The Mermaid and the Sniper – Larry Graubard

October 17, 2025

Morning hits like punishment detail. First thing’s the piss—slow, reluctant, a thin stream from a rusted pipe. Then coffee. Bitter, black, essential.

The mirror doesn’t lie. Naked. Swollen. Sagging. Once, if someone talked to me the way I talk to myself now, they’d regret it. These days, I just stare. Fabio catches it too—something in his eyes, like a black-and-white Polaroid of someone he used to be. Barely.

I’ve watched him for years. Marine sniper. Vietnam vet. On the surface, just another old guy. At seventeen, Fabio wanted the uniform his father couldn’t touch. He enlisted. Not for ideals. Not for glory. Spite is its own kind of gravity.

The rifle fit his shoulder like something he’d been born missing. Winchester Model 70, .30-06, Unertl scope—steel you could believe in. Lover, confessor, compass. Only the rifle told the truth when asked.

He read the tree line for flickers the way a musician hears a sour note. Tango boats slid the Mekong at two knots, hugging the bank like rumors. Breath out, slow squeeze. The world shrank to crosshairs and heartbeat. He used to say he could shoot the asshole off a river rat at a thousand yards. In his mouth it wasn’t brag. It was liturgy.

They whispered about the Apache, the VC sniper who wounded one man and waited for his brothers to rush in. Fabio carried the story like a riff: rumor as melody, torture in 4/4.

One afternoon, a water buffalo with a teenage girl riding on its back stepped on a booby trap. Fabio remembered it clearly—peasants rushed to market with chunks of meat.

Now we live in the Starbucks lifestyle. Padded walls with jazz. The green siren grins from every wall, a corporate succubus hawking comfort and connection. Dopamine on a drip. Every Starbucks is the same—standardized like a psychiatric dayroom.

Fabio works next to you. You wouldn’t know. He doesn’t talk about it. He doesn’t talk much at all. He just does the job and goes home. Probably had a dozen jobs. Probably won’t retire. Probably doesn’t care.

He looks fine. That’s the thing. But something didn’t come back. Something stayed behind in the jungle or the desert or wherever it was. He’s here, technically. But not really.

He knows how to handle bullets. That part was easy. It’s the quiet that’s hard. The quiet is unbearable.

We sip our fix. The Mermaid hums. Fabio stares. I stare too. The jazz plays on. This isn’t a coffee shop—it’s a dayroom for the misfit faithful. The righteous lost. The broken circling the drain with espresso and ambient music.