2. Imagining the Secrets of Others

A true constant in the decor (if any of the flotsam that dutifully lined the walls could reach 'decor') of this xampanyería was one certain slender 'tipo' in a leather jacket. Lone cockatoo. Maybe he didn't have the piercing wisdom of the owl, but he would look into people, through people, one bottle, one glass at his elbow, as he leaned on the counter that ran the length of the wall. He'd look into you, as if he had a secret which should have belonged only to you, and he wanted to correct the error... only, he couldn’t remember the secret, and he blamed you.

He seemed to love imagining the secrets of others. He never spoke. At times, it appeared that he was actually only appearing to be, not being, not real, a ghost. He would look into you, then look away, straight out the twelve-foot-high barn door a foot and a half away, into the street, as if there were nowhere else to be and his lament was a great, thick, impenetrable pane of glass that kept him inside the bar.

'Restos' we called him: 'the ruins' or remains of something bigger than what we saw. Restos just stood, drank, watched, trying to imagine himself, an elsewhere, others, places to be. He was the most subjunctive human being I had ever encountered.

With tart concern, I would observe the man in the corner, his little struggles against the mob, his attempts to keep from getting crushed, but mostly his rags and his way of clinging to the bottle he was drinking, as if it had a life of its own, as if it were his own most precious creation. He behaved as if detached, unimaginably detached, from everything around him, and yet he treated every object he touched (the bottles, vasos, countertop, the wall against which he leaned) with deeply paternal care, a something stored up from decades of disuse which we imagined he could never fully expend. There was an absence he carried with passion, and whatever was lacking, that was the reason he felt mildly existentially fulfilled by the day's drink, one of many imprecise answers to disuse.

Indeed, having learned to exist in the distance that dominated my thinking, existing beyond all prior horizons, I felt akin to his scarcity. You could almost see through him. I had felt that way, wondered if I was merely a speculation of myself, a guess at some far-fetched possibility of selfhood, never to be realized. Restos was an icon and a diversion. I would scrutinize his habits, his silence, his precarious footing, and I would inevitably see myself. His sandaled feet had carried me; the mossy brown of his jacket wore something I knew as my own. I had known his isolation, likely his fears. And yet, I had managed to fall into this warm expatriate subculture, lucky forastero that I was.

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