I was always in the
corner. Life had put me in an unwanted place and in some people’s eyes
perhaps I’d given up the fight. But the corner was a good place for
observing things, so I tried to make the best of it. You can learn a
lot about the world simply from watching, yet so many people are
loudmouths, taking up space in the middle of a room, sprawling as
much as possible, and they never notice that everyone around finds them intolerable. Some mistake that for confidence, or power,
but I’d say it’s mostly stupidity.
Stupidity is what
got me here – although not my own. I suppose it could be said I
was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and now I’m in the corner
of this bar – observing. Nothing ever starts until 5 p.m., when the
bartenders start polishing glasses and stacking up glistening bottles
of spirits, all a kaleidoscope of colours and shapes. Perpetually
dark, the bar is underground, with walls of deep blue velvet, and no
windows to admit gasps of dying evening sunlight. Light hangs from
the ceiling in the form of reflective cut stone, tear drops dangling
from sculpted iron. The iron stretches like spiders’ legs
from webs of spindly chandeliers, and on each table flickers a fat,
waxy candle.
Then there are the
customers. Some are random, like vapid bumbling tourists, or grey
businessmen looking for a quick drink before returning home to
yawning domesticity, but there are also regulars. There’s the fat
man who slams his palm on the bar for a double smoked whiskey, or the
very young fellow with the gaunt, hopeless face who never says a
word. I relate to hopeless-face quite a lot; perhaps at some point
life just kicked him so many times he forgot how to smile, or the
feelings that could lead to such a phenomenon. No one ever asks him
his story.
No one notices me
either, or at least not very often. So what else can I do except wait
for her to arrive?
She usually arrives
around 8 o’clock, with the slow confidence of a prowling alley cat
that knows its streets. Tonight she’s wearing a little black cap
that sits askew atop her glossy raven waves, and a fitted black
jacket with a velvet trim. She paints her eyebrows with punctuated
glamour and her lips are deep blood pricked burgundy. I can’t help feeling
a tiny swell of excitement when I see her; it’s all I look forward
to every day.
As despairing as my
situation is, at least I see her. And she does notice me.
Sometimes she will blow me a kiss or send me a little wink. She is
the only one who seems to care. Maybe she grasps
the knowledge that my life drags on an endless prison? It used to
be very different. I miss the things I used to see, the places I once
knew. My body aches to its core, and I feel old, and as soon as she
turns around to order her drink, the spark dwindles and I’m left
yet again with nothing except my thoughts. I clench and unclench my
stiff hand wrapped in tape, like an injured prize fighter. I’ve
lost this match; I can merely hope for next time... but what if “next
time” never comes? Maybe the vague promise of next time is the sole grain that keeps a lot of us going.
Tonight, a man in a
long charcoal coat comes into the bar to talk with her. He kisses her
on both cheeks, and carries a spiral bound notebook under his arm.
One thing I know, is that she’s a struggling actress, so he could
be a director, or a playwright, or perhaps neither; they could be lovers. I feel suffocated, cramped up, trapped. Oh, to be this
handsome man, coming and going as he pleases, the breeze flapping his
coat around his legs, a seemingly endless world at his feet, even
smelling the light perfume of the dark woman’s hair. I miss
freedom, even things so simple as the texture of stones under my
limbs. Everything is flat, stagnant.
Before he leaves, he
says, “People only see fragments of you, yet in their minds they
build a holistic concept. Naturally, it’s almost always very
wrong.” Her eyes dazzle as he
presses the notebook into her hands,
and disappears around the corner stairwell.
Then,
I feel a slippery nudge. I’m shocked back into my own reality, as
another prisoner climbs on top of me, out of the way of that massive fleshy
hand that sometimes reaches into the ceiling of water above us. I
brace myself, immobilized by fear and tape, pressing my face against
a wall of glass. But it is not me they take away this
time, and I return to
watching the people at the bar.
This short story is dedicated to a lobster I saw in a bar in Prague... I remember watching him through the tank and feeling such a deep sense of unfairness about his life... so I wanted to immortalize him in a little story.
