The Customers at the Midnight Café by Ken Anderson
The Jaycee He owns a hardware store, is stingy with his wages, whether clerk or trade. His eyes say that he’ll pay you ten, no more— his crystal eyes that come alive with lust. Like some small businessmen you’ve seen, he wears a wrinkled, light-green leisure suit. Trick The lumbering, gangly child —he’s thirty-five— who forces love in bed remarks the sign announcing a revival Friday night. The lonely youth will go with him for food or no good reason, just that rape somehow seems better than the unforeseen. He’s hard to hurt, and yet an unexpected kindness may, by accident, forgive without relent. Luck The minor hazards change our lives: the inauspicious ghost among the glass reflections of the counter customers, uncertain eyes in a sharp, decisive face. Sometimes your white knight coughs and pays his check, then vanishes into the night, someone who sat for minutes just in reach. Bobby Darlington Brown shoes, green socks, red pants, blue jacket, hair half brown and gray that’s thin and sprayed in place— our Bobby Darlington’s come to cruise. He turns to size us up, then lingers near the cigarette machine before one last, seductive wink goodbye. Chevalier No dignity distinguishes despair, O mon chevalier, who turns to stare, this face I’ve seen, but can’t remember where, another bar, another late café. O gallant, in your courting days with jonquils for a Southern belle, the cool winds and the yellow leaves portend the night you will not score and winter’s rude affront. 56 RFD 183 Fall 2020
