Instantaneous

It’s midnight. The bar with the neon sign glows through the window unto the slick road. Then, the light shines back into the boozy business. A car brakes squeak and a door slams, and a woman walks a couple steps, whipping the heavy glass door open. Click, click, her stilettos tap onto the waxed concrete floor. She makes her way to a stool and orders a virgin drink. The bartender sideway glances at her in bewilderment. She just ignores it, scanning the nearly ghostly empty establishment.

“Why would you bother even coming here in the dead of night to order a nonalcoholic drink at a sketchy bar, madam?”

She waves her hand out in slight irritation, “Just fetch me my beverage, would ya?” Acting like a tough-gal flapper in the roaring twenties, she pulls out a cigarette and lights it. Or maybe she’s a probing, tightly wound detective in black-and-white. The only other customer seated next to her minds his own until she asks, “wha’dda in fer?” like he’s a jailbird. The smoke rising turns shadowy with the dim overhead lamp.

The bartender refills the man’s shot glass. His head is down, his wide-rimmed hat covering any features. He fires back, “Lady, it’s been a rough night, K? I’m in no mood for an autograph, alright?” He chokes down the sharp-tasting liquor, and the glass clangs to the counter. She looks up at him and raises his chin up to get a better view of his face. In his sorrowful drunkenness, he allows this.

She shakes her head. “I don’t got a damn clue what yer talken ‘bout, yeah, K?” She takes a sip of her drink. “I said no alcohol.” She slides the glass across the bar for the tender to replace. “I know what that poison does to the liver,” she finishes.

He twists himself all up and shouts, “I know you’re following me. A pretty girl like you, I know, I’ve seen it all, wants me to sign my name on your chest or somethin’. I get it, you’re, like, 18, so you can’t order a real drink. But don’t try to sweet-talk me.”

She begins laughing hysterically. “Oh, this is so going into my book!” she energetically utters, breaking her character. Then she goes on, defensively, “Firstly, I don’t know you, OK man? And I’m over the legal drinking age, thank you very much.”

He tinkers with the bowl of peanuts, deshelling them and popping them in his mouth. “Yeah, sure, I know a crazy fan girl when I see one. Nice disguise, but it’s not fooling me.”

She pulls out a five-dollar bill and lays over her glass and gets up, disgruntled. As she stands from the stool, she pats him on the back. “I hope you got a safe way home.” She leaves the bar.

The man gets consumed with concepts of this woman’s persona. He feels bamboozled. He hurriedly darts into the pouring rain to find her. He yells, surprised, “You really don’t know who I am? And you don’t want an autograph?!”

Around the corner, she has her phone and an umbrella in hand, arranging for a ride to come pick her up. “I’m a celebrity! I was the voice—the singer—behind that movie called, “Just A Heart, And Nothing Else.”

He finally gains her attention. “Oh,” she says, perky, “that film based on a book?”

“Yeah.”

She smirks. “Well, you’re welcome for the job, then, because that was based on my book.”

They both face one another, eye-to-eye, reciting each of their names aloud: “Then you are --”

She gently inquiries, “Why are you here if you’re so famous?”

He responds, sullen, “I didn’t win best -- at the -- award show.”

Difficulty speaking, she mentally puts in the pieces herself. He is so drunk, he bends down grabbing his stomach in pain and begins throwing up all over her heels. She helps him and gets him to sit up over the curb of the road. “That nursing degree is finally helping me tonight.”

He looks to her, “Now why are you here tonight?”

She giggles, “Well, I was trying to reenact a scene in a book I’m writing.” She pauses, “It seems kinda’ lame when I say it to a complete stranger.” She rubs his back, consoling him through his nausea. “I’m gonna’ call you a cab for you to get home.” He slouches on her leg as she tries to get cell signal to order a vehicular pickup. “Is a limousine fine?” she jokes.

“My hotel room is just across the street. I’ll walk.” He tries to get up but struggles. She helps him up and down the road. She asks him what room, and she lays him out on the couch in the suite.

Then suddenly, a group of photo-snapping paparazzi and people with video cameras try to get into the room as she shuts the door. She pushes it closed and gets the man a trashcan by his side. The crowd begins screaming and pounding around the hallway. The piercing beat on the door is giving her a migraine, so her tolerance diminishes. “Now this is why I have an alias and not my real name! This is why I am not a celebrity!” She thrusts the metal door open with ease and yells out profanities and quite a colorful vocabulary, demanding they scatter. She gets into the camera and spits out articulate insults, almost literary. She sees more and more people push their way into the corner of the hall. She shuts the door again and leans over it in exhaustion. “Looks like I’m trapped in here tonight.”

The man is knocked out, until he wakes up a couple hours later with the lights on and a woman sneaking out of his room. “Did I? No—did I?” he asks himself about her, puffy eyes and in half-asleep confusion. He returns to an obnoxious snore.

Come daylight through the sheer hotel curtains, he checks his calls on his phone and sees notifications about news stories with his name in the headlines. His agent abruptly is ringing him, and he answers. The vexed guy on the phone chews him out regarding the woman making a commotion in front of the cameras and subsequent seen leaving his suite. He hangs up, wondering about her. It slowly comes back to him: “She is the author of the first movie I was in, and she helped me here since I was so drunk.” He yawns, “I gotta’ find her.” He goes to the lobby and calls out to a concierge clerk behind the desk with a headache of his own. “That woman last night—have you seen her? She took me up to my room because I was too intoxicated to even walk?”

“Sorry, sir, I have not.”

Then, the cameras resurface and surround him, the flash blinding him with irritation. Impromptu, he slips away from lightings and people, cameras and fans, and he trots to the hotel library, darkened and velvety, a couple soft lamp shadings. He sees a familiar woman in an armchair with her legs crossed and her head bent into a book.

Before he says anything to her, she blurts, “Wow, this book is amazing! Oh, that’s right, I wrote it!”

He is surprised, “You’re still here?”

“Yeah, well, I never left. All the snaking corridors in this place, I got lost, and stumbled my way into this library. If only I had a cigar. Now that would be a scene, huh?”

He puts her book down. “What’s better—the book or the movie?”

“Heh, that’s quite a dumb question, is it not?”

Unrelated and off topic, he gushes, “Write a song with me!”

“What?”

“Write a song with me. Think about it, I’ll teach you to sing, and you’ll write me a song, and we’ll sing it together.” He puts out his hand for her to shake in agreement. He goes on, “You’ll be famous.”

“I don’t want to be, though. It kinda’ sucks!” She yanks her book back. “Careful, it’s a signed edition.” She flips back to the page she was on, mumbling, “Ooo, I love this part. What genius storyline right here!”

He tips the spine of the book back, looking her square in the face. “Come on, let’s make a song together, it’ll top all the charts. I can regain my popularity status, because ever since that movie, my life has slowly fallen apart. This’s the least you can do!”

She slams the book onto the glossy side table, ready to verbally defend herself and her career as a writer. "Oh, give me a break, Mr. Supersta--"

 He interjects, “I can see it now: Instantaneous—the name of our song. Whadda’ say, friend?!”

“We’re not friends!”

“Not yet anyway.” He ponders for a moment, “This song can relaunch both of us! I get back in the top 100’s, and you get all your books purchased and read and talked about at book club—not just the one based on the barely-broke-even movie.”

“I’m not sure, this is just so sudden.”

“Exactly!” He begins singing, “Instant click, this instance, it’s instantaneous, all that miscellaneous…”

 “Damn, OK, let’s do it.” She shakes his hand. “I know a good writing opportunity when I see one,” she mimics. “But not with those lyrics. Well maybe. It could work. We’ll see.”

And so a friendship blossomed, then a quick romance, really just a summer fling, returning back to friendship as they wrote and recorded a song, watching as it rise on those popularity charts and streamings, collecting awards like magnets, occasionally sealed with a kiss or two. They constantly told and retold their story of how they met and kindled a friendly relationship to media outlets, hosts on late shows, and radio voices. Everyone wanted a piece of them and their appeal. It happened almost overnight, same with their comradeship, and immediate like their song.