018 Luis Neer - A Parabolic Tragedy
In Buffalo, New
York, a well-dressed man with a big moustache goes into a cafe that isn’t very
busy and orders a cappuccino. A moment later the youthful, lanky barista, likely
a participant in outdoor activities such as rock climbing, hands him the
cappuccino, its foam finished with the likeness of a swan. “Splendid,” says the
moustachioed man, who then squints as he surveys the cafe. Finding a table to
his liking, he goes to claim it by setting his drink upon it. The table
wobbles, the cup rattles in its saucer and spills out about a fifth of its
contents. Very flustered, the man, whose name is Lawrence Burbery, goes to the
front of the cafe, retrieves a stack of square napkins, returns to the table,
and commences to clean the spill as best he can. He stands glaring at the
puddle of coffee in the saucer, and at the stained cup, hardly knowing what he
ought to do. Making a decision at last, he goes over to the barista, who is
washing a dish.
“Excuse me,” Lawrence says, having
cleared his throat. “I do hate to bother you. I only wanted to inform you that
my table is wobbling.”
“Oh, okay,” the barista answers
politely, “thanks for letting me know.”
As Lawrence continues to stare at him,
the barista adds, “I mean, I wouldn’t know what to do about it, but…”
Lawrence laughs, “Hah, hah hah. I
suppose there isn’t a nightly tightening of tables?”
The barista, whose name is Jordan
Carter, appears confused. “Oh, yeah, no.”
The moustachioed man’s eyes flash
behind his round, frameless spectacles. “My good man,” he says incredulously,
“am I to understand that your business’s protocol is to let each and every
table on the premises wobble into perpetuity?”
“I mean, it won’t wobble if you press
down, like, with your elbows…”
At this moment Lawrence is possessed by a vision, perhaps a memory from a past life: muskets firing, wrapping a field
in smoke; flags of some two states flashing, tearing in a vacuous sky; bodies
everywhere. One musket from this vision seems to fire through him as he says,
“I say, I hardly know what the world has come to!”
“Whoa, take it easy,” Jordan replies,
extending his hands with the palms facing down.
“My friend,” Lawrence growls rabidly,
“do you quite know whom you are addressing? Well, I will tell you. I am
Lawrence Burbery, editor of Buffalo’s Bespoke Barometer, a widely read
blog. I cover all the goings-on here in the city, and my readers will be made
aware of this.”
Up to now Jordan has addressed his
customer in the flat tone he habitually assumes whenever he is at work. In the
silent millisecond that follows Lawrence’s self-exposition, though, he feels
another register taking precedence, one that otherwise only emerges when he
plays Rainbow Six Siege, which he prefers to Call of Duty. And so
he lets into Mr. Burbery with a bombardment of choice insults which cannot be
reprinted here, partly because our correspondents have been listening to
Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, “Pathetique”, in AirPods, and it just became very
loud.
Of the many, many things the two men are saying, though, the phrase “your mother” finds exchange eight, no, nine times.
As the music lulls, then, the
illustrious editor of B.B.B., alternately shaking his fist and adjusting his
scarf, shouts from the cafe’s half-open front door, “You scoundrel! I pledge
that you will not forget this fateful day, the day your faulty furnishings
wobbled Lawrence Burbery out of your two-bit establishment for-ever!” And he
spits on the floor, then leaves.
In like manner the tall, paunchy,
dapper gentleman goes on waging a campaign of furnitural stability, etc.,
across the city of Buffalo, taking his case to the City Council more than once.
A decade hence, in 2036, Buffalo and the surrounding area have been positively
transformed: tables stand rigid as so many deer in headlights, petrified, as it
were, by the unfading memory of the wrath of Burbery. High-wheel bicycles have
been reintroduced, the police patrol on horseback, and the pigeons have been trained
to help keep the sidewalks clean. In the last months of this Year of the
Dragon, however, rioting ensues: the streets of Buffalo are looted, every
window broken and every television swept away, and Lawrence is trampled by a
policeman’s horse as it flees from a flashbang. Without getting to taste his
lavender-mint gelato, he dies.
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