The Man Who Was Left Behind by Rachel Ingalls

trying to keep their children under control. But he liked to sit there for a while, knowing the street was there just outside and he could get out if he wanted to. He had been told to go from several laundramats. Even in the summer. But especially now in the cold weather, the supervisors kept an eye out for tramps who came in there to sit where it was warm. He’d been thrown out of this particular one at the beginning of October.
    He peered through the window. He began to cough and saw spots. He walked up to the glass and put his nose against it, cold, and leaned there, looking in and not seeing the superintendent. But somehow he no longer wanted to go inside as he had while passing.
    Next to him on the street stood two women, talking.They both had baby carriages with them and one held the hand of a little girl. Ap-yap-yak-ak they talked. Why did they have to shout like that? Throwing their arms around. People stare at a crazy person muttering and shouting through the streets, but what was the difference? Just that the crazy one is alone, and maybe that’s what the word meant.
    The mother of the little girl had a bandana over her head and her hair tied around silver things underneath it; small poppy rat eyes, a long lip, and one of those noses that looks as if it’s taking offence at what the face is directed towards. He noticed that the little girl was staring at him, sour-faced, the duplicate of the other. Suddenly she stuck out her tongue at him. He had to laugh. She stuck it out even farther and made it sound.
    “That’s a nice trick. Bet you learned that from your mother,” he said.
    The child tugged at her mother’s stretchy pants and started to yell, tears running down her mean little face, and the mother turned around, shrieking, “What the hell are you doing to my child you filthy bum you dirty old man stinking of liquor too quick Mabel call a cop you lousy—” and so on. The child yelled louder and buried her face in the trousers, wishing it was a skirt no doubt, for he could see that really she was gloating, shaking with satisfaction and glee in spite of the tears. Then the mother pressed her child’s head to her thigh, covering its ears with her hands, shouting at him. All those old army phrases of abuse, they hadn’t changed since nineteen fourteen. He moved off.
    He went to another bar, one he knew well. A daytime bar. At night it was so crowded you couldn’t sit down unless you came in early, and then it was difficult to get out, easier to stay there until you passed out.
    “Where’s Selwin?”
    “Off sick,” the bartender told him, snuffling. “Everybody’s got it. I’m just getting over it.”
    He had one drink, taking it slowly, seeing spots again and the back of his head tight at the top. He looked up at the painting, the pride of the bar. Lots of men came in to drink there because of the painting—one of the original old-style frontier bar types, a gigantic splayed nymph fully fifteen feet long and accompanied by cherubim and floral sprays. While he was looking at it a woman got up from the end of the bar and moved near him. Not right next to him, but leaving one stool in between in case he wasn’t interested.
    “Got a light?” she said. He lit her cigarette and she went on, “Haven’t seen you around here before.”
    “I’m here now and then. Not every day.”
    “What’s your name?”
    “Murphy.”
    “Murphy, that’s an Irish name.”
    “Russian,” he said. “They changed it from Murkevitch.”
    “Oh yah, you don’t say. I never met anybody from Russian ancestry before. How about that.”
    “Drink?” he said.
    “Sure, thanks.”
    She was a big girl, her face too. Big nose, big mouth, big eyes, big black hair. But friendly. He’d have liked to buy her lunch but then she’d want to talk. First they ask you for your life story, better than a psychiatrist. And before you get out the essentials they’re telling you theirs, lock, stock, and barrel. How then they met