Coffee With Phil

It’s midnight at the QuickMart and strange things are brewing

So, it’s midnight and I need gas and black coffee.

In the QuickMart, pink-haired Missy, goddess of six-packs, condoms, and candy, is behind the counter, eyes rolling like pinwheels at the voice inside her bedazzled phone.

“Hey, Missy.”

“Hey, Brad.”

A cup of coffee and a spoon skid to a stop in front of me. I’m about to take a sip when Missy cocks her head toward the door.

I don’t need to look. The stench of tobacco, turpentine, and decay heralds the arrival of Philip Guston, artist extraordinaire, booze-bleary as usual, an ash-ended stogy dangling from his blue lips, a canvas under his arm.

“Jesus. I’m dead,” he kvetches.

That’s Phil. I love the guy, but it’s always something.

“Another all-nighter, Phil?”

“It’s all night to me now, kiddo,” he says and gives my cheek an icy pinch.

Phil searches his pockets for change and comes up empty.

“Hard times, even for legends, Brad,” he says. “Trade you this painting for some java. Genuine oil on canvas, Ab-Ex, perfect over the sofa.”

I see him ogling my steamy, brimming cup.

“Nah. If you’d offered up an eyeball, a KKK clown car, or a disembodied limb or two, you’d have had a deal at howdy,” I say. “I’m not interested in abstractions. Maybe you’re not keeping up with this world, but we’re living in a fever dream, Phil. Alternative facts. Guns. A dying planet. Tell me how we dig ourselves out of this unholy mess. You’re the visionary.”

“Unholy? What’s unholy is that s.o.b., Mr. H. Kramer, ravaging me like a Cossack after I went figurative.”

“Don’t speak ill of Mr. K,” says Missy, tapping her bayonet nails on the countertop. “He was in last week. Such a gent. Said he had no beef with you. He bought a Snickers, and vanished.”

I notice my coffee’s frozen solid. The QuickMart feels like the inside of an ice chest on the fritz, full of frost.

“Hey, Missy, turn up the heat, would you?”

When my words hit the air they float like plumes of car exhaust. I wrap my wool muffler over my head twice and tie it under my chin as if I have a toothache. Close enough; my teeth are chattering like a jackhammer. It can only mean one thing.

“My my my. Look what the cat dragged in,” Phil sneers.

“Guston.”

“Kramer.”

“You look like death warmed over, Guston.”

“There you go, Kramer. Always the critic. You’re looking a little pale yourself, ya know.”

“May we call it even, then, Guston? I just dropped by in search of a Snickers bar, not to pick a fight. Missy, my love, I trust you’ve laid in a fresh supply. By the way, Guston, what’s that under your arm?”

I poke Phil’s arm. My finger goes in as if his flesh is jelly, which it sort of is.

“Show Mr. Kramer the painting,” I say.

Phil shrugs and flips the canvas around. Kramer’s eyes bug out. I mean, out of his head, but only for a second.

“Marvelous! It’s a revelation. I don’t know why you ever abandoned abstraction.”

“Mr. Guston just offered it to me but I prefer his later works,” I say.

“You, young man, are a halfwit. Now, what will you take for it, Guston?”

“A coffee would be nice.”

I poke him again.

“Every night.”

“Splendid, Guston. Done. Missy, darling, you heard the man. Coffee every night for Mr. Guston. Now give me the picture and I’ll be gone.”

With a Snickers bar and the painting in hand, he vanishes. The QuickMart defrosts in an instant and I unwrap my head.

“Here’s your joe-to-go, Phil.”

“Why, thank you, Missy, darling,” he says as he sneaks a Slim Jim into his pocket.

Phil turns to me. “Remember, kid. What you see is not what you see. You can quote me on that.”

Before I can say I won’t be the first nor last to do so he disappears, and Missy pours me a hot cup of coffee for the road.

Thanks for giving this a read!