Dancing After Hours (21 page)

Emily hoped the man’s injury was not to his brain as
well; she had a long shift ahead of her, until one o’clock closing, and she did not want the embarrassment of trying to speak to someone and listen to someone whose body was anchored in a chair and whose mind was afloat. She did not want to feel this way, but she knew she had no talent for it, and she would end by talking to him as though he were an infant, or a dog. He moved across the parking lot, toward the ramp and Emily. She turned to her right, so she faced him, and the sun.

The black man walked behind him but did not touch the chair. He wore jeans and a red T-shirt, he was tall and could still be in his twenties, and he exercised: she guessed with medium weights and running. The man in the moving chair wore a pale blue shirt with the cuffs rolled up twice at his wrists, tan slacks, and polished brown loafers. Emily glanced at his hands, their palms up and fingers curled and motionless on the armrests of his chair; he could work the chair’s controls on the right armrest, but she knew he had not polished the loafers; knew he had not put them on his feet either, and had not put on his socks, or his pants and shirt. His clothes fit him loosely and his body looked small;
arrested
, she thought, and this made his head seem large, though it was not. She wanted to treat him well. She guessed he was in his mid-thirties, but all she saw clearly in his face was his condition: he was not new to it. His hair was brown, thinning on top, and at the sides it was combed back and trimmed. Someone took very good care of this man, and she looked beyond him at the black man’s eyes. Then she pulled open the door, heard the couples in bathing suits and the couples at tables and the men at the dartboard; smells of cigarette smoke and beer and liquor came from the air-conditioned
dark; she liked those smells. The man in the chair was climbing the ramp, and he said: “Thank you.”

His voice was normal, and so was the cheerful light in his eyes, and she was relieved. She said: “I make the drinks, too.”

“This gets better.”

He smiled, and the black man said: “Our kind of place, Drew. The bartender waits outside, looking for us.”

Drew was up the ramp, his feet close to Emily’s legs; she stepped inside, her outstretched left arm holding the door open; the black man reached over Drew and held the door and said: “I’ve got it.”

She lowered her arm and turned to the dark and looked at Rita, who was watching from a swivel chair at the bar. Rita Bick was thirty-seven years old, and had red hair in a ponytail, and wore a purple shirt and a black skirt; she had tended bar since late morning, grilled and fried lunches, served the happy hour customers, and now was drinking a straight-up Manhattan she had made when Emily came to work. Her boyfriend had moved out a month ago, and she was smoking again. When Emily had left the bar to see the evening sun, she had touched Rita’s shoulder in passing, then stopped when Rita said quietly: “What’s so great about living a long time? Remote controls?” Emily had said: “What?” and Rita had said: “To change channels. While you lie in bed alone.” Emily did not have a television in her bedroom, so she would not lie in bed with a remote control, watching movies and parts of movies till near dawn, when she could finally
sleep. Now Rita stood and put her cigarette between her lips and pushed a table and four chairs out of Drew’s path, then another table and its chairs, and at the next table she pulled away two chairs, and Drew rolled past Emily, the black man following, the door swinging shut on the sunlight. Emily watched Drew moving to the place Rita had made. Rita took the cigarette from her lips and looked at Drew.

“Will this be all right?”

“Absolutely. I like the way you make a road.”

He turned his chair to the table and stopped, his back to the room, his face to the bar. Rita looked at Emily and said: “She’ll do the rest. I’m off.”

“Then join us. You left two chairs.”

Emily was looking at the well-shaped back of the black man when he said: “Perfect math.”

“Sure,” Rita said, and went to the bar for her purse and drink. Emily stepped toward the table to take their orders, but Kay was coming from the men at the dartboard with a tray of glasses and beer bottles, and she veered to the table. Emily went behind the bar, a rectangle with a wall at one end and a swinging door to the kitchen. When Jeff had taught her the work, he had said: When you’re behind the bar, you’re the ship’s captain; never leave the bar, and never let a customer behind it; keep their respect. She did. She was friendly with her customers; she wanted them to feel they were welcome here, and were missed if they did not come in often. She remembered the names of the regulars, their jobs and something about their families, and what they liked to drink. She talked with them when they wanted her to, and this was the hardest work
of all; and standing for hours was hard, and she wore runner’s shoes, and still her soles ached. She did not allow discourtesy or drunkenness.

The long sides of the bar were parallel to the building’s front and rear, and the couples in bathing suits faced the entrance and, still talking, glanced to their right at Drew. Emily saw Drew notice them; he winked at her, and she smiled. He held a cigarette between his curled fingers. Kay was talking to him and the black man, holding her tray with one arm. Emily put a Bill Evans cassette in the player near the cash register, then stepped to the front of the bar and watched Kay in profile: the left side of her face, her short black hair, and her small body in a blue denim skirt and a black silk shirt. She was thirty and acted in the local theater and performed on nights when Emily was working, and she was always cheerful at the bar. Emily never saw her outside the bar, or Rita, either; she could imagine Rita at home because Rita told her about it; she could only imagine about Kay that she must sometimes be angry, or sad, or languid. Kay turned from the table and came six paces to the bar and put her tray on it; her eyelids were shaded, her lipstick pale. Emily’s concentration when she was working was very good: the beach couples were talking and she could hear each word and Evans playing the piano and, at the same time, looking at Kay, she heard only her, as someone focusing on one singer in a chorus hears only her, and the other singers as well.

“Two margaritas, straight up, one in a regular glass because he has trouble with stems. A Manhattan for Rita. She says it’s her last.”

Dark-skinned, black-haired Kay Younger had gray-blue
eyes, and she flirted subtly and seriously with Rita, evening after evening when Rita sat at the bar for two drinks after work. Rita smiled at Kay’s flirting, and Emily did not believe she saw what Emily did: that Kay was falling in love. Emily hoped Kay would stop the fall, or direct its arc toward a woman who did not work at the bar. Emily wished she were not so cautious, or disillusioned; she longed for love but was able to keep her longing muted till late at night when she lay reading in bed, and it was trumpets, drums, French horns; and when she woke at noon, its sound in her soul was a distant fast train. Love did not bring happiness, it did not last, and it ended in pain. She did not want to believe this, and she was not certain that she did; perhaps she feared it was true in her own life, and her fear had become a feeling that tasted like disbelief. She did not want to see Rita and Kay in pain, and she did not want to walk into their pain when five nights a week she came to work. Love also pulled you downhill; then you had to climb again to the top, where you felt solidly alone with your integrity and were able to enjoy work again, and food and exercise and friends. Kay lit a cigarette and rested it on an ashtray, and Emily picked it up and drew on it and put it back; she blew smoke into the ice chest and reached for the tequila in the speed rack.

The beach couples and dart throwers were gone, someone sat on every chair at the bar, and at twelve of the fifteen tables, and Jeff was in his place. He was the manager, and he sat on the last chair at the back of the bar, before its gate. A Chet Baker cassette was playing,
and Emily was working fast and smoothly, making drinks, washing glasses, talking to customers who spoke to her, punching tabs on the cash register, putting money in it, giving change, and stuffing bills and dropping coins into the brandy snifter that held her tips. Rita took her empty glass to Emily; it had been her second Manhattan and she had sipped it, had sat with Drew and the black man while they drank three margaritas. There were no windows in the bar, and Emily imagined the quiet dusk outside and Rita in her purple shirt walking into it. She said: “Jeff could cook you a steak.”

“That’s sweet. I have fish at home. And a potato. And salad.”

“It’s good that you’re cooking.”

“Do you? At night.”

“It took me years.”

“Amazing.”

“What?”

“How much will it takes. I watch TV while I eat. But I cook. If I stay and drink with these guys, it could be something I’d start doing. Night shifts are better.”

“I can’t sleep anyway”

“I didn’t know that. You mean all the time?”

“Every night, since college.”

“Can you take a pill?”

“I read. Around four I sleep.”

“I’d go crazy. See you tomorrow.”

“Take care.”

Rita turned and waved at Drew and the black man and walked to the door, looking at no one, and went outside. Emily imagined her walking into her apartment, listening to her telephone messages, standing at
the machine, her heart beating with hope and dread; then putting a potato in the oven, taking off her shoes, turning on the television, to bring light and sound, faces and bodies into the room.

Emily had discipline: every night she read two or three poems twice, then a novel or stories till she slept. Eight hours later she woke and ate grapefruit or a melon, and cereal with a banana or berries and skimmed milk, and wheat toast with nothing on it. An hour after eating, she left her apartment and walked five miles in fifty-three minutes; the first half mile was in her neighborhood, and the next two were on a road through woods and past a farm with a meadow where cows stood. In late afternoon she cooked fish or chicken, and rice, a yellow vegetable and a green one. On the days when she did not have to work, she washed her clothes and cleaned her apartment, bought food, and went to a video store to rent a movie, or in a theater that night watched one with women friends. All of this sustained her body and soul, but they also isolated her: she became what she could see and hear, smell and taste and touch; like and dislike; think about and talk about; and they became the world. Then, in her long nights, when it seemed everyone on earth was asleep while she lay reading in bed, sorrow was tangible in the dark hall to her bedroom door, and in the dark rooms she could not see from her bed. It was there, in the lamplight, that she knew she would never bear and love children; that tomorrow would require of her the same strength and rituals of today; that if she did not nourish herself with food, gain a balancing peace of soul with a long walk, and immerse herself in work, she could not keep sorrow at bay, and it would consume her. In
the lamplight she read, and she was opened to the world by imagined women and men and children, on pages she held in her hands, and the sorrow in the darkness remained, but she was consoled, as she became one with the earth and its creatures: its dead, its living, its living after her own death; one with the sky and water, and with a single leaf falling from a tree.

A man at the bar pushed his empty glass and beer bottle toward Emily, and she opened a bottle and brought it with a glass. Kay was at her station with a tray of glasses, and said: “Rita left.”

“Being brave.”

Emily took a glass from the tray and emptied it in one of two cylinders in front of her; a strainer at its top caught the ice and fruit; in the second cylinder she dipped the glass in water, then placed it in the rack of the small dishwasher. She looked at each glass she rinsed and at all three sides of the bar as she listened to Kay’s order. Then she made piña coladas in the blender, whose noise rose above the music and the voices at the bar, and she made gin and tonics, smelling the wedges of lime she squeezed; and made two red sea breezes. Kay left with the drinks and Emily stood facing the tables, where the room was darker, and listened to Baker’s trumpet. She tapped her fingers in rhythm on the bar. Behind her was Jeff, and she felt him watching her.

Jefferson Gately was a tall and broad man who had lost every hair on top of his head; he had brown hair on the sides and back, and let it grow over his collar. He had a thick brown mustache with gray in it. Last fall, when the second of his two daughters started college, his wife told him she wanted a divorce. He was
shocked. He was an intelligent and watchful man, and at work he was gentle, and Emily could not imagine him living twenty-three years with a woman and not knowing precisely when she no longer wanted him in her life. He told all of this to Emily on autumn nights, with a drink after the bar closed, and she believed he did not know his wife’s heart, but she did not understand why. He lived alone in a small apartment, and his brown eyes were often pensive. At night he sat on his chair and watched the crowd and drank club soda with bitters; when people wanted food, he cooked hamburgers or steaks on the grill, potatoes and clams or fish in the fryers, and made sandwiches and salads. The bar’s owner was old and lived in Florida and had no children, and Jeff would inherit the bar. Twice a year he flew to Florida to eat dinner with the old man, who gave Jeff all his trust and small yearly pay raises.

In spring Jeff had begun talking differently to Emily, when she was not making drinks, when she went to him at the back of the bar. He still talked only about his daughters and the bar, or wanting to buy a boat to ride in on the river, to fish from on the sea; but he sounded as if he were confiding in her; and his eyes were giving her something: they seemed poised to reveal a depth she could enter if she chose. One night in June he asked Emily if she would like to get together sometime, maybe for lunch. The muscles in her back and chest and legs and arms tightened, and she said: “Why not,” and saw in his face that her eyes and voice had told him no and that she had hurt him.