Read Online Orange Suitcase by Joseph Riippi - Free Book Online Page B

else’s poems. I kept getting distracted—there was a paper sac on the floor next to me, of beer and the frozen turbot filets I would make for dinner later. I kept picturing the bottom of the bag getting wet. We would brake to a stop and I would stand and lift the bag by its brown paper handles, not thinking to lift from the bottom. The fish and beer would spill out across the floor, fizzing and spitting, ruining everything while everyone stared.
    Even now, having just eaten, drinking this beer, the thought gets my eyes pinching.
    Jensen got on at Fifth Avenue. I recognized him by his height and knit fingerless gloves. I’d remembered his gloves being red, but these were blue. He made his way toward me and he looked like he’d lost weight. I couldn’t be sure, and I don’t think he saw me. I hope he didn’t see me. I wondered if I looked different, too.
    I thought of calling out, but there were too many strangers between us, and I didn’t want to move until my stop. Almost everyone would be off the bus by then and if my bag spilled fewer people would stare. I watched him over my book. I peered. I remember thinking that word, peered. I remember my foot fell asleep against the wheel well. I remember wanting to say, I’ve missed you.
    Jensen was reading advertisements for skin cream and cable channels; he held the metal pole and rocked back and forth with everyone else. I wanted to ask him where he’d been the last three years, if that last story he’d told me was true, about the guys beating the shit out of him in Washington Heights.
    He got off at Seventh Avenue. I didn’t chase. I didn’t even put down my book.
    The bus pushed forward with the rest. Only then did I get the courage to look back. I thought I might get a glimpse of him, entering a coffee shop or electronics store, a church or synagogue—something that might give a clue as to what he’s been doing. There have been no new poems. No cryptic emails from Europe or the Bosporus or the Caspian Sea. No sightings in the usual bars, restaurants, bookstores, parks, streets, readings, grocery stores, avenues, benches.
    We kept moving forward and I didn’t have a choice; I accepted he’d disappeared again.
    Three years ago was the last time. I got an email he’d been attacked by four men in hoods. Somewhere up by City College.
    The sun wasn’t even down yet, he’d written. Somebody should make a rule.
    I tried to picture a person being mugged at 136th and Amsterdam in the middle of the day. There would be so many people. I pictured the old Dominican man selling sneakers and underwear in front of the bodega, the women sitting in neon lawn chairs by the ball field. The long accordion-bellied buses, pigeons fleeing barking dogs, children running from landing pigeons. And then Jensen, a guy just like me, just exactly like me, being attacked right there in the heart of it all. Jensen wrote that he’d been able to roll away and outrun them, even after getting punched in the back of the head, even after getting kicked in the corners of his ribs. Even then, they still hadn’t gotten his phone or wallet. I remember reading his email right here, at this same kitchen table.
    I am still trying to picture it. I’ve never seen Ben Jensen run. I drink this beer and try.
    When I think of Jensen I think of red fingerless gloves rolling cigarettes and us arguing about other poets behind their backs.
    I don’t deny I loved him.
    When I picture the mugging, I picture a man selling sneakers and those women in lawn chairs and a black patch where Jensen should be; he’s a patch burnt from a newspaper I can’t read.
    I remember a time Jensen and I met for wine somewhere. When he arrived he had a patch of bruise beneath his left eye. He’d been in Berlin for a week and an Austrian woman had thrown his own boots at him; one had kicked him in the face.
    I remember he laughed as he told the story.