go to a social spot where I used to love to go and where we spent a lot of time together. I forgot all the directions so she’s going to lead us there with the help of a map app. We venture into the bright concrete.

We walk down the sidewalk talking shy with each other, as though on a first date. A hive of memories rushes in, stirring emotions good and bad. Just then I hear a honk from a car and look up. It’s the cousin cruising slowly past us in his Cayenne, waving eagerly through the windshield and beaming that submissive smile of his. Damn!

We keep walking through the hot, dull streets, getting a little tired. Obviously, and predictably, the girl with the map app gets us lost. Can’t find the subway exit. I take over the lead as we trudge through the smog. I don’t feel so comfortable. The architecture becomes surreal and gargantuan: the skyscrapers have lost their sense of proportion and now loom over us like some cyberpunk nightmare. The sky gets yellow and grey; the air gets heavy. Nevertheless, I manage to find the metro exit.

“Ah, I remember this place!” I say. “Now I know where we are. I used to live right there, right up that hill! Let’s go there for bit, do you mind?”

The girl agrees with her imploring smile. We climb up the steep street and I look to the left in anticipation of seeing the headquarters of my past youthful exuberance. At the top of the hill, we arrive, and I’m struck still by what I see: surrounded by the sharpest, cleanest, most gentrified buildings, there is an old shack, recognizable yet different from what I remember. Its wooden siding is coming undone and it has rackety side stairs leading to a dirty front porch. The front door has a filthy glass panel above it. The veranda hanging to the right of the porch is rotted out. There are even holes in its creaky wooden floor.

Wait – I notice there is someone on the veranda, sitting still in its moldy shade. It’s an expat; a young Sam Smith lookalike. He’s banging away at an old mechanical typewriter. “A writer! Lol … typical expat loser.”

My eyes scroll back to the porch and now, another expat is standing there. This one looks like Ryan Gossling with a bad hangover: he is greasy, wearing some expensive but threadbare bathrobe, and smoking a cigarette. It cannot be that these two shitheads live in my house.

I’m shaken out of my stupor by my ex in her dainty white dress. She’s now standing beside a white cab and waving at me imploringly to get in. She had figured out how to get to that restaurant; it’s not that close; we better take the cab, now.

“What happened to this place?” I ask her. “Was it always like this? I don’t remember it being…”

“Just get in, never mind that!” she beckons.

“Yeah, and you better be back soon!” A voice behind me warns. I turn around and see that the writer has teleported from the veranda onto the sidewalk beside me. Up close, he is fat, neckbearded, and sinister. He’s also wearing a bathrobe; his is soiled white. He’s leaning on a golf club. He starts practicing his swing with it. “Three hours max!”

“What the fuck?” I turn to my ex. “Is this man your boyfriend!?”

“Yes,” she answers. “He knows. We are in an open relationship.”

“God, no,” I sigh.

“Yeah buddy,” says the Sam Smith guy, “And consider yourself lucky to have a peak, loser!” He pokes me with the golf club.

I walk over to my ex and look her in the eyes. “He’s a good guy,” she pleads. “He had good test scores. He had a business, but it failed.”

“I can’t believe you’d pick this!” I point back to the fuzzy fatty.

“You gotta problem, asshole?” the guy approaches. “What was that?” He’s now standing in my face. “What’s with the frown? You got a problem?”

Seeing his jaundiced face up close is too much. I stiff-arm him to back off. He scratches my face. I knee him in the nuts and he folds like a lawn chair. I proceed to punch and kick him until he’s all fetal on the sidewalk.

Now his friend, Ryan Gosling’s ugly stepbrother, is down on the street and shouting threats at me in his own filthy robe. I square up to him. He’s too slow and stupid to harm me. I had the golf club in my hands; I had confiscated it as I was beating down Sam Smith. Gosling makes a threatening approach and I jab him in the face with its butt. His nose begins to spray blood all over the gray sidewalk.

“You’re crazy!” my ex starts screaming. “They’re dangerous!”

Dollar-Store Gosling runs back into the house.

“Let’s get out of here,” I say.

“You don’t understand,” the ex cries. “He’s got a gun!”

Upon hearing that, I run into the house too. I catch Gosling flipping up the cushions of his stained living room sofa.

“Where the fuck is my nine-millimeter!” he mutters to himself. He rushes to a shoebox on a shelf. “Here it is!”

He turns towards me with a revolver in hand but I grab his wrists. We wrestle for a while. He’s a wily broke bastard. But I’ve learned some jiujitsu since then, and I manage to tangle myself out and drop him with a cross to the jaw. He drops the gun as he collapses to the floor. While he’s struggling on his knees and elbows, I pick up the revolver and open it. Fully loaded.

“Playing with a live gun!” I can’t believe he was going to do it.

“You’re a dead man!” growls Gossling from the floor. I put down the gun. This time I will use the golf club. A swing to the temple. Dead on the spot, I’m sure.

I walk back out. The ex is still waiting by the white cab. Sam Smith is face down on the sidewalk, a stream of blood trickling downhill from his head. I hope he never gets up.

“We’re not going,” I say. “Get married.”

I walk back to where I came from. Turns out, it’s not that hard to find.