The Old

Well, you know the drill, if you enjoy what I do read ahead, if you don't, then find another story and don't leave negative vibes. Let me just add how STRANGE it is when people give a low rating or even a very high rating to a SEGMENT of a story. Yeah, rating are weird and comments are few. Well, here's a new tale.

THE NIGHT BEFORE

Everything has been foretold, but who knows how to interpret it?
-The Red Book

“HELLO!”

“What are you doing tonight?”

“Staying inside.”

And to prove it, he was sitting in pajama bottoms and an old tee shirt full of holes with a cup of coffee on the table before him, and a half smoked cigarette in his hand.

“There is this club,” Erika continued on the other side of the phone, “and a friend of mine was saying how nice it was and I should come and visit, and I was thinking that maybe I should go tonight.”

“Well,” Lewis said, sipping from his coffee, “I sure hope you have a good time.”

“In fact,” Erika continued, “I’ll be off work in about a half hour, and I have some things to do, but by ten o’ clock, I’m thinking of going to the club would be a good idea.”

“For you?” Lewis ashed his cigarette and pulled his cardigan close about him.

“Well, you know, you could go too.”

“I don’t think I would like that.”

“I think we would both love it.”

“I’ve never really liked clubs. Or going out. But,” Lewis curled his feet under him and laid out on the couch, “if you wanted to visit then that would be great. Come over for a few minutes before you go to the club.”

“Or come and get you before we both go to the club.”

“I really don’t think I want to go.”

“You might change your mind.”

“I don’t think I will.”

“I’ll see you at ten. Or ten thirty. That’ll give you enough time, and then we can talk a little and head out to the club.”

“Or not.”

When Lewis Dunharrow was off of the phone, he laid back on the couch half asleep, then finished his cup of coffee and thought about the books he wanted to read, and the writing he wanted to do in his journal, and how good it was to be alone, and how it was good that Erika was coming over because he hadn’t seen in her in some time, but he had to be firm about falling for her crazy schemes and going off to whatever this club was with her. He was in the midst of telling himself that when the phone rang and he saw that it was past ten and Erika said, “I’m here.”

“Here I come,” Lewis said, and pulling on the old thick cardigan he’d found the other week in the laundry room in the pile of abandoned clothing, he left his apartment and trekked down the hallways and then down the stairwell wrapping down and down again for five flights of stairs, the next to the last one being where he remarked, “Damn this place is big,” and opened the door to walk out into the courtyard where he saw no one waiting on any of the benches. He stood there for a while, keys in his hand, hearing the noises of Sheridan Street at night, and he looked across from him where the west wing of the building stretched, it’s little yellow lights shining, and then he stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked into the middle of the courtyard to see that a car was waiting at the curb.

“I feel,” Lewis said, “That you weren’t taking me seriously at all when I said I wasn’t going.”

“I did think you’d change your mind,” a woman said after turning the loud stereo down.

“Well, you see I’m in pjs.”

She was red headed with a ring through her nose and a serpent tattoo went up her arm into her sleeve.

“I feel like you put on extra pjs to prove a point.”

“Well, maybe,” Lewis said, opening the door nad getting in the car. “Park in a better space and I’ll entertain you. We’ve got a while before you leave.”

As she pulled off and turned the corner to park, Lewis said, “For a brief moment I had the wild idea that you were about to drive off to the club with me like this.”

“It had crossed my mind,” Erika admitted, “but I knew I’d never hear the end of it.”

“I miss this place,” Erika said, looking around the high ceilings of the kitchen.

“The selfish part of me wants you to come back. But you’ve got that house, and you’ve got Vera, and children should have houses and space and yards.”

“Not to mention the animals.”

“You would definitely have to get rid of the bird.”

“You know it attacked me!”

“I see the bite on your hand.”

“I cried for a whole day after it did that. It’s like it didn’t appreciate everything I’ve tried to do for it.”

“It’s like it’s a bird,” Lewis remarked, crushing his cigarette in the ashtray.

“I promised Raven I would go to this club. And I think it would be good for us. I think we need to see new places and new things.”

“A gay night club isn’t really a new thing.”

“Well, this one is. It’s actually brand new, and think of all the people we might meet.”

“I don’t think we’ll meet anybody.”

And then Lewis said, “I feel like you really want to do this.”

“I do.”

“And,” he said, looking at the pierced brow of his best friend, “I feel like you really want me to go with you, and it would be shitty of me to say no,”

He had disappeared into the living room, and he was saying, “If I was to go, I wouldn’t want to stay more than an hour.”

“Oh no, me neither. We’re just going to stick our heads in.”

“And I would not want to spend the night at the bar buying drinks.”

“Well, I promise you, the first drink is on me, and I’m not having alcohol anymore, because you know the bad decisions I have made on it.”

“Goddamn it, Erika, you know, I really hate clubs,” Lewis said, coming back into the room in his green dress shirt, khakis and shiny black loafers.

“Slip these in your purse,” he said, handing her some battered old sandals.

“Oh, yeah,” Erika said, as Lewis slouched on a Burberry fedora.

“You look great, though,” she said.

As Lewis bent to blow out the candles on the table beside the sofa, tipping the brim of his hat away from it, he said, “Well, I appreciate that.”

“Tonight will be wonderful,” Erika declared as they headed out of the apartment,.

“I feel like that’s a false hope.”

As Lewis closed the door and they headed down the hall, Erika rejoiced, “My whole life is based on false hope!

“I LIKE THIS PLACE. It’s got a nice vibe,” Erika said as they sat at the bar. “It makes me feel really safe. Like no one’s going to take advantage of me.”

“That’s because it’s a gay bar,” Lewis said.

“And then you just look out there at Raven, and she, or he, I’m not exactly sure what Raven prefers to be called, just looks so free.”

“I guess everyone who’s not you looks free from the outside,” Lewis decided turning from the bar to look at the small crowd of people on the dance floor.

“I feel more attractive here,” Lewis said, “and at the same time not attractive. I feel like every time I go into a gay anything, it’s a bunch of men who are so used to pretending they aren’t looking at men that everyone walks around looking like they’re too good for you, or don’t want to talk to you. I forgot about that.”

Erika didn’t say anything, and Lewis sipped on his drink.

Lewis took out his phone to look at it and see how much of the hour had passed.

Three men who all looked attractive in the same way walked past them, heading past the bathroom and out the back door.

“What’s that?

“I think there’s a porch out back,” Erika said

“Maybe we should go out there and look at the people,” Lewis said it half heartedly, but he thought, better than sitting on this stool with someone who had wanted to be here, but didn’t know what to do, was seeing something new and interesting. They watched her friend Raven dance and occasionally Raven came up and danced beside Erika.

“She wants you to join her,” Lewis said.

“I just don’t have the courage for dancing when I’m sober. Sobriety is hard. I used to do all sorts of shit when I was high all the time.”

Lewis reminded himself that just days ago Erika had broken up with someone she’d been with for three years. To his mind, Jordan wasn’t that much different from the man before and wouldn’t be very different from whoever came next. In a time when he was younger and more easily hurt, he had resented the pattern of a friend who lived her life for whatever man showed up until he was gone, and then promptly lived her life for the next one. She thought this was a new moment. Erika thought she was newly single and finding a new life for herself. Vera was with her grandparents, and tonight Erika would go to bed alone. She thought that this was the beginning of an independent life and she was trying new things, and he was being slightly bored and accompanying her while she was doing it.

“This is a really good Long Island Iced Tea.”

“Raven says its called a Long Island Raven.”

“You know he made that up, right? Or she made it up or…”

“She’s so beautiful and free. Or he is.” Erika remarked as Raven two stepped into the middle of the dance floor beside, but not with, an overweight man and a girl who was probably his best friend, who loved gay night clubs because she, like Erika, thought they made her free.

“Raven looks like a man with Nellie Olsen’s haircut from Little House on the Prairie,” Lewis was about to say, but he stopped himself. What was wrong with him? What was all of this snarkiness? Why couldn’t he get out of his own head?

But then he stopped talking, because someone new was coming into the blue and red lit club. And it wasn’t that he was tall and white, that wouldn’t have been remarkable, or even that he had frosted blond hair and wrap around shades. That pretension wasn’t unusual either. But he was by himself, and seemed glad to be by himself, and he took off the shades and slipped them into the pocket of his leather coat, and then sat at the bar two seats from them. The bartender with the tight shirt over his beer belly came to him, and the man held out two fingers and mouthed, thank you, and then, a moment later, a glass of Scotch or bourbon came to him, and the tall man with the long face and high cheekbones nodded and sipped. He looked around a bit, and Lewis looked away, not wishing to be caught looking.

“I’ve just seen the first interesting thing in this place tonight,” Lewis said.

“Oh,” Erika said, wistfully, “I think there are lots of interesting things here.”

“No,” Lewis disagreed, taking another sip from the drink he was going to make last because he was determined to not spend money tonight.

“Who?” Erika’s eyes went vaguely wide, and Lewis tilted his head in the direction of the man.

“He looks kind,” she decided.

Lewis wasn’t sure what that meant. Erika was the kind of friend who would, in all sincerity, tell you how good you looked even when you looked awful. She was full of love and bad judgment, and what she meant by someone being kind or trustworthy, Lewis admitted he couldn’t easily assess.

A man came up and talked a while with the fair haired man, and then they both went out and smoked cigarettes, and Lewis thought that was the end of him, but then he came back alone with his drink. The second man came back and Lewis thought it was just about time to go because Erika wasn’t going to get anything done this night, and he didn’t want to spend all night looking at a random person. Not when something could actually happen, not when his phone was buzzing with men online who were not at this club.

“I wonder what that steel ring means,” Erika said. “I think it means he’s into bondage or leather.”

“Really?” Lewis said.

“I’m not sure. I think I’ve seen it somewhere before.”

And Lewis would have left it at that, but this time, when the man turned in their direction, Lewis decided to smile and wave, and he was completely surprised when this somewhat somber looking person suddenly smiled back He had large teeth, and he moved a seat over and sat down beside Lewis and Erika.

“I was just saying hello,” Lewis said. “No one seems to say hi here.”

“Oh, I think this place is very friendly,” Erika said.

“That’s because you’re not gay,” the man said before Lewis could say anything, and Lewis laughed while the man nodded, smiling.

“Straight women always come here thinking this place is so nice and peaceful because they get the one thing we get everyday. Invisibility. Why, I bet you dragged him out here, didn’t you?” he said to Erika, looking at Lewis.

“Well, I did think it would be nice for us.”

“For you,” the man said. He looked at Lewis. “You don’t look like the kind of person who would ever set foot in here.”

“Not really. You don’t either by the way.”

“No,” the man shook his head. “Friends ask. You don’t want to come, but you know you end up here because something in you says something might happen tonight. Right? No one encouraged me. I just told myself, something might happen tonight. And it did. You waved and smiled.”

“That isn’t much, really.”

“It’s more than nothing. What are you drinking?”

“A Raven,” Erika said.

While the man frowned at her, Lewis said, “A Long Island Iced Tea.”

“I will,” the man said, taking out his wallet, “get you that second drink.”

“Oh, no, I mean, we were really about to head out. I thought Erika wanted to—”

“No,” Erika said, her voice changing, “I don’t. In fact,” she said, insistently, “I think we should stay. I think you should definitely have that second drink.”

“You want something?” the man asked her.

“No,” Erika said. “I’m just getting sober again. I’m sticking to fizzy water.”