Is that your breakfast today? I ask this silently of each person who comes into the donut shop. Is that your breakfast today? A donut and coffee? Often, actually, it’s two or three donuts. No wonder Americans are so obese. Yet here they are, secretaries and chiropractors and CPAs en route to nearby offices, school bus drivers, students heading for the university, and construction workers on the new high rises going up all over the place. The construction guys push in with their flag hardhats and protruding bellies, order whole families of donuts, unaware that I am asking them silently, Is that your breakfast today? For all that physical labor? Well, somehow, they make it through another day, and another building goes up.
Me, I have a banana in my briefcase. A donut is just a little preliminary goodie, a nice amuse-bouche to kick off the day, not the main course. The banana balances it out and provides proper sustenance that a donut can’t. An adult person should know this. Still, I enjoy this little pick-me-up in the donut shop as I clear up paperwork and review my marching orders for the day.
Lys’s donut shop is owned by a Vietnamese family. They remain in back as if sequestering themselves from a potentially hostile alien culture, and if I twist around in my seat and peer through the display case I can see an older woman who sits in a cheap metal folding chair rounding out a cake of some type not for sale to the public. Mister Ly himself mans the counter; he is light-skinned, with a pouchy face, and he shuffles with a rigid gait as if unaware that his legs are actually designed to move up and down, like human pistons. Maybe his can’t; maybe they’ve atrophied, somehow. How does someone get that way? A tragedy. But Mr. Ly is a nice man who always says “good morning” to me and sometimes gives me a free munchkin along with my donut. That’s nothing to sneeze at nowadays.
I am in my usual window seat in the right front corner facing the street—my “window on the world.” Most customers dash in, order, and dash out with their donut (more often donuts), so I am usually surrounded by empty chairs and tables, as I am now. Before taking a bite from my donut (one), and after cleaning up the stray crumbs from previous customers, I like to sit and watch my coffee (black) steaming. I find the wafting steam a happy sight, offering the reassurance of warmth, comfort, purpose, good thoughts, social stability, and of course, sexual potency. (The sexual potency component is latent; one must act on it, turn steam into power, so to speak.) In the past, we used the latent power of steam on gigantic scales, and I like to imagine the steam from my little coffee cup as it expands into the steam wafting out of the funnels of the Titanic, wafting cozily and reassuringly as the ship slumps down into the ocean, curling steadily forth as if there will be further use for that energy. All that power, steaming patiently and awaiting the next ring of the bell, a ring that will never come. Happiness and social stability and chocolate éclairs and pianos (grand in First Class, upright in Steerage) against all those billions of gallons of cold, cold sea water. Man against the abyss. It’s a very uneven match.
Ly doesn’t have éclairs but he does offer a nice bar in chocolate or maple. Today, though, I’m having an old-fashioned. I like the old-fashioned; they are a nice, quiet, unassuming donut with their handy tabs you can peel off and eat one at a time. I’m prompted to wonder just why they’re called “old-fashioned,” and then I wonder how many books have been written about donuts. This might be an opening for me. I take one of my note papers from my briefcase and write DONUTS—OLD FASHIONED—SOURCES? I produce many potentially profitable ideas like this one, and if I don’t commit them to paper, they tend to wander off and get lost. I’ve had quite a few wander off, but lately I’ve been pretty good about keeping them in line. I think the briefcase helps. My paperwork fits handily under my banana, which will be my breakfast today.
Mister Ly’s donuts are a quality product, and are presented in a quality manner, in a large case with a glass front curving downward like a glittering waterfall. That glitter is a big part of the appeal of a place like this; it says, silently, All that glitters may not be gold, but it is good. A man can eat a donut from the glittering case and feel that he is enjoying a taste of the good life. His little piece of gold, so to speak. I suspect that modest little hint of opulence is at least a small part of why I come in here.
As for the “good life”: I wonder if we even know what that is, anymore.
From the back comes the chatter of the sequestered owners and the fainter chatter of television. Their language is amusing to me, harsh yet high and singsong, and in fact, every few minutes a female voice, either from the older woman I saw shaping the cake or possibly from a younger woman, bursts out singing, Ya-dee, ya-dee-dee-dee-yahhh. A pretty sound, and unexpected. You would never have heard any singing in an old-time American donut shop; those places were all-business, clattering cups and banging trays, maybe a raspy radio and bitching about the weather or the ball game or some damn thing. But singing? Never. Can you imagine a burly, dough-faced white man in a little white cap suddenly bursting into song? The thought is comical. In this shop, though, it’s simple reality. This is one good thing about these people coming in from overseas: they’re loosening things up.
I sit and watch my coffee steam and eat my day’s donut and think about the Titanic and try to make some more progress through these Philip Roth stories currently on my docket. I like to keep up on my reading, and picked Roth because he’s a major name I should be acquainted with. Many of his stories seem to deal with being Jewish in the postwar years and are full of angst, family relations, social repressions, and various types of self-loathing. I can completely relate to the self-loathing component, but I’m finding him tough going. He has a lot of digressions and insertions, and a lot of psychological analysis, which might do me some good except I don’t really understand a lot of it. Plus it interrupts the story.
Oh! Here’s something about a train. My interest pricks up, but there’s nothing more. He just dropped it. Dammit, Phil, I ask silently, are you jerking my chain? Why bring something up if you’re not going to follow through? I think Phil is probably doing something considered cool among literary people like Roth and Updike and Cheever, upper-echelon types, New Yorker people, very smart intellectuals, the people who wrote the book on analysis. And that is: being opaque. They probably use that exact word. Why do some people think being opaque is cool? Not finding more about the train only makes me disappointed. I would love to read about a transcontinental train trip in Roth’s day: the Super Chief, the Twentieth Century Limited—trains a serious writer might have ridden.
Thinking about trains, I take another little sip of coffee and begin to hum softly to myself. A low buzzing note, hmmmm. This is an old habit of mine, something I do while I’m going around or even sitting in the donut shop and other places. Maybe it was inspired by those train horns that honked like a scalded cow; as a kid, those things scared me, I was a terrible wimp when it came to loud sounds. I sometimes catch myself making the sound involuntarily, and I have come to regard it as beacon of my presence in the universe, the call of a lone vessel moving through the Cosmos, or possibly even an echo of the Big Bang sounding in me. I think it possible that we all carry these minute echoes inside. Of course, a lone man sounding any sort of repetitive audible signal in public runs the risk of upsetting others, so I keep it pretty much to myself. Still, realizing this makes me wonder if I’m possibly going slightly crazy. Many people do as they grow older. I don’t care, really. I keep humming (do we really have a choice about being beacons?), peel another leaf from my old-fashioned donut, and move on to the next paragraph of Philip Roth. Texas? Armagnac?
A large man, his belly protruding in front of him, pushes in, making the buzzer on the door go braak! He says to Mr. Ly, “Two of the ones with the white on top, and coffee,” and I ask him, silently, Is that your breakfast today? He puts his tray on the table down the row from me, pulls back a chair with a terrible scraping sound, and sits down slowly, making a sort of deflating balloon noise. He wears a blue nylon jacket and tan slacks and brown sensible shoes and white socks; a facilities manager, maybe, or a maintenance guy or some other kind of doojamathingie guy, a man who makes society function. I steal another sideways glance in his direction, and with a slight feeling of shock I become slowly aware that he is younger than I am. Quite a bit younger: an old young man. The type is familiar to me, the kind of person who looks fifty at age thirty and thinks and acts even older. I see so many now who look like the old people of my youth and who are younger than I am, and this depresses me. How did they get like this? Didn’t we learn anything when we were young?
No matter, really; he is of no consequence to me. (Though I accept that I might conceivably be inconvenienced in some way in the absence of his contribution to society.) I suppose he’s got a wife or girlfriend whom he can be of consequence to. I wonder what woman would want to be his girlfriend, but they do, the women. They have a great capacity for love. I read another paragraph but my eyes keep straying out the window while the man eats his donut and issues a faint wheezing sound between bites. He eats fast, drinks his coffee in gulps, then heaves himself up with a grunt and walks out, issuing a faint farewell wheeze as he opens the door and thrusts his newly-enlarged belly back onto the street. I think about running after him and yelling, “Sir! Was that your breakfast today?” but I know that would only be a ridiculous act on my part, not to mention open to interpretation as an act of hostility. Luckily, such an act is far from my intention, and I adhere to the prevailing social reality that it’s better to mind one’s own business. And there’s also this: maybe he’s planning on having something else a little later, like I am. With that protruding belly, I think it’s very likely.
A pair of pigeons is pecking around the curb by the bus stop. They’re hoping to find bits of discarded food, donut crumbs, maybe. Imagine that: living on crumbs. But they do. I tell them, silently, Look out, little pigeons, look out! There are people out there driving who would actually swerve to hit them. I am relieved when they steer away from the street and peck their way up the sidewalk, their little iridescent heads jerking toward destiny. Their day has begun, nourished by crumbs of people food, no good at all for birds, as evidenced by their ample protruding pigeon bellies. Was that your breakfast today? I hope not.
A young woman comes bustling in, making the buzzer go braak! She’s all business, hurry-hurry, likes she aspiring to the upper echelon, and she orders six “donut holes.” Donut holes? This shop does not serve donut holes, it serves munchkins. The same thing, true, but with a different name, and there’s a nice, easily readable plastic sign in the display case saying “munchkins.” Not “donut holes.” And yet, here’s this woman, all business, looking right at the display and presumably the sign, but refusing the nomenclature provided and instead substituting her own. Maybe she thinks saying “munchkins” is beneath her.
Somehow, this behavior annoys me, like refusing an outstretched hand or slapping it away and saying, “I’ll do it myself.” My mother used to do that when I offered to help with some task around the house. “No,” she’d say, “it’s easier if I just do it myself.” I was injured by this rebuff and today I consider it among the several factors responsible for stunting my development. I can’t control other people’s behavior, and this behavior has been to consistently, over many years, reject me. Then this woman comes in and rejects the obvious, just because she feels like it, or has no feeling at all.
Well, never mind, I have business of my own to worry about. I feel like I must make some forward movement today. My inner beacon is insistently sounding a clarion call to action, an alarum that time and tide wait for no man. I knew someone once who habitually used that expression, and back then I dismissed it as trite. When you’re young, you can do that. Now, though, I sense that the tide is running out, and I have few friends or anyone else who might offer me a life preserver. How about you, Rothie—have you got a life preserver for me? I focus in on the page, and after several lines I get a funny feeling. I feel like I’ve been reading this wrong, and I’m beginning to think that this guy and I might have something in common. He’s alone, he’s trying to find his way forward, he’s dealing with many ideas clashing around in his head. I must pay closer attention; Roth didn’t get where he was by slacking off.
A movement pulls my eyes from the book and I see two young dudes sauntering unsteadily across the parking lot heading this way. Uh-oh. One of them is sort of prancing, as if stoned or hopped-up on something. They look punchy and mean, feral opportunists. One sits down on the curb outside and the prancer comes in, making the buzzer go braak!, and asks for a coffee and a chocolate donut with sprinkles. Mr. Ly tells him it will cost 2.25, so he goes back outside and asks his friend for some money. He comes back in and gives it to Mr. Ly, who says, “Thank you, sir.” Prancer says “Thanks” and takes his coffee and donut outside, and I ask him, silently, Is that your breakfast today?
The way this transaction went down without any trouble, which these guys looked strongly prone to, satisfies me. The thin veneer of propriety held in this case, and I feel that there is some hope for us, yet. The coffee steams reassuringly and I think again of the Titanic and poor old Captain Smith, who never used up all his steam and who went down not happy at all. Those funnels (like giant coffee cups) kept right on steaming, the boilers and engines standing by and ready to push the vessel on to New York, right until the sea poured in. All that cold, cold water: against that, what chance did happiness have? In fact, at this moment, I remind myself that we, too, are sinking very, very slowly into space. Cold, cold space. What chance does happiness have against that?
Outside, the pigeons are gone and buses disgorge small groups of texting young people, their cell phones blanching their faces ghostly white, as if drained of blood. Which they might well be if a car suddenly careened up onto the curb and punted them into oblivion. If that were to happened, I’d say, silently, Your face is really white now! Yet they stand waiting for the light right on the very brink of the busy street, as if calamity could never happen to them. Not that these young people really care; they’re young, and if a car came up and punted one of them into oblivion the others would probably just flutter around like pigeons for a few seconds, then go right on texting. As for the clammy hand of death: I like to think I’m ready, but I know I’m not. No one is.
A young man wheels up on a bicycle, props it by the door, and enters, making the buzzer go braak! He wears a hooded pullover and a white captain’s hat, which of course makes me think of The Captain and Tennille. I always wondered why that guy wore a captain’s hat and called himself “the Captain.” He looked so serious and stuffy on the albums, as if telling potential buyers, silently, “When you see me, Mister, buy this album!” It was all a gimmick, of course, but that gimmick made the Captain and the girl a nice pile of dough. Marketing people are pretty damn shrewd; they know that some men like authority figures and would buy the album for precisely this reason, while women like a man in uniform and would buy even more. Me, I never wore a uniform and I never had a girl and as far as singing goes, I’d rather hear myself eat. I suppose this young man’s captain’s hat is a gimmick, too, for picking up girls or telling people that he likes boats or that he actually hopes to become a seaman one day. Or maybe he’s a fan of the Captain-singer and is using him as a role model. It seems silly, but I wouldn’t mind coming up with a gimmick or two, myself. Even one might save me from this water rising around me.
The Captain orders a coffee and “six of those things,” by which I know even without looking that he means munchkins. He won’t say it, either, like the girl of a few minutes ago. A strange phenomenon. I have no qualm about saying “munchkin” aloud, so I don’t understand these people. Do the Captain and the hurry-hurry girl consider “munchkin” a not-cool word—threatening, even? Though they are blandly unconcerned about standing six inches from juggernaut-inflicted death, young people are completely consumed by the fear of being seen as uncool, of saying things that they would never say and using words they would never use, even in front of complete strangers of no consequence. Seems like a hell of a burden to carry every day. I think about going over and ordering a couple, so I can say “munchkins” in a loud, firm voice while the Captain is here, but I resist the urge. The Captain is having six, but he’s young and he bicycles, he will work them off. Then again, maybe he’ll be texting on his bike and a car will punt him into oblivion. Never happen to you, eh, white-face?
The mini mall containing the donut shop is a tidy little shopping center, a metropolis in miniature, lacking only a residential component. Next to Ly’s is Subway, then the Sav-Mor smoke shop and Teriyaki Time and Sunrise Supplements. One can meet a large portion of their daily needs right here—the place is really a marvel of convenience. I wonder what all the boys who fought at Lexington and Chickamauga and Guadalcanal would have thought of their farms and villages giving way to mini malls full of modern conveniences, so many of them owned by people from other countries, countries they may have gone to war against. Before saddling up to do battle for an alien and terrifying new America somewhere far up ahead, would the onetime (now dead) eaters of home-smoked ham and chard and hominy grits ask us donut eaters and supplement swallowers, Is that your breakfast today? I think it likely as hell. Poor boys.
A woman enters, making the buzzer go braak!, and stands in front of the case gazing in at the donuts. She is middle-aged and wears a plaid muffler and matching fedora—a natty dresser. Mr. Ly asks, “Help you?” leaving out the “can” and the “I” and also any kind of “ma’am” or “miss” to match the “sir” he calls all the men. She says “No” and continues looking into the case. After a moment he asks again, “Help you?” She says again, “No” and continues standing there staring, then abruptly walks out. Maybe she was offended by not being called “ma’am,” or maybe she asked herself, silently, Is this your breakfast today? and decided that it would be better if it wasn’t.
I suspect that, although the woman appeared natty, she is possibly a form of mildly deranged person who will probably get worse with time. Natty people often fall into this category. I wouldn’t exactly call myself natty, but I wonder if I might be getting worse with time, since I’ve been sitting here for the past twenty minutes humming like the Super Chief going through Pasadena. The hum is barely audible but sound carries in this little room with its big windows and linoleum floors, and I don’t want to make Mr. Ly nervous. He’s probably got enough to worry about.
Getting back into the story, I read a few more lines and the feeling that I may be on the verge of a breakthrough gets stronger. Philip Roth has pissed me off somewhat by being opaque and by not following through on things like the train, but it definitely seems like this guy (probably Roth himself, in reality) is trying to tell me something. I may not be an upper-echelon intellectual, but I now have the uncanny feeling of sensing a crack in the opaqueness, an opening. Okay, Rothie, I’ll take the bait! This potential donut book—who else is doing it, right now? Very likely no one, and that is where I step in. Maybe The New Yorker would be interested in something about donuts.
Outside, a bus pulls away from the stop as a woman runs up with mincing little birdlike steps, pulling a wheeled suitcase. She stops abruptly, raises her arm, and gives the bus the finger. She stares after it a moment longer, then turns to a young Asian woman standing at the bus stop and smiles and shrugs. Her giving the bus the finger interests me; why did she do it? I think because she is angry. Most of us are. All that pent-up anger inside us, human steam. I think I’ll have to do some looking into anger issues, specifically female anger issues and how they compare with the male’s. I jot down a note: ANGER—MALE-FEMALE.
My donut is now part of history and the coffee cup nearly empty and emanating very little in the way of steam. No, this is not my breakfast today, but a half hour of material and a good launch of a new day, which yawns before me like a whale’s mouth. Feeling full of firm resolution, I snap my briefcase shut and stand up. Hmmm…hmmm. The donut, the coffee (steaming hotly) have done something to me, and so has Roth. He’s a sly one, I get that now. I get that he’s set me up. He says, in a strong New York accent, “Okay, sure I’m opaque. Life is opaque! Deal with it.” This person who has spent his life laboring on huge opaque books has led me to a new vantage point, a summit, where the air is clearer and the view is wider and the sun is breaking through the clouds. The shining sea stretches before me—full steam ahead! Just call me Captain! I’ve enjoyed a little piece of the good life and a piece of great literature has hit its target. And I have a banana to balance it all out.