My wife and I took our seats at the bar in Penn Station,
Forty minutes to wait before our train.
The middle-aged woman sitting next to me,
Wearing a frilly prom dress,
A fancy cocktail untouched
Before her,
Leaned over and whispered:
“Hello, sailor. Do you think
You’re man enough
To rock my world?”
“I doubt it,” I told her.

She turned away,
Began whispering to the man
To her left. Their conversation
Intense, but every
Once in awhile she’d turn to me
With the whispered
Play-by-play: “He’s got
A wife in Copaigue, but thinks
Maybe he can catch the later train
If we head over to the
Hotel across the street
For a quick one.”

But by the time she’d turned back
To him, the man had stood up
Red-faced
And was rushing out of the bar.

Silence. The three of us
Alone. Then two women
Entered, and our new friend
Called: “Hey Ladies. Can I
Buy you a drink?”
But the ladies scuttled
Into shadows.
“They probably think
I’m into pussy,” the woman confided.
“Well, I can accommodate.”

It was time for our train, so Barbara and I
Stood up. I turned to say
Goodbye.

“Going so soon?” she asked,
Then sighed. “Oh well.
It’s been
A slow evening.”

I’d been moving from scene to scene in my nightly pageant when I came upon a friend at the piano talking to a stranger.

“I’d like you to meet John Cage,”

Cage smiled, not intimidated by my appearance: buck naked except each foot and hand plunged into a box of facial tissues (props from a previous scene).

Cage was inside the piano stuffing objects between the strings—thumbtacks, bits of wood, a tiny bust of the Emperor Lucretin.

“You see,” he told me. “There isn’t such a thing as a random number generator. It’s only an algorithm that pretends to be random. In fact, there is only cause and effect.”

Then we were silent, bereft of polite conversation.

The audience shuffled, coughed nervously. A siren intruded from the street. My friend twiddled his fingers. Then I realized Cage was performing his infamous work, 4’ 33” in which a pianist sits for four minutes and thirty-three seconds in absolute silence without touching the keys.

Growing apprehension: Some people, struggling for nonchalance, displayed grotesque, uncontrollable facial ticks. Others rolled their eyes luridly, watching the big clock in the auditorium, which was telling us not even one minute had passed.

I, too, was becoming uncomfortable and ashamed of my nakedness, like Adam expelled from Eden.

Anything could happen now, anything at all: Awful silence weighing on the grand piano, maybe all at once collapsing it through the stage floor, a wild whirlwind following, sucking us all down.