Priscilla, Come Down

If Priscilla was dancing on the bar, it was going to be a short summer. That’s why when we saw her do it, we started banging our glasses as hard as we could without breaking them. It was a little like the way they used to run Congress in the colonial days.

Order, order! Sit down, John!

Not that she listened. She’d been working at the bar since before she was old enough to drink, and by the time she was past fifty, she didn’t want to hear a damn thing about what we wanted or didn’t want. She didn’t even care that it was bad luck for her to be up there gyrating while Tina Turner played. Shep, who owned the bar back then, kept threatening to take “Private Dancer” out of the jukebox, but he couldn't figure out how to unscrew the damn thing. Some poor sap from out of town would show up, drop a quarter in, and the next thing you knew, Priscilla’s heels would be digging into the top of the bar right next to the stale pretzels and the five-dollar bills.

We were at the bar the night Priscilla pulled the Widower up onto the bar. Some of us swear his name was Frank and some say it was something a lot more interesting. For the purpose of telling a story, we’ll call him Frank, but just know that maybe he wasn’t named Frank. Maybe he was named Brooklyn Bridge. This was all a long time ago. Priscilla’s been dead for years now. She kicked cancer the first time, but the second time got her. Very few people beat the second time. Shep went a lot easier. He went to sleep one night, and that was it. Right in his own bed. Lucky SOB.

Where were we?

Right, the Widower Frank. He came in the bar one night about a month after his wife died. Cancer got her too, but it got her the first time. Poor thing. Not that we knew her. We didn’t even know him all that well, but back then, you read the obits, and that’s how you found out who was buying you drinks that night and who you were drinking to. Frank came in all timid a month after his wife passed, and he sat down at the edge of the bar, which was exactly where you sat if you didn’t want to be bothered.

Now, it’s more than possible that Priscilla didn’t know Frank was a Widower. He was still wearing black, but lots of people wear black, and it doesn’t always mean something. The thing is, he was at the end of the bar, so even if he wasn’t in mourning, everybody was supposed to leave him alone. He ordered a beer, and he’d been nursing it for about an hour when somebody from out of town went over to the jukebox with a quarter. Now, Tina Turner is one thing, but whoever that out-of-towner was decided to take it one step further.

They put on Donna Summer.

Whoever decided that Donna Summer belonged in a jukebox in a bar like Shep’s was a damn fool. This was not a disco. It was a place for men to go after a long day’s work. It was a respectable place. We’d get together and talk about what we would have done if we’d never had kids or gotten married or listened to our parents when they told us that a factory job was good, solid work that we should be grateful for. The only thing that belonged in that jukebox was the Stones or the Who or Eric Clapton. There was no place for Donna Summer, and nobody played her.

Except the one time they did.

We’re all sitting there, and the next thing we know, “Last Dance” comes on. You ever see that Roger Rabbit movie where if somebody does “Shave and a Haircut,” he just about explodes? That’s what it was like when “Last Dance” came on. The bar was practically full, and all of us who knew Priscilla looked right at her and damn if she wasn’t vibrating. She held it together for the beginning of the song when it’s all slow and steady, but as soon as the music dropped, she was up on that bar as quick as anything. There was no point in telling her to knock it off. We banged our glasses a few times, but you just knew that she was going to be up there until that song was done.

What we didn’t know was that she was going to make her way over to the end of the bar and lean down to offer her hand to the Widower. All of us just about froze. You don’t hold out your hand to a man who still has his wedding ring on. You don’t hold out your hand to a man who still has his wife’s clothes hanging up in the bedroom closet. You don’t hold out your hand to ask for a dance from a man who must wish he was buried alongside the only woman he ever loved. A few of us saw that and once the shock wore off, we yelled out--

Priscilla, come down!

Maybe she didn’t hear us. Maybe she didn’t care. Priscilla kept her hand outstretched, and the next thing you knew, she was pulling Widower Frank up onto the bar with her. We all expected the man to die from embarrassment once he got up there. He stood stock still while she did her little shimmy and her little arm pumps like she didn’t have a care in the world. The first go-around with cancer was coming, but it hadn’t arrived yet. Priscilla had the most beautiful dirty blonde hair you ever saw, and she kept it all tied up and out of her face, but if she was feeling some kind of way, she’d let it down. Standing up there with Frank, she tugged on the elastic holding her hair in one place, and let it all fall down. Some of us kept yelling for her to come down, but some were just covering their eyes. Waiting for it all to end however it was going to end.

Some of us still had our eyes covered when Widower Frank began to dance with Priscilla. It wasn’t any kind of joyful dancing. Those of us who really paid attention to it felt as though it was some kind of summoning. Frank had some Greek in him and some Irish and a few other nationalities, but all of them know how to mourn their dead. He was swaying with his eyes closed and his hands raised. He wasn’t so much dancing with Priscilla as he was adjacent to her, but between the two of them, it almost seemed as though there was a…a ritual going on. A ceremony. We never wondered who Priscilla might be dancing for, because we always assumed she was dancing for herself. Maybe that’s not true. Maybe she was dancing for us. Maybe she wasn’t. Doesn’t matter now. It was all a long time ago.

Priscilla and Widower Frank kept dancing up on that bar, and, pretty soon, you had someone else up there dancing with them. That same kind of lost-in-your-thoughts dancing. Doesn’t mean it’s all serious and glum. Far from it. It just means the music is important and there could be no music at all, and you don’t know what we mean by that, try dancing in your living room with nobody watching you. You’ll get it.

Another person hopped up on the bar. Then another, and another. All men. All men with wives and kids and jobs they hate and things they feel guilty about and dreams they couldn’t afford, because the factory paid just enough to keep you coming back everyday at eight and leaving everyday at six, and if you mentioned overtime, you got handed your walking papers. Men were climbing up on the bar, and Shep wasn’t there that night to tell everybody to get down. You would’ve thought the whole counter was going to collapse with all of us standing on it, but it didn’t. It held up.

When the song was over, we all got down the same way we’d gone up. Nobody cheered. Nobody tried to make an inspiring movie moment out of it. Priscilla was the last one down. She helped the Widower back to his seat, and then offered to bring him another beer. She tied her hair up and that was her last dance of the night.

Now there’s a Starbucks where Shep’s used to be. The factory closed during either Clinton’s last year or Bush’s first. Priscilla’s funeral was so packed the receiving line was stretched all the way out to the parking lot. The year she died, we had the shortest summer in history. The sun came up, went down, and the next thing you know, it was winter.

Widower Frank was the last person in Priscilla’s receiving line. He knelt down, said a prayer, and put his hands on the edge of the casket. None of us heard his prayer, but a few of us thought we heard him humming on his way out of the funeral home. It sounded like “Last Dance,” but maybe we’re making that part up.

It’s a story, you know?

There are a lot of ways you can tell it.