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I arrived a wreck at her door, pockets full of jukebox change, the Rolling Stones on my mind, boot heels caked with candle wax, a black eye not from fighting but from falling. I held up my right middle finger to show her my writing callous hadn’t receded since we last saw each other and started to tell her about the tides, but she’d already heard me tell this one many times before and once again reminded me that she’s living it.
There was a guy smoking a cigarette on her couch. He was wearing leather and looked pretty tough, though he didn’t scare me and didn’t try. I blinked a couple times when I saw his angel’s wings and she cooed to let me know I wasn’t seeing things, “they’re real!” We shook hands and played a game of chess while she made sweet tea and whiskey in the kitchen. Wolves howled outside her windows. Something scratched at one of the panes, wanting to get in.
I had finished my second glass and was pondering the nature of this creature when I realized I hadn’t been listening to the story the guy was telling me and that several minutes had passed since he pinned me in checkmate. I only heard the last line, “I would never hold a grudge against a fish.”
I laughed at the line and she laughed because I was laughing and put her feet up on my knee the way she used to and then all three of us were smiling and laughing, knowing we’d sealed the deal on being friends and clay of the earth at play on a new moon Sunday night. Just a few minutes earlier, I’d been nothing but a stray dog out in the rain.
I’d left my bass under the bench on the front porch but thought it a good time to bring it into the house. When he saw me walk in with the case, he nodded and said he had an extra amp and that she’d been singing some numbers with him the past few weeks. I looked at her and sensed that good times were ahead for the three of us.
It was more than enough to sleep on her couch that night after we hugged and she went into the bedroom with him. He was simply too cool to make me feel jealous and since she and I were old lovers it somehow felt obvious to us all that we were dealing with history lessons to be learned from, not fought over, and to his credit he recognized that behind the façade of the decrepitude of my condition I was still utterly at odds with the world and therefore an ally.
I fell asleep with the cat pawing fists on my chest and silent static on the television screen. The sun arrived from the other side of the Earth, its eye focused square on us three blessed monks of the night as the moon winked and tucked itself in to sleep. The world was ours.
I suggested blueberry waffles. She suggested clover honey. I was a worker bee and knew what this meant. A few moments of pleasure in the queen’s lair, then back out into the open air.
About Greg Bachar
Greg Bachar lives in Seattle. His writing has appeared previously in Conduit, Rain Taxi, Dislocate, Indiana Review, Redactions, Columbia: A Journal Online, Temenos, Pageboy, Sentence, Arroyo Literary Review, Southeast Review, and Pontoon: An Anthology Of Washington State poets. He earned his M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Fiction) from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the author of Curiosisosity, Dumb Bell & Sticky Foot, Beans, The Amusement Park Of The Mind, The Writing Machine, Sensual Eye, and Three-Sided Coin.
So sweet
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