Coe Review

We became friends the summer after I graduated. He was sitting in his
long-reserved corner of Sojourners, a coffee shop in Dallas' uptown, against
a backdrop of slow-falling summer sun and distant neon lights buzzing awake
for the bar-bouncing Saturday night crowd. I noticed him tossing a chess
piece over with his fingers and staring at nothing. I carried my coffee to his
table, asked him if he wanted to play, and we killed several hours that night
playing several games, "pressing lidless eyes... and waiting for a knock upon
the door" as T.S. Eliot once predicted.
During the game, Henry was sprawled across a heavy brown suede chair,
eyeing the chess pieces while bouncing one leg on the other, bracing his chin
in the palm of his right hand. At the moment, I blamed his messy appearance
on a lack of sleep; around the deep brown centers of his eyes there were rims
of red streaks, like the frame of a southwest sun, and his hair bolted away
from one of his temples as if he'd tried to sleep on that side all night. He
took several breaks to use the bathroom, have a cigarette outside and make a
phone call, at which time, his hand and facial gestures, the wry smile tipped
to one corner of his mouth, the way he tilted his back and shut his eyes, to
name a few, conveyed a medley of emotions, precisely dramatized. He would
come back inside, skip past the cash register and lean over the serving counter,
whisper something to the lady making drinks with his mouth close enough
to tongue the recesses of her ear, and he would come away with free drinks
for both of us. Other than what I'd seen of him, I knew very little that first
night. He wore stylish but cheap clothes, Salvation Army chic, you might
say, a hat like Fievel in "An American Tale," and a pair of sunglasses tucked
into the middle of his shirt. He spoke softly, coolly; he was confident, and he
never stumbled over his words. He said he was an actor, and that was the first
thing that made sense about him. He was too young to be so streamlined.
He was the kind of guy, you knew, had a handle on life, knew exactly what
he wanted and how to get it. That's one of the things I admired about him.
He was generous, too. He procured several drinks in the course of the night,
always shaking his hands at me when I reached for my wallet. He was all those
things I had a feeling I'd never be, and, as if by association, after taking his
number and hanging out several times, I soon came to fantasize that all of it,
his style, his articulation, his whole appeal, might rub off on me.
A few weeks after we met, Henry became my best friend. He called often,
and I enjoyed every detail of his life, what I saw, what he told me, and what
they would say when he wasn't around. It became a habit of mine to occupy
the chair opposite him at the coffee shop even when he was absent, as though,
like him, I'd become a regular, I'd become a character in the story, and the
seat that was always mine said it all. I'd spend so much time there, especially
48 Henry Fragmentary