Roger's is my favorite eating and drinking place. It’s miles from the city. Who would go all the way out there just for drinks and American fries? Travelers, maybe. And people like my friends and me. The place has good food, the waitresses are nice, and their prices are low. What more could one ask? Oh, yes: Their drinks are big and well-spiked. But the main reason my friends and I go there has nothing to do with food or drink. We go for the ambience and the mind games.

I was at Roger's one Friday evening with some of my Masters swimming friends after our workout. We ate burgers and fries, and then we decided to stay late and talk about things and forget things.

Roger's has no windows. It looks drab from the outside. But within, the lack of scenery makes it easy to notice the people. There were several of us swimmers, a couple of women and the rest of us men. We were trying to recapture some of that spirit from days when we had swum fast.

We fell under the spell of food and alcohol, and for a time we could forget the pressures of the world system. We endure it, as evidenced by our daily thrashing about on behalf of pieces of paper and digital electronic impulses. But we don't like it.

It was getting hard to hear other people speaking as the place got crowded, and people were all smoking and talking louder and louder. So I began to watch people, just to sit back, relax and observe it, like a psychologist, I imagined with a suppressed chuckle. At a table next to a wall there were two men, both with beards. The man on the right had a black, well-trimmed beard; his companion a red, wild eruption. Black Beard's eyes reflected the light, and he spoke with enthusiasm, obviously entertained with himself. He kept raising his eyebrows, both at the same time, always only for an instant, so I could never be sure he really did it. He gestured with his right hand, palm up, pushing air toward the ceiling as if he needed to get each parcel of breath out of the way of his face before puffing out the next. Black Beard kept making the same movements like a replaying video, his mouth curved upward showing his teeth. His drink appeared to be plain soda water, but his demeanor suggested his poison was something stronger than alcohol, something they didn't serve at Roger's.

Red Beard had beer. His eyes did not reflect the light. He didn't smile, but stared at his companion as if hypnotized.

Black Beard continued smiling and talking without ever slowing down. I couldn't hear him because of the general noise. No one seemed to notice the strangeness of his movements, the shallowness of his countenance, the emptiness of his smile despite the warmth in his eyes. Black Beard was fascinated by his own oratory, and Red Beard was almost asleep with boredom. For the first time in my life I wished I was deaf. Then I'd have learned lip reading, and I'd have been able to decipher Black Beard's monologue.

But what if Black Beard weren't saying anything, but only pretending to speak? I laughed aloud. It would be exactly the same to me, whether he was speaking, or only mouthing. Or could he be speaking in tongues? That is to say, gibberish? It would be exactly the same to me.

My friends were talking among themselves, sometimes laughing, making hand movements, the way people do at bars. They spoke about this or that corporate merger or takeover, who might be sleeping with whom, which baseball team would win the Series. But no one else in Roger's looked like Black Beard or Red Beard. Mike, the fastest swimmer, sat back, hands behind his head, dangerously leaning in his chair, and the shroud that normally surrounded his persona was lifted by the liquor. I thought for a moment I might speak with him and maybe get to know him as I could not do at workouts. But instead I looked back at Black Beard.

Then I saw that Red Beard was staring through me.

Of all the people in the place, Red Beard had chosen me for salvation! His eyes said, "What should I say to this man?" I knew these were his thoughts. He knew I knew. I knew he knew I knew.

I shrugged and sipped my left-handed, backwards screwdriver. (That means it's got gin and grapefruit juice.) The sting of the alcohol took my mind away, but only for a moment.

Red Beard was insistent. I hadn't answered. He kept on pleading, eyes never blinking, dry as the wall, for some guidance, some miracle, from me. I couldn't turn away from this man in need, but what could I say? He wouldn't hear me if I spoke, nor I him, so, as if we were cats on a sultry night, we sat there, not moving, not breathing, the background fading in favor of the fibers of thought connecting our pairs of eyes.

In my peripheral vision Black Beard was a shadow, always moving, his right hand repeatedly gesturing, in exactly the same way every time. He had not noticed Red Beard's change of attitude any more than Red Beard cared that he had not. Red Beard was inconsolable. Would he pounce? Would he faint? Or would he sit there till closing, till the manager had to come and tell him to leave, till the police were called, till he was taken away, till they locked him up in the psych ward? I laughed again. Red Beard continued his plea. I shrugged and took another swallow of my drink, then two swallows, then three.

I smiled and began to mouth words, to speak silently, uttering syllables that could not exist in any language. I made statements never before conceived in the minds of humanity. Then I lifted my eyebrows, only for a fraction of a second, so I could not be sure I really did it. I pushed some air toward the ceiling with my right hand, palm up, deliberately, emphatically, although I could not imagine what I might be trying to glorify. I opened my eyes so wide they hurt.

Red Beard did not understand.

I pointed at Black Beard. He was still carrying on. I aimed my outstretched left hand, index finger rigid, so that it was aligned between Red Beard's parched eyes. My right hand kept up its assigned movements, and I tried to say, "Do like him, just like him there," but I mouthed it silently in that language unknown. I kept on acting like Black Beard, to see without seeing, to speak without speaking, and to push air up out of the way of my nothings.

I turned toward Linda, the girl sitting next to me, who up till then hadn't noticed what I was doing. I touched her on the shoulder, and she saw how I had been transformed. At first she seemed surprised, puzzled, and almost frightened. I pointed at Black Beard, and saw that Red Beard had begun to converse, or to pretend to converse, with his well-groomed friend.

I turned again to Linda. She still didn't know what it was about. So I pointed again at the men at the little table by the wall, where the light from the ceiling lamp etched an hyperbola over a painting of horses in a field of grass. I acted some more; I pointed again, and repeated the sequence six, seven, eight times, till Linda began to laugh and imitate me. "Is this the way?" she asked in that alien tongue, noiseless. "You've got it," I responded. Thus we both pushed air towards the ceiling, and opened our eyes till the whites showed all the way around.

Mike and Paul had seen all of this. For a while they stared at us, and then they began the charade. They laughed silently, mouthing in the new language. We communicated as we never had.

Soon everyone at our table was swept into the act; people at other tables saw us, and they worked their way into it. We all made identical motions with our right hands, palms up, pushing air out of the room so that more could enter through the vents or underneath the cracks in the doors, or from wherever air comes in Roger's.

The noise level fell. The whole clientele were at it now. There was not a whisper. Everyone spoke without form or content. The air conditioning droned. Then it stopped, and at the same moment, Red Beard and Black Beard ceased their silent conversation and turned to regard the rest of us. Roger's was now quiet but for the rush of clothing rubbing against other parts of clothing, sleeves against shirts or blouses. A chair snapped as someone squirmed.

Black Beard and Red Beard looked around at us all. Then they looked again at each other, and that smile washed once more over Black Beard's face. Red Beard, ever serious, regarded him with intensity. Then Black Beard spoke loudly and clearly. "Well," he said, "as I was about to say, before we were so rudely interrupted --"

Roger's exploded with laughter. The bearded gentlemen had reached us. They both (even Red Beard!) threw back their heads with mirth. Myriad sins, never committed, were forgiven.