Issue Seven

It’s a bit seedy and not the kind of place you’d usually like, but something–the sway of music fluttering in the street, the dim lights glowing through a dirty window, the drunk and laughing doorman–something makes you peel three dollars from your wallet and go inside.

They don’t serve wine, and they’re low on gin the bartender warns you, so you settle for a beer, draft, the house brew. It’s slightly warm, but surprisingly good you think, and you drink it slowly, remembering nights back home–a dead-end road, warm beer, the flicker of headlights illuminating the darkness. It’s something you haven’t thought of in a while, those nights when you were young, restless, leaning hard toward a future that was shimmering and immeasurable. You’re not young anymore, you realize, but still restless at times and still leaning hard, though you’ve become less and less sure what it is that you’re leaning toward.

Over the rim of your glass you notice that there is a band in the corner, a rough looking bunch warming up their instruments and playfully poking and prodding one another. You can’t tell what they are saying to each other but they are young, teenagers perhaps, and you imagine that they are talking about the new song they will try out tonight, or the girls they hope will come, or how long their hair has gotten, how well their chord progression has advanced. You imagine that they are planning for a future that can be nothing less than brilliant, though looking around the bar at the sparse crowd, the frowning bartender, the disheveled waitresses and their rundown landscape, you can nearly feel the sting of disappointment, the betrayal of a life that strays from best laid plans.

You order another beer and a minute later, the band begins to play. There is an unsteady start but then a tempo is captured and you are surprised, find yourself smiling as you decide that the band is rather good and the skinny red-headed kid sings as well as anyone you’ve heard.

You tap your foot and are nearly moved to dance, though you don’t, and won’t now that your dancing partner has long since waltzed off with the car and the dog that you once shared, and can’t be bothered with your sadness, your ache. There were accusations, you remember, and complaints. Remarks that suggested faultlines, blame. There was a kitchen at dusk, and her, pointing, an empty cardboard box in her other hand.

“What did you expect, anyway,” she said. “I mean, what were the chances?”

This is where memory fails you. You cannot summon your last words, your last attempt at redemption or something like it. Tonight, you would like to remember the evidence you cleverly compiled in favor of chance; you would like to remember the angles of her cheekbones softening with laughter, her body against yours as you reached for a shoulder, a waist, and gathered her into a dance. You would like to remember that she joined you, a reluctant but willing accomplice in a two-step or a tango, her fist loosening and dropping the cardboard box to the tile floor where it stayed for a week or a month, until someone put it in the attic, garage. You do not remember this, however.

What you do remember is that you were never a good dancer to begin with, though you can recall times when the music was wonderful and the air was muggy and sweet and you danced until sweat bounced on you like a summer rainstorm, and that’s what it felt like, a storm, a wash of rain, a wide open stretch of steaming blacktop, clean and gleaming and new. You haven’t felt like that in a long time and suddenly it is something that you regret; suddenly you realize you have lost something that you hadn’t even missed for all these years. For a moment you are angry at yourself, at the tenuous grip you have somehow managed on your own happiness. What did you expect?

Breathing deeply, you watch a small group of people crowd the dance floor and begin to move in an illogical rhythm; you focus on a man at the edge in a red shirt and a ridiculous hat. He is skinny and tall, his features standing out almost mime-like, overdone and exaggerated. He is a horrible dancer, the worst that you have ever seen, you think. For a moment you are embarrassed for him, his stringy arms and legs flapping against the still air, his head goosing to the beat, his hands  trembling toward the sky. He is smiling–no, laughing–and the entire group gravitates toward him, swirling and spinning around him in small or large patterns and touching him lightly on the hips, arms, shoulder. He shakes his head vigorously and his straw hat ascends a beautiful arc across the floor and is kicked aside. It is then that you notice the downy hair covering his head in small patches, the delicate lattice of blue and purple veins bulging against papery skin, the horrible tube poking through the flesh of his neck, covered only slightly by a bit of blood-crusted tape. He bends deeply into his knees and shakes his arms, he kicks into the air and howls as each foot swings toward the ceiling, he tosses his frail body into a surging swell of bodies and swats people on their backs, shakes them by the shoulders, pats them on the head and laughs into the wind of moving arms, swaying hips, clapping hands. He is beckoning a beautiful woman and she is drawing closer, closer, closer until their bodies are like one motion, he is leading her across the dance floor awkwardly, without grace, and you imagine her saying that he is the most perfect dancer, you imagine her believing it, you imagine her dancing with him song after song, and she does, she does.

And then it is two a.m., it is late, it is time for the band to play their last song.

It’s a slow song, an old favorite, a song with a reedy refrain about romance and the tragedy of young love, and you watch as the man leans into the plump body of a woman and sways slowly, his balding head glistening, his starved body circling slowly around a floor that is now empty. You imagine that he is seeing a Chinese herbalist, an Indian shaman, a spiritualist or psychic. There are bitter herbs, of course, and strange concoctions to brew over an open fire, chanting and meditations to perform. He has never been a man to believe in these things, these out-of-body experiences, the transcendence of reality, a peaceful union of body and mind. He has never been a believer in miracles. And yet here he is, at this strange intersection of his life; here he is at the point where coincidence and chance can fall on either side of luck. A nail in the road. A flat tire. One cancer cell that takes root and grows like a weed. A moment, any moment can fall either way. He knows this now. A truck may barrell through a red light a mile from where you pull a jack and a spare from the trunk. The waitress who serves you breakfast on a morning she was supposed to have off may be the very woman that now yells at your four year old to get back in the car as you tighten the last lug nut on the spare.

What the hell, he cries as his ex-wife, his grown children warn him of the dangers of swallowing unresearched vitamins and herbs; why not, he challenges as a doctor tells him there is no chance. Why not an unforeseen tragedy as likely as an unheeded miracle, something wonderful as likely as nothing at all? And so here he is, dancing, the juices of bitterroot with a pinch of ginseng churning in his hot blood, a daily meditation, a prayer on his lips, mixed with the words of a song. He should be home in bed, his ex-wife fluffing his pillow, his son reading from some book, a daughter measuring out liquid into a syringe. But here he is, you realize, dancing, dancing, dancing; dancing like tribes once danced for rain, for freedom, for good fortune. And what the hell, you think. Why not?

A moment later the lights come up, the music fades, a groan of protest rises from the crowd. You watch the man in the red shirt head to the bathroom and you follow him, you watch him in the mirror as he pats at his face and neck with a wet paper towel then takes a large yellow pill that you imagine is bitter and hard to swallow. He turns to you and you are startled at his yellowed eyes, the fluttering skin over the hollow of his throat, the pale flesh
of his face.

He looks at you and you gasp slightly as you imagine an unfinished bridge arcing out over a shimmering body of water, a long stretch of suspended road that ends a bit more than midway, not nearly far enough. You imagine that he is as surprised as you to find this here, as sorrowful, and yet he is gathering his bones for a running start, he is diving, bellyflopping, cannonballing, he is soaring out over the water and laughing with the rush of air against his bare skin. You watch as he falls slowly, a long shadow darkening the glassy waters, then he shatters the surface like an explosion and is gone.

You stand for a minute, watching your own still image in the mirror, the silence buzzing in your ears until it is nearly more than you can bear. When you emerge the place is empty and the man is gone, though you think you can see the faint outline of a straw hat bobbing down the street.

Later, a bit drunk, you will call a distant city and tell her about the spectacular diver you met. A cannonball contest, you will say, just like the ones at camp when you were a kid. There will be music in the background, a cat weaving lazily between your legs. You will make absurd splashing sounds with breath against your tongue, and looking out the window, your eyes will linger on a neighbor’s glowing porch at the instant an unseen hand reaches for the wall switch and flicks off the light. What are the chances, you will ask. She will laugh, confused, slightly disoriented at this late hour, and before she can respond, you will say, in a steady voice and without hesitation, “Let’s dance.”