THE BIRDS WE PILED LOOSELY • ISSUE 10 • JANUARY 2017

#NINE PICK UP LINE
by Merridawn Duckler
FRANK’S PLACE
by Calder G. Lorenz
The renters did it so much we called them the rutters,
The walls shook, the toothpaste jumped out of the tube.
God help the person who wanted to cook a custard!
Daily, monthly, hourly. Not newlyweds,
these bed-wreckers, not insects with only one chance
before they croak. They had tons of chances and used them all.
God help us, they were at it again.
But you get used to everything said our parents, who never did.
So we steadied fragile vases by rote and
if anyone wanted to hang a picture, they just held
the nail next to the hammer and waited.
Then one day—silence.
Were they dead? Had they done it to death?
O the stillness. We heard a car door slam. Done.
It was first and last and nothing at all. And that’s the only reason
I’m even suggesting it. The silence. No one should get used to that.
“It’s no good for a man to swallow blood,” Frank said. “It’s bad for the stomach.”
He put a plastic cup on the bar. He twisted open a bottle of soda water. He said,
“Rinse and then spit.”
It was his bar after all and so I followed his orders. I rinsed and then I spit into
the cup.
He asked, “How about some tea? Peppermint? Jasmine? Rooibos?”
I watched him open a tin next to the register. He held up an impressive selection.
He waved the packages. He spread it all out before me. He said, “These kinds of
things are good for the stomach.”
“I want whiskey, Frank. Neat.”
Again, I rinsed and then I spit into the cup. I saw that there was less blood than
before.
Frank wore his concern. He asked, “Should you be drinking?”
“I’m at a bar,” I said.
Frank frowned. He went and filled the coffee pot with water. He turned it on.
He said, “This place is more than that.”
While we waited, Frank buttoned and then unbuttoned his green flannel shirt.
He adjusted his brown ball cap. He put one hand on his hip and one hand on the
bar. And I watched as the lines around his eyes stretched and his left cheek pulled
up into a lump. I noticed that his mustache was more manicured than usual. It’d
been trimmed. It was level and ordered. He’d shaved too. His skin looked smooth
and lotioned. And even though his moustache was still curled down over his lip,
wrapped into his mouth a bit, he looked younger and confident and ready for the
day.
Now, he’d never admit it, and I’d never say it to him, but in that moment, I
thought I might know why he’d gone and decided to attempt a little upkeep.
I thought back, it was about a week before, on a Tuesday night, and there was a
customer, a woman in her late thirties, a woman with piled brown hair, a woman
with her logoed work jacket zipped to her neck, a woman not at all agreeable that
she’d been brought down to Frank’s by her younger and drunker date who ignored
her and chatted away with whoever was chatting. She kept her arms together. She
leaned away as people leaned into each other. She wiped all that was in front of her
onto the floor. She wore her disgust for where she was. With the neighborhood.
With her neighbors there at the bar.
Now, on some level it was understandable, she’d been brought to where the
streets outside raged with a different kind of addiction than she was probably
accustomed to and when you’re new to a setting, a town, a city, the last thing you
want to hear the people inside it say, prattle over, chatter about, is what the city
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