Four Seats Down

There’s a man sitting four seats down from me at the bar.

He doesn’t notice me staring, or he ignores it. Something about him is reaching out to me—his head is hung low, face buried in the drink he is nursing. I look at his fingers wrapped around the glass—they are tough, calloused and ridden with cuts. He puts down the empty glass, waves the bartender over to order another.

I don’t know why I want to know his story, but I do. There is something off, some reason he came here that I cannot pinpoint. The words are at the tip of my tongue, rolling around and never still enough for me to speak them aloud. There’s a certain sadness to him, a sadness that I know, that I’ve seen before reflected in the mirror and hidden in my heart. I want to put my hand on his shoulder. I want to ask him if he is okay, if he is like me, if either of us are making it through and if he knows the feelings inside me by name, if he recognizes them.

My friend puts a hand on my shoulder, regaining my attention. I turn my head, listen to the words they babble, not taking anything in. When they finish speaking, I turn my head back.

There’s a man sitting four seats down from me at the bar. In a flash, he stands, puts his arms through his coat, begins to walk towards the door. He’s older than I initially thought, his body slouching with age and his legs somewhat unsteady. I want to follow him, and I think, for a moment, that he might stop on his way out, sense the same kinship in me that I do in him. He walks right by me, doesn’t spare a glance.

The old man at the bar exits. He takes a left, I think, down Milwaukee, towards the spot where the hectic crowds of people walking ends and through the alleys that no one goes down. I can picture the way he walks, the slow pace of his steps, the determination in him to make it home. He is going home to no one, like I am. As he exits the alley, someone stops him—a middle-aged woman asking for directions. He rattles them off quickly, and continues his trot. The woman turns back to look at him, shrugs, continues her walk. He has said something, done something, acted some way that disgusts her, or maybe his existence in and of itself does. The sky is grey, fitting for his mood, and he continues on, pushes through whatever pain he is feeling.

His apartment, at last. I can see the way his hands must shake as he puts his keys to the slot, the trembling act of turning them, of opening that door and collapsing into home—a gateway to heaven, or to whatever he is waiting for.

I see him take off his shoes, hang his coat, wipe the sweat off his brow. He’s alone, as I suspected. He looks exhausted in more ways than one, and again, I want to reach out, to put my hand on his shoulder, to see if he feels what I feel, to confirm what I already know. But we are distanced now, much too far apart to reach each other.

The man walks to his closet. His hands are still shaky, and he kneels down, reaching in for something. He grabs it, struggles to stand up, and I see a rope in his hand, and his apartment is my apartment and everything around him shifts and swirls together until I am standing there, in the middle of it all, alone. There is no rope in my hand, and the loneliness of being here without him makes me ache. I wonder if he lived, but he was alone, too. If he was like me.

There used to be a man who sat four seats down from me at the bar. I go there now, and his seat is empty, as though no one else will dare touch it, even though I know someone will, eventually. I feel sick, more alone now than ever. He hasn’t come to this place in months, and I wonder if everything I suspected is right, if, on the last night I saw him, the determination in his step was because he was walking towards his own idea of freedom. I wonder if I had said something, had reached out my hand as he passed me. I wonder if I could have done something, could have told him my story, could have told him that every time he was at the bar I noticed him, wondered if he was okay. That there were people before him who sat in the same seat who stopped coming one day, how I didn’t want him to become someone who disappeared, too. Maybe he would still be here, right in that seat, if I had let him know that I cared, that every week when I came I was hopeful I would see his face, feel that sense of relief. Perhaps he is fine. Perhaps he is not alone like me, and I am the only one who feels the way I do.

My friend touches my shoulder, and I turn my head away from his empty seat, contemplate how long it will remain empty for.