The Fall of Icarus

A young man and a young woman sat in a bar and stared into their drinks. The lights were dim and seeing as it was late and a weekday most of the regulars had left already, leaving only the couple and a few down-and-outers to fill the silence of the night. The man was sipping a whiskey on the rocks with a quiet restraint, while the woman, seated next to him, was on her sixth twisted tea. A quiet song played in the background, melancholy and low.

The woman turned to her lover. “Do you want to keep drinking?” She asked, followed by a long gulp from her beer. 

“I’m not in the mood for drinking,” he answered.

“You’re never in the mood for anything anymore.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It was simply an observation.”

Across the room two old men were having a drunk conversation. Their words were garbled and distorted and unintelligible, but the man and the woman tried to listen. It was like hearing music underwater, the sounds coming out warped and strange.

“I’m gonna get another beer.” The woman said.

“Okay.”

“Excuse me, bartender? Another beer please. Yes, twisted tea, thank you.”

The man noticed a stain on the counter and it bothered him. He looked hard, trying to pinpoint the source, but the whiskey made him slow. He thought about asking the bartender for some paper towels. Maybe a new seat. But in the end he covered it up with his coaster and went on staring into the bottom of his glass. 

“Do you wanna go home?”

“Sorry?” He said.

“I asked if you wanna go home.”

“I wanna leave, yes.”

“So you wanna go home?”

He looked away and stared at the walls. They were painted a dark orange, like a rusty gate. “You like the color of those walls?”

She stopped drinking to inspect them. “They’re very nice, yes. Very attractive.”

“Better than the color of our walls?” He asked. “At home?”

She didn’t answer him. 

They went on sitting in silence like that for a good while. Outside the bar crickets chirped harmonious chords to each other, crafting a somber lullaby. In the woods surrounding the building, all the animals of the previous day were enjoying a long, restful, hard-earned night’s sleep. The nocturnal creatures stalked through thick brush or soared over scaly branches, looking or smelling or listening for their next meal.

The bartender approached the man at the bar. “More whiskey?”

“No. Thank you.”

The woman cleared her throat. “I need to talk to you about something.”

“It’s a beautiful painting,” said the man, pointing towards a portrait hanging from the wall behind the bar, “What’s it called?”

The bar-tender stopped washing mugs and looked up. “Landscape With the Fall of Icarus,” he said with tiredness. He resumed his washing.

“Icarus,” the woman said, turning to her lover, “isn’t that the boy in the myth that broke out of the tower with his father?”

“Yes.” It came out dry. “His father, Daedalus, was a great problem solver. He built the labyrinth for King Minos of Crete, to trap the minotaur in,” he could see the drunk in her eyes, “but was imprisoned in it with Icarus because he helped…”

“...his enemy Theseus escape from it.” The woman finished for him. “You forgot I was a classics major.”

“Right.”

A pause. The woman thought about saying what she wanted to say before but decided against it. “Remind me again why Icarus is--”

“What? I don’t know what what you’re say--”

“Remind me again why Icarus is falling in the painting.”

“Oh. Right.” The man belched. It was terribly hard to hear in this room, he thought to himself. The acoustics must be terrible. “Icarus,” he began, “was warned by his father not to fly too close to the sun, because the wings were made out of wax and would melt and fall apart if they got too warm. Icarus was a pretentious little idiot though and decided he didn’t need to listen to his father,” the whiskey was sour and rotten on his breath, “and so they get all suited up after Daedalus puts all this effort into this whole plan and what’does the kid do? I’ll tell you what he does, he flies right into the fucker, thinking he’s invincible and owns the world cuz he’s got a couple’a wings that his dad, Heather, that his dad built for him. Never thinking for two seconds two GOD’DAMN seconds what kinda effect that’s gonna have on his dad, watching him get swallowed up by the sun like that, all that warmth and all that freedom just so he could go plunging to his death, while his dad watched and thought why, Heather, why would you do this to me?” He stopped and tried to catch his breath, the alcohol clouding his mind and his words. The drunk men across the room had paused to listen to the tale as the man telling it became more and more animated, but after it was clear that the night’s entertainment was finished they went on talking in the same incomprehensible form that they had previously, just as oblivious to the couple as they had been before.

The woman pouted at the man and placed a hand on the top of his receding hair. “I learned in college that there’s two different versions of that story.”

“Did you?” He brushed her hand away.

“I did. One of them is just the way you put it, absolutely right. But in the other, it’s not the sun that kills Icarus,” he could hear her very well now, “it’s the moisture that clings to his wings from flying too close to the ocean,” she said with remorse, “from flying too low.”

There was another long silence while they each stared at the painting. In the world the hour grew late and the day time creatures started to stir from their calm slumbers, but in the somber catacombs of a run down city, in the roomy bar where the couple sipped their drinks in a refined silence, the music slowly dimmed and faded like the pale moon.

“If you could choose,” the man said to the woman, “which way to go, what would you choose?”

She answered his question immediately. “I would do what you were so worried about. I would fly towards the sun.”

“And why is that?”

The old drunkards retreated from the bar, leaving the room remarkably still.

“Because if we’re all destined to die someday, we might as well do it flying up into the sky. To tell you the truth,” she turned towards him once again, “The only time i’ve ever felt alive is when i’ve been close to dying. The only time i’ve ever felt free is when I've been burned alive.” She turned back towards the painting. “Maybe Icarus felt the same.”

Outside the bar the Earth went on spinning, remote and oblivious.