Dancing in the Wind

My fingers are silky, my hand cradles a lustrous photo. Emerging from a yellowed sheathe, it rocks in my palm, refracting the glints of the bedside lamp this way and that. Amidst the disarray of my thoughts and feelings, a draught flips the picture over to its velvety white side where the penmanship is a marvel.

“Will you ever forgive without anger?

Will you ever forget without hatred?

Will you ever call me Noodle Girl?”

How did she know? Did I sigh it, my eyes shut tight? Did I blurt it out, cast from the depths of my heart? She must’ve known, for she'd unbind her ponytail and approach with her locks unfurled…

***

I waver at the entrance to Nobby’s, my glance skyward through the rusty awning grating; the faded orange-brown at the joins like dying stars in the forever blackness. My throat tingles with a gulp of the nippy Colorado air. A suppressed cough into my fist rings in my head. With the dewdrops, the blast of spittle in my palm, like fallen mizzle.

Etched in my memory… a modest glass door would’ve opened into the foyer, into the bar and dance section, flanked by the dining area. Of course, on those heady nights, the tables and chairs were moved to the side to accommodate the encroaching dance floor. The busboys scurried between the lobby and dining room, all the while checking out the dancers. Singles, singles with newfound partners, and couples glided across the glistening hardwood surface in fashionable dresses, and jackets, but most favoured chic jeans and tee-shirts.

The couples I found, were the most interesting, the most handsome couple, the most graceful always the focus of attention. The ones who took dance classes were well coordinated until they slipped up, then they stopped dancing, and discussed how they went amiss. One of the pair wanted to start anew, the other from where they slipped up. Then they would’ve argued, and exasperated, would’ve left the floor.  

Had there been the darkened glass, I would’ve pressed my nose against it, my nasal outline forming in a breathy fog.

Now, my nervous hands feel the crude entrance, plank, smooth mostly, my touch straying away from coarse grain, but I wince at splinters in the timber. My feet, shaky, like stilts; my body, rigid; my fingers, trembling as they flick the door open.

Swinging on its upper hinge, the rickety door creaks to a halt against a sandbag door stop. A tailwind sneaks in ahead of me; whispering, it meanders around legs, and dusts surfaces along its path. Bottles clink; rumpled hair flutter in the cool draught. A hush follows as glares raise from the tawny granules strewn on the floor to fix on me, unnerving me, the scarlet eyes on wrinkly, crusted faces blazing through the smoke and dust.

In the doorway still, I glance around as if unperturbed, and in a flash, the momentary hush shatters, and the din returns. 

I smile at my sense of the place, as I imagine patrons betting on when the door would fall. Yet it is a reluctant smile. My notion of this bar for the down and outs, that the things here, the people here, are so broken they couldn't break anymore, is more depressing than funny.

In the corner, the drunk passed out on the table, snores, snug in a most awkward position; his legs curled under the table one way, over the side of the table his body and hands twisted the other, his posture reminiscent of him in mid-nosedive. Flies buzz around his body, repulsed by his grunts, but they return to his dripping face when the sound ebbs; drawn to the stains on his shirt, they gather around the splotches.

At the next table, a man alone with a bottle for company. Two huge swigs were taken already since the door opened, but a great deal spouted out the sides of his mouth.

Nearby, a massive guy with a blank stare. His eyes, lifeless eyes, very much like that fat cat on the stoop outside, half asleep but ready to spring, ready to pounce.   

And on the far end, the rowdy bunch; five phantoms, hobbling in and out of the shadows under the swinging pool table light.

Amidst the gruff manners and brusque tones, I discern a faint sound in my ear and turn to the wooden bar counter.

The barman, leaning against the drink rack, flashes a deliberate wink at me. A conspicuous one at that too, that someone attentive enough, or sober enough, would’ve noticed. If they did, I wish they'd also said something about the awry rack; the bottles gathering towards one side of the rack is pretty apparent, although I try not to concern myself too much about that.

“Havin’ a good day, pal? the barman asks. “What’ll it be?” He holds his hands aloft, fingers splayed. “Left, or right?”

I get that he meant a double or triple. A smarter crowd would’ve perceived his attempt at wry humour (him missing a few digits in both hands) but not this lot of witless drunks.

Two chairs between me and the counter, both vacant. I’m there in nineteen chary paces. The bar counter, a dull, dirty piece of furniture surviving from years back, but shorter, and tapered at one end. An amateur carpenter, or a confused one.

But the tapered end is familiar. Is this the corner? The polish and shine my sleeves gave to this spot, it’s not there, the flecked lustre has disappeared. But is this the corner where I sat all those years ago? Where I met Clara.

I wonder if you remember, Clara, as I do?

Back then, my whiskey was sourer than the day before. Streaked with the oak brown liquid in my glass, the ice cubes melted, like speckled glaciers catching the passing light. Elsewhere in the bar, it was full; patrons on the floor, smoke in the air, spills everywhere.

Mouths clapped words into the smokey haze, words, tangling with other words in a cloud of noise. Ears touched moving lips in romantic whispers. Every laugh, a strain of an opus; every hug, a seductive adagio; every soft kiss, a passionate melody...

A warm breeze in my ear jolted me out of my dreaminess. It was you, Clara. You said, I don’t think that’s gonna happen, cowboy. Your melodic voice beside me, shut out the loudest shouts, and the softest whispers. 

Sorry? was what I asked, and I meant to ask,… when what happens? But as I turned around, I received the answer as if I did ask it.

You’re not gonna fit in your glass with your hat on, you said; your head tilted, posing, gloating over the veracity of what you’d said; and grinning. Pony-tailed, but a hanging twirl on the side of the tilt. Happy Clara, Noodle Girl. 

I couldn’t figure out if I should dive in with my hat off, or take my hat off, or why I should dive in at all. I arrived in town a few days earlier, seeking employment. Every night of those uneventful days, I sipped on a single drink the entire night. I wasn’t a cowboy, and the hat wasn’t mine. Do you still remember how you knew all those things?

You knew. Why else would you tell me you were looking for a ranch hand. And asked me if I had someone in mind.

I couldn’t speak; I pointed at myself.

You led me outside. Past the parking, through the patchy gravel on Leach Airfield, to the end of the smoked grey jut. You timed your stop, one step further…

I caught a pink sway out of the corner of my eye, but I couldn’t turn. If I did I’d turn into your face and how would that have looked. The scent of crisp verdure fluttered up the hillside, clothing us in freshness. My hair flitted about my eyes, swaying on its roots, and side-parted on the wrong side. But I didn’t mind it.

The undulating valley down below, green waves crashing into the sylvan enclave. We used to ride there. Along the pathways of Sulley Forest.

I missed it, you said. In springtime, you seemed like a ghost in the day as treetops shrugged their snowflakes on you, clouded over by vapour as she exhaled.

Her name was Misty, and you loved her, and I loved her. She galloped close to the paling before scaling the fence on Clayburn Road. Into McGillies Farm she went and doubled back. The touch of mischief in her. An appropriate match for you.

Did I show her more attention than the others; I thought she demanded it. I’d tuck her in. And check up on her, but I didn’t see you seeing me. I didn’t want you to see me.

Was it a year after I began employment…? Yes, a year.

I wonder if you remember summoning me to your father’s office. We were all there, the cowboys, cowhands, the cleaners, and me, in your father’s office. I partied the previous night. I couldn’t understand, I’d drank no more than I did on other nights. My head… my head hurt.

Misty was gone, you told me. Misty was gone! You had her for four years, nothing. And suddenly she’s gone, you told me. But why tell me? Why look at me? You stepped up close, so close you stepped on my boots, and told me you saw me around her, always. You asked me if that was what I was planning? That stung.

I couldn’t forget that. I wonder, Clara, if you remember at all.

As my mind returns to the present, I see the barman’s face turn sombre when he cannot conjure a laugh from the bar’s residents. I pity him. We became acquainted earlier that day; a little pity is what he deserves.

Earlier, I was leaning against a light pole outside Nobby’s when he popped out, munching on a burger and drinking a coke. He told me he was less hungry, more anxious I may have been casing the place for a robbery.

He hadn’t noticed me the day earlier, or he would’ve told me that too; he loved talking. Friendly, and imaginative, in a short time he yarned of his adventures and misadventures, of the good old days and recent times. I pretended to be absorbed in his stories, for I knew they were embellished, a few even lies. I guess I'd become accustomed to continuous rantings, so my mind blocked entry to most of his words.

His peculiar habit of reaching a certain point in his tales and going no further, concerned me. Somehow a buzzing fly, or a passing vehicle had interrupted him, and he wasn’t able to remember where he’d stopped. 

But I sensed something else; I could sense it a mile away—caution. Also, I couldn’t help being suspicious of him.

His looks, a bias against him being taken seriously, didn’t help him either.

Whilst not odd enough to scare bats out of caves, his appearance left the impression his parents wouldn't have easily taken ownership of him. A bent nose on an oblong face wouldn't seem bad enough, but it left one side of his face looking quite distinct from the other; like the scrambled reflection in a cracked mirror. And wispy strays dangling down the sides of his bald head; like a horse's head.

I hated feeling that way or judging him, but chances were people thought of me in all sorts of ways. All I did was continue the chain.

As he spoke, my gaze swept the sprawling scrapyard that years ago had been Nobby’s parking area, settling on the diminished extent and desolate state of the facade. The parking had once stretched far to the other side to the disused containers on the Airfield. The parking valets had a good thing going for them: renting out those containers as undercover parking. And they didn’t come cheap; those valets had expensive tastes.

The entire single-storey block would’ve been Nobby’s, as I recall, but now consigned to a corner spot, merely a few feet on either side. A stack of bricks had fallen in the adjacent alley, and the garbage had turned it into a dump site. I smiled at a dirty board near Nobby's entrance. "Stake," a misspelling, later altered to "Stale".  

My mood soon turned to melancholy, pondering, as I'd done the day before. "How long does it take to destroy a building?" I asked aloud, but not expecting an answer.

The barman bent sideways, arms akimbo, his brow furrowed above his squinted eyes. “Why you wanna destroy a building?”

I ignored him.

But I wondered still.

Could it have taken five years for the paint to flake off? Ten years when the wood swelled and split? I wouldn’t know, I wasn’t there. And twenty years? A sagging roof, salvaged lumber for a door, shattered windows, and here I was, witness to a past so shamelessly destroyed.  

The barman stared at me, his eyes piercing in his mosaic face.

“I mean, Nobby’s was a beautiful place twenty years ago,” I said.

“You’re right. I know… I was working here.”

“You sure…?” A squeak of surprise lodged in my throat. I knew Nobby’s back then, for a year at least. But I didn’t remember seeing him there.

It took him a while to answer, much longer than needed to compose a reasonable reply. “No, you’re right, it’s my fault… couldn’t have been, but I heard about it.” His face gained a dark tinge; the dusky sky reflected? or the aspect of a man knowing more than he let on.  

He had to get back to work and invited me to visit him later. Whilst I accepted his invitation, I harboured doubts about his history.

Now, inside the bar, he tells me, “You didn’t tell me where you’re from, mate.”

He’s right. But I don’t think I should tell him about the time I slept on dank floors eight-foot forward and across. It didn't rain in there, but I heard drips as if they came in through the roof and splashed into pots. The chill crept in through the steel bars on the windows and never left. And the sun, always out of reach, beyond that wall, beyond that fence. Beyond those guards. Bright on the grass and blooms on the other side.  

I don’t think I should tell him I’d hardly said hello to this place before I had to say goodbye. Although I’m still wondering what to call this visit.

He bends to the side for another bottle of whiskey, and a strip of light finds a photo behind his shoulder.

“I see you like horses,” I say, astonished. How would he twirl the reins around his few fingers? A laugh makes its way up from my tummy, so I feign a choke.

“Not particularly… this one, her name’s Misty. She’s a beaut, right?” He lifts the photo off the shelf, blows the dust off, and kisses it. “I made a barrow load with her… so I got me this place.”  

I ask him how he did it, and he proceeds with another of his tales. I squint at him—the pretence of attentiveness—but I don’t need to pay him any heed at all; his words float around in the space between us, my mind completing his sentences as I sift through his chatter.

My fingers squeak around the rim of my glass; they clench into a fist beside it, alongside the other fist, as I glean from his maze-like language.

“Here’s the thing… there’s this rich guy, see… Wanna do an insurance thing. Takes his daughter’s horse, the best of the lot, asks me to sell her over state lines… He tells the cops she’s stolen… Blames it on some schmuck… Poor guy, the girl too, never knew a thing.” And he laughs.

Will I be forgiven for the anger I'm about to unleash? Will my hatred at this moment be forgotten? Will I ever say, Noodle Girl?