Performance Art
- Jun 29, 2018
- 4 min read
by Doug Hoekstra
Take a shower. Shave. Lean in close to the mirror. You notice lines you’ve never seen before. You turn down the dimmer. Stand back. Dry your hair and get dressed. Your keys are exactly where you left them, in the basket that sits next to the piano. You turn off the lights and lock the door on the way out. You check it to be sure. You jiggle the lock. It remains shut. When you walk to your car, you look up at the sky to see if you can find the Big Dipper.
You get to her house early and so you circle the block, just like you remember Joe Leaphorn, Navajo Detective, doing in all those great Tony Hillerman mysteries. You stand up straight as you knock. You walk just a little behind her and open the door when she gets to the car. She may think you’re a gentleman, but really, it’s force of habit. On your way to the restaurant, you drive through Music Row, because it takes longer. There are signs on every other building, “Congratulations to Us.”
You pass Chet Atkins Place and out of the corner of your eye you notice the tiny apartment you shared with your girlfriend who became your ex-wife, the place where the stray tabby came to your door crying one morning. She brought him in and you gave in immediately as he cuddled on your chest, purring. “Okay, we’ll keep him,” you said immediately. Five years later she was gone and you found yourself giving him shots of fluid to keep him going before his kidneys failed altogether. “He’s not my cat,” she said after she left. “I’m allergic to cats.”
You cried at the vet’s.
You hear something knocking in the engine and wonder how much it’ll cost to fix. You come to the roundabout, slow down and look both ways, because people aren’t supposed to stop. She’s wearing horn-rimmed glasses with flowers over the hinges. Her knee bobs up and down, and she strokes her jeans with one hand, and you see the bruises, all up and down her arm. She fell off her bike, she says. And, the patch is so she can stop smoking because this guy she likes told her he’ll take her out to dinner on a nice date, if she quits first. She taps you lightly on the thigh as she says the word “guy.” You wonder how old she is. You think you know. You do the math. She rolls down the window and coughs. “Boy, I wish I had a cigarette,” she says. You picture your ex, chain smoking outside the apartment. You pop in a Modest Mouse CD. Float on Float on. She starts singing along, octaves. She’s a pretty good singer.
You pull up at the restaurant and get out first. You open the door…again. An ambulance flies by, sirens blaring, and you stand there waiting. She makes the sign of the cross. “Everything happens for a reason,” she says. The busker on the corner is doing Hank Williams. Senior. You make the sign of the cross and thank God he isn’t doing Bocephus. Exhaust fumes settle over the couples sitting on the patio. You ask to be seated inside, where it’s darker and cooler and you can breathe again. She doesn’t look at the menu. “I’ll have that, too,” she says after you order. The food comes quickly. The portions are large. Marlon Brando once said he didn’t care how fat he was, he got paid the same no matter what. Marlon Brando also once said he was a good actor because he had eyes like a dead pig. You wonder what he meant. Her eyes are nothing like a dead pig. They are alive, shimmering in the shadows, pupils open wide. You talk about things that you think matter. She laughs at everything.
Halfway through dinner, she excuses herself to go to the bathroom. Half her plate is empty, but the food is still there, rearranged and piled high into a sculpture of pasta and sauce.
Light flickers off the blade of your butter knife, as you turn it slowly, waiting for her, alone at the table. You remember reading somewhere that psychologists say when people meet, they decide within 7 and 17 seconds whether or not they will like each other. You wonder about the 10 seconds in between. You look at your watch and realize your time is up. You still wonder.
Doug Hoekstra is a Chicago-bred, Nashville-based writer. His first book, Bothering the Coffee Drinkers, appeared on the Canopic Publishing (TN) imprint in April 2006 and earned an Independent Publisher Award (IPPY) for Best Short Fiction (Bronze Medal). Several of the selections in the book appeared in other publications, and one story, “The Blarney Stone,” was nominated for a 2006 Pushcart Prize. Other stories and poems of his have appeared in numerous online and print literary journals and a second book of prose, The Tenth Inning, was released independently in 2015. In a previous life, Hoekstra was a singer-songwriter troubadour who released seven albums of original material on labels in Europe and America and performed at bookstores, coffeehouses, clubs, libraries, pubs, festivals, radio stations, and castles — solo and with band in tow. Highlights include Nashville Music Award and Independent Music Award nominations, lots of Top 10 lists, and many groovy times.
