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Description
It was not a very hip or popular bar. Neither its atmosphere nor its location made it particularly attractive; its clientele were primarily those people who, driving along an otherwise empty stretch of Rte. 60 at nine or ten at night headed somewhere else entirely, saw the neon sign advertising OPEN and realized a sudden intense urge for a Yuengling. Understandably, then, it was never really a busy place. It was not a place that had any real reason to stay open past dinnertime on a Tuesday night. With these thoughts in mind, the man behind the counter swore incisively under his breath when he saw the door open and, for the second time that night, a stranger headed towards the bar. Normally he could have sent the bottle-blond college dropout working that night home early, and then paid himself for the full scheduled evening before heading home to his wife. But tonight, this was apparently the place to be, and they both had to stay lolling behind the bar until both of the unwelcome customers left.

The entrant proved to be a woman; small and dark, enveloped in a man's flannel coat that was too big for her. Her opal-black hair was pulled tight against her scalp and tied in a loose knot behind her head; as she grew nearer to the light of the bar, it gleamed darkly. She had the kind of face that defied the idea of age; she could have been in her mid-thirties, late fifties, or anywhere in between. The lines of her cheekbones and nose said that she had once been sharply, dazzlingly beautiful. Now, she was still beautiful, but in a different, softer way. Tiny lines around her eyes and lips indicated that a lot of laughing and crying and shouting had occurred in the intervening time. A small, tired smile and kind eyes made the bartender guess that she was perhaps a nurse, just leaving an all-day shift at the clinic a few miles away. He was wrong, but not by much.

The first customer barely looked up as she sat down next to him; he had been expecting her. If she was sea glass, smoothed and softened by time, he was a ruined mansion. Pale and looming to her brown and compact, the underlying structure of his face, his hands, his shoulders said that he had once been magnificent. Once he had hands that could carry an infant within each of their massive palms, and rock them to sleep; once he had a smile that made people laugh when they saw it, it was so infectiously joyous. Now he was like an apple that had been bruised too many times, the skin remaining intact while the flesh below it rotted and melted away. Something in him was collapsed inward, torn loose from its foundations. His face had begun the stages of inflating and reddening, like an Irish drunk. He wore a gray suit over his shirt, collar unbuttoned, no tie.  His clothes weren't seedy, but they weren't nice, either. Judging by his outfit, he could have been a car salesman, or a representative for a small, disreputable insurance company. Again, neither of these things were true, but nor were they far from the truth.

The sense of some deep unhappiness radiating from the white man were enough to keep both of the establishment's employees all the way at the opposite end of the bar, studiously ignoring him. But the woman's appearance and white-toothed smile were comforting, and encouraged the blond girl to approach cautiously and ask if they would like to order. The woman smiled courteously and asked for a mojito. The girl frowned slightly and said "I'm sorry, but we don't- " She paused, and seemed to be pondering something for a moment. Then she smiled again, and responded "Okay, a mojito for you." With considerably more trepadition, she turned to the man. "And for you?" "Whiskey." his voice was gravelly; it sounded like it must hurt for him to talk. "Whatever's cheapest." The girl swallowed, and walked away wordlessly. The man turned to his companion. "Fire water." he told her gravely. She gave a tepid smile, just enough to show that she got the joke.

There was no place on Earth, it seemed, that two people so different could have known each other from; nothing they could have in common. But it was clear that they did; they talked quietly, with the grudging recognizance of people who have not seen each other for a long time, and were hoping not to have to see each other for even longer. "How have you been?" the woman murmured, stirring her drink lazily. "Oh, you know," he replied.  "I've been busy. This and that."  He drank, and did not wince at the burning in his gut. With a wry expression that could not really be called a smile, he rose and strode across the room to the old-fashioned jukebox in the corner. He fiddled with it for a moment, and then as he walked back to his stool the beginning chords of "The Last Time I Saw Richard," began to play. The bartender was puzzled; he had never seen Joni Mitchell on that machine before. The woman just smiled softly; his sense of humor had always been one of her favorite things. "I suppose you  have been, as well." She looked up then, and scrutinized his face as if for the first time. "Busy, you mean?" Her eyes dropped again. "I guess you could say that." She stopped stirring and sat up straight, turning away from the counter. "What have you been up to? I heard you've been spending time in Africa." He had his glass to his mouth when she said it; he swallowed, and then scowled at her. "Why do you do this? Yes, I've been in Africa. Mostly Uganda. Things are going swimmingly. I'm thinking of heading to Pakistan later this month. You know this. Why do you have to hear it from me? There are people to do this for you." She didn't answer; merely stared at him. After a second, she swiveled back towards the counter on her stool and cupped the drink in her hands, although she still hadn't taken a sip.

They sat in silence for a moment. He was fuming; she was waiting. The bartender and the waitress could not help but be aware of the lengthening pause in the conversation; they tried to steer around it, like a ship in an ice field. Finally, the white man asked "How is he?" in a dark, low voice. To the two people behind the counter, it sounded like a question heavy with bitterness and resentment. Only his companion recognized the note of longing and envy in the words. She smiled for a moment, remembering; for a second she almost forgot to pity him his jealousy, so worthy was her son of being coveted. "He's well. He's very well." She looked up at him, still smiling. "He asks after you." Smiling at him seemed outrageous, even dangerous; it was a foolhardy move, like singing The Song That Never Ends to a grizzly. For a moment it seemed as though he would punish her for it in a bearlike fashion, with a crash of broken glass and blood. But the moment passed, and instead he deflated further into himself, his head retracting into the broken cradle of his shoulders.

She winced inwardly at his despair, but a comforting feeling of warmth rose inside her simultaneously. Her son was that kind of boy; thinking of him was reassuring. Gentle and sweet, with skin a shade darker than hers, like coffee. No one who met him ever quite recovered from his sense of solemn delight in all things, and the man sitting beside her had perhaps had the worst recovery of all. They had met only a few times, when the boy was younger. The child had politely refused all of his ill-meant gifts, so gracious and compassionate that most people would have walked away feeling flattered without knowing why. That was what had done it, perhaps. If the boy had been a little less compassionate, maybe he could have remained not whole, exactly, but at least in the same number of fragments. "I'll bet he does," the man replied softly. She was the only one who could guess how badly he wished he had a child of his own; the only one who understood the intricate interplay of fear with the laws of nature that kept him from it. Unconsciously, she began to finger the silver crucifix around her neck. Catching it out of the corner of his eye, the man beside her chuckled roughly. A painful sound.

For a while, nothing was said. It was not an uncomfortable silence, but weighty; the air was crowded with things that no one was saying. The employees felt distinctly ill at ease. Both of the drinkers' faces had changed since they came in: the woman looked a little more weary, a little more mournful; the man wore an expression as though daydreaming about something terrible, reliving some hideous memory. They looked, thought the waitress suddenly, like the faces that her aunt and uncle had worn when her nine-year-old nephew had died. Alone together with something awful that they couldn't share with anyone else. And indeed, it could have been said that they were both grieving for the same thing.

He said it so softly that she wouldn't have heard him unless she was listening for it. "I don't know why you have us do this. Can't you let it go already? It just makes it harder, and not just for me." Her drink was warm now, but she picked it up and sipped it anyways. "No. You know I can't." She looked as though she might touch him, reach out for his hand; but then she stopped. "Is it really so bad, being with me like this?" He raised his head, about to answer angrily, and accidentally met her gaze. For a moment his face was transformed; he looked for a moment like what he used to be, maybe a little older and more tired. Then he was looking for the waitress; he caught her eye and raised an eyebrow meaningfully, which she correctly interpreted as a request for more whiskey. "Yes." he whispered, so only she could hear. "It is."  Neither of them could look at one another when the blond girl came back with the glass refilled. She didn't have to wonder what tortured inner workings had strained his voice, because she felt the same thing. She had loved him once, with the hopeless, wide-eyed devotion of a child. And he had loved her. Now, with their flannel- and polyester-clad elbows set six inches apart from each other on the sticky countertop, the memory of it knifed through them like pain felt in a phantom limb. Or maybe it was more than a memory. His body radiated incredible heat; there seemed to be a fire inside of him, like a human wood stove. The warmth of him made her shiver as if he had touched her. He drained the glass of whiskey in two gulps. The proprietor was alarmed; he realized suddenly that the night could in fact get worse, if he had to call 911 to get this asshole's stomach pumped. He already had enough fire water in his veins to make most people rather woozy. But the drink seemed to have no more effect on him than iced tea.

Following his example, the small dark woman finished her drink as well. Staring at the wood grain through the bottom of the glass, she felt herself growing inexorably sadder and sorrier as she traced the story of their rise and his fall in her mind. Suddenly she felt so old, so exhausted. All she wanted right then was to go home, to go to sleep. But home was very far away and she didn't really sleep anyway, so instead she said what they were both thinking: "You didn't have to leave, you know."

He meant his reply to be casual, lighthearted; but it came out in a voice more like a sob. "You didn't have to let me." She seemed to accept his rebuke for what it was, and said nothing right away. When she did respond, it was clear that she had been preparing herself; making sure to approach it at precisely the right angle. Her studied nonchalance betrayed some formidable weight of meaning in it when she said lightly, "You could always come back." After the words were out, she held her breath and waited. It had to be done exactly right; she knew that with a simple change of tone, she could have made him do it. By the same mysterious force of intention that had brought him to a sad, empty bar near the end of Rte. 60, she could have simultaneously reinstated him to his former glory and made him feel glad of it. Anytime she wanted, she herself could bring her best beloved back home. But that wasn't what she wanted. And he knew it, so he granted her a sad smile when he said "No, I don't think I can." Pushing his glass away, he rose and walked out the door.

She sighed, with no expression of surprise or relief on her face, and slowly began to gather her things as well. Sensing the end of the evening was imminent, the bartender told his coworker to head home, he'd close up. She scurried out gratefully. Out in the parking lot, counting out the outrageous tip the woman had left her, she wondered for a moment how the two customers had gotten there; there were only two cars in the parking lot, hers and her boss's. Wiping down the counter, the bartender turned to say something to his last remaining customer - he wanted to ask her name, thought maybe he'd seen her in here before. But she was already gone, her exit attended by the sudden reprisal of whooshing tire-sounds through the open door. The man shrugged, and began stacking the barstools on top of the counter.