Kurt Vonnegut and I
I had a professor who had a long lost
brother. Yesterday I saw that nameless
brother on the train. I knew it was him
because he looked exactly like the professor.
He was tall and slender, and wore a neon green shirt under a beige blazer
with white tennis shoes—very much unlike his brother. But his face was exactly the same. And in my dream his face was on Kurt
Vonnegut.
I was standing outside of a diner. Jim Carroll’s* ghost was smoking a cigarette
in the corner of the alcove awning. Revamping Nighthawks,** the painting. I
was pointing out Jim to my parents when a man tapped me on the shoulder.
“Kurt Vonnegut!” I said.
And because it did not look like
Vonnegut himself I thought, maybe this is the shape he assumed when he slapped
on his Jr.
When we went back into the diner it
had turned into a barren bar: a few scattered tables set up as a Texas-hoedown-theme—minus
the mechanical bull. A stage was also set along the back of the bar-barn.
By then my parents were gone. And Kurt
and I sat at a table.
For a furniture-less room the place
was pretty packed, and maybe we could not hear each other so Kurt and I were
pressed practically lip-to-lip, for forty minutes.
Then maybe I got up to dance on the
stage (most likely), or play darts, or get drinks, or flirt with a younger guy
across the way (possibly), but Kurt was leaving with an oblong satchel on his
back.
“Kurt!” I said, and I ran over to
hug him, which I had suspicion he did not want.
He did not expect to see me as he left and I noticed as he walked past
our table that he had scribbled me a note and left it next to his plate. I
grabbed it and folded it into my pocket.
And then there was a shift in atmosphere as the image turned to lava and
disintegrated into mist.
*Jim Carroll
**Nighthawks Edward Hopper
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