The Parcel (A Bar Idyll)

The Parcel (A Bar Idyll) Pete Hausier One recent rainy evening, you find yourself walking around with a three-foot-by-two-foot-by-two-foot parcel. The parcel is swathed in plain brown wrapping, suggesting that it was purchased at some kind ofprofessional shop. White twine is double-spooled crosswise to facüitate a journey through the city. The brown paper is liver-spotted, puckered from the winter monsoon that hit early in the day and continues into the night. You don't teU anyone what is in the parcel. It wiU remain a mystery, while briefly turning you into a somewhat eccentric figure. It is the size of the package that makes it conspicuous, and you would have preferred to dump it off at home, but some things can't be helped, so here you are, carting it around. With the parcel under your arm, you negotiate the front door of your favorite bar, the Blue and Gold on 7th Street between First and Second Avenues. You order a bourbon and Coke from the Polish barmaid. Leave a fiver on the bar and whüe she fiUs your order, put a doUar in the increasingly -rare, aU-vinyl juke box (five songs for a doUar). Before selecting anything , ask the two old ladies drinking brandy (!) at the bar—kvetching about nothing—if they have any requests. It is imperative that you phrase it just so: ladies, any requests? One of them says, Elvis Presley, "Always on My Mind," and proceeds to call out the song's number. For some reason, despite the fact that she is obviously a regular, you are amazed that she knows the number and you think this is just the perfect touch. You pick the remaining four songs: Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth," which always reminds you of The Muppet Show; "Venus," Shocking Blue's spare original, not Bananarama's dancehaU cover; Aretha Franklin's "Spanish Harlem;" and Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire," a tradition for you at this bar. But whoops! You press 175 instead of 173 and you foUow the twisted path of the song numbers, hoping for something good, but then thinking anything would be good right now, and Sweet Baby Jesus it's George Baker's "Litde Green Bag." Bliss! A briUiant mistake. 88 Pete Hausler89 CoUect your drink from the barmaid ($2.50 + 500 tip), gather your parcel and alight to one of the dozen sUck, vinyl booths that ring the inside of the bar. You put quarters up on the pool table and figure it's in your best interest to watch the current match since you're up next. There is a girl shooting lefty who looks vaguely famüiar (you think you've played her before, maybe here) and an older guy who is teUing the girl that he speaks Russian, PoUsh, Ukrainian and various other Eastern European languages. The match looks even. You puU out a piece of scrap paper to scribble down some notes. Something compels you to hold the pen differently, just to see how the longhand looks. The writing looks strange, but it's readable and since you Uke the odd feel ofthe pen in your hand, you continue to write this way. You lean back in the booth so that your body is a perfect L-shape and sip the bourbon through a straw, which you usuaUy just use as a swizzle stick. You suddenly reaUze that your notes are coming out in the second person, which you find vaguely annoying (too '80s?) and wonder if you should switch to the first. You relax; at least the voice in your head isn't in the third person. You attribute these strange choices tonight to the parcel. It is somehow liberating , Ufe-altering, but on a very smaU scale. Just as you ponder the parcel, a guy from the bar walks up and stands next to your booth and watches the pool game. He turns to you, as you knew he would, and comments on the parcel. To his credit he doesn't ask what's inside. He says he noticed the package when you walked in, not...