*****
The tinkle of the piano keys gives the hovel new life, unnatural life for a crusty smoke riddled roach motel. The piano sings out it's soft, haunting melody as the men nurse their drunks and stare at the tables forlornly. The piano lilts and sighs, joyous and sad, as the bartender pours drinks and gives that stereotypical advice that you learn from watching late night reruns of 'Cheers'.
He pours a Cutty Sark, water back, for the man in the greasy cover-alls, not asking, but *knowing* that he didn't have a home to return to. At least, a home where his wife's thighs weren't caked with the drying seed of another man. Life's a bitch. The understatement of the year.
"Two bucks."
Money is pushed across the table, background scramble.
"Take it easy, man."
And the seat is filled by another.
Drinks're slurped, shots pounded, the battered jukebox ignored as the pianist played on, veiled by the grimy air of fifty thousand cheap cigars long since past. And, like a distant percussion, the drone of the city streets filter in, both complimenting and bastardizing the simple blues' tune.
The whole room seems to coordinate, a simple dance not choreographed to show anyone. A dance merely to purge and get drunk. Shitfaced. Men like this don't 'imbibe.' They don't drink lager out of beer steins. They order boilermakers, and pound the shots back while gulping beer. Quality doesn't matter. It just has to cut like a knife and burn like a blowtorch. It's enough to stare at stained Formica and crunch a beernut or two, and wait for the bartender to sense that you are ready for another. He just appears, like a god bearing salvation in a smeary bottle with a wholesale label.
"Tequila. Straight. Best you got."
"The best I have is also the worst." A ghost of a smirk passes the bartender's face as he pours the drink. Briefly. He doesn't smirk anymore. It's not part of this job.
And he's good at his job. He's the chorus to each of his customer's individual ballets. He dances in, pushes them on, and moves to someone else. Providing the backup music, the scenery, the comfort. The 'everyman-you aren't the only one' subtle reassurance that brings a soul to a bar like this in the first place. Not like you come here to pick up the ladies. The only waitress, Gladys, spends her time scrubbing the droolcrust off of the tables, gathering bottles, and hiding in the shadows. It's a job. She gets paid, and goes home to her family. She has a life.
Which automatically excludes her from the dance that fills this stage every night around 7:15 pm. The slow, mindless, pitifully beautiful cycle of thirty somethings drowning their whateverneedsdrowning in beer and firewater. And the bartender plays the role of stagehand and conductor, pouring and pushing, stirring and mixing, rarely talking, rarely looking, only knowing that when one gets up, the next takes his place. And the cycle lives on, swaying with the moaning of the man's song in the back.
He sets shot glasses on gritty surfaces, pouring with a swift, practiced hand. The act of building the drink is changed from art to instinct. His customers don't want to see the beautiful way he makes a Bloody Mary. They just want the fucking drink. All the better to down you with, my dear.
The strands of haze envelop them all, dusting them and isolating them. And the whole picture is made complex by that dim, one bulb missing lighting that seems to personify most hole in the wall establishments. The 'in' crowd doesn't move here, the country/western line dancers click their heels somewhere else, the Hollywood bad boys and their gal pals party somewhere further into town. Only the blue collar working class finds it's way, picking the shaded doorway out of so many bright city lights with an ease that speaks of inbred knowledge.
Maybe it is. It's what brought ME here.
He continues to pour drinks, dark eyes following the progress of his customers naturally, without an effort. Their movements are all similar, all bound together in a way that suffering always seems to accomplish. He can tell when they are going to fall asleep, when they are going to cry, when they are going to scream, when they are going to simply sit there and stare off into space that is all but empty.
When the guy at the end of the bar starts cutting up, talking too loudly, the bartender moved towards him. He pushed away the slender man's half drained mug and pushed towards him a salty bowl of nuts. "Eat."
The commanding softness of his voice takes the raucous customer by surprise, and he sits. Tears begin to form in his eyes, his face changes from that of an angry 32 year old to a defeated seven or eight year old child. "I just... don't want to fail."
The bartender gives him wordless sympathy with a even glance, and moves on to the next customer.
And so it continues. The piano playing the music that has filled this room for days, weeks, years, notes floating through the dark shades of red and black, brown and yellow. The slumped patrons at the bar, the stained floor, the mirror-less wall behind the bartender. The dark.
The comfort in the darkness is almost tangible. You can hide who you are, hide who you were, become merely a shadow amongst shadows. It soothes away all pain, at least for an hour or so.
And it keeps you going. Because when you have a drink in one hand, and the time to sit back and let the world move on without you, you can find some sort of peace. *He* knows this. It's why he's done his job for years, becoming only a nameless archetype in this bar full of drowned misery, the salvation in the storm. Fucking years. He's been alive for god damn *centuries* and he still angsts. Only now, it's in private, hidden from the world. He puts on his painless face and pours drinks and feeds off of their pain. Like a vampire.
Not very surprising.
But I know that underneath lurks the anger and the sadness of events years in the past. That the brooding person is there, just under the surface, drinking and crying and doing the same pathetic dance to the piano music. He tries to ignore it, but when he goes home, he falls asleep to the sounds of silence.
No one knows his name now.
Except for me. And yet he doesn't see my face. I'm less than a customer. I'm the scenery. I'm there every night, and gone every morning. I don't speak to him, to any of them. I simply pay my dues, play my blues, and let their dance continue. It helps. It all helps when you can watch someone who was never your friend try and cope, hiding the whole time. He's the son I never had, the lover never realized, the impossible dream. But I don't need that anymore. I've found my peace in the black and white keys.
It's like salvation, giving him what none of them could, what *she* couldn't. I promise that. For as long as I live, I promise that.
For I don't play for me, or for them. I play for the peace it's taken me years to discover... and the peace I know he'll find when he finally stops and lets the music take him.
~end~