Three forceful knocks on the door of Joe’s Tavern are unacknowledged. Joyful voices and laughter are heard inside. The knocking starts again and doesn’t stop until someone near the door decides to see what’s going on.
A man dressed in funny clothes is standing outside. He is distressed.
“What’re you knocking for? You know you can just come on in any time before two?”
“Oh.” The man enters, walks to the bar, and says “Hello Florence. I’d like a cosmo-tini.”
“I haven’t seen you in here,” says Florence. “How’d you know my name?”
“We, um, we must have met in passing once,” says the man. “I’m not an important person.”
“Alright then.” She makes his drink to the best of her ability and sets it on a napkin in front of him.
The man says “My name is Michael.” He turns his attention to the drink, picks it up gently, and investigates its light pink color. He gulps it down.
“Whoa, there,” says Florence. “You want another?”
“No,” he says. “Not right now.”
A woman in a khaki fabric jacket takes a seat next to him. Her hair is wavy and red. Her eyelashes are covered with thick black mascara. “Fell off the wagon again?” she asks.
“What wagon? I thought you went to Europe.”
Her name is Tracie. “You know I gave up on that dream a long time ago,” she says. “When did you start drinking again?”
“Just now. I had a cosmo-tini. But I finished drinking it pretty soon after I started.”
“Is everything alright? Do you want someone to talk to?”
“That would be good, actually. I can’t say I know how to deal with what has happened.”
She nods her head and makes a motion to leave. He stands up and saunters to the door. Outside, the hard snow crunches beneath their shoes like breakfast cereal.
“I don’t know how I got here,” Michael says. “I don’t know how to get back, and it doesn’t feel good at all.”
“You’re talking about being sober?”
“No. I know how to be sober. I’m talking about a big blue glowing circle on the floor outside of a bathroom that I fell into. When I hit the ground, there was a sensation on the front of me which was the opposite of pleasure. I couldn’t stop focusing on it, but I really wanted to. Then I started to learn that the opposite of pleasure doesn’t only have to be physical here. It’s mental as well, which is even less good.”
They stop walking. Tracie says “Are you really that drunk?”
“No,” says Michael.
She sighs and walks away, quick footsteps fading to silence.
He sits on the ground. He sees people. A few of them seem to be considering the same plethora of misfortune that he finds himself immersed in.
One person without a smile is coming toward him.
“What is this place?” he says. The anxiety in his voice is exaggerated. “Why isn’t everyone happy? Why isn’t everything either good or avoidable?”
The stranger chuckles and keeps going.
Michael hunches over and something salty begins to leak from his eyes. It trickles down his cheeks. With his head between his knees, he lets out a moan.
Surprised by himself, Michael jerks his head up and sits in an upright position. Two people are in the immediate vicinity. They are staring at him. The mental feeling is back.
Heavy footfalls approach. “Hey, fella. What the hell’s the matter?”
“I don’t know where I am. Nothing is good.” The process of letting salty liquid out of his eyes is making it impossible to speak clearly.
“You mean you’re lost?”
“I guess you could say that.”
“There’s a gas station about a block from here. They’ll be able to point you in the right direction. Get up. I’ll show you where it is.” A hand extends, helping Michael to his feet. “So where did you come from?”
“I don’t even know anymore,” Michael says.
They pass Joe’s Tavern on the right.
“You mean you don’t remember?”
“I don’t think you would believe me if I told you.”
“Then you might as well tell me anyway.”
Michael is contemplative. “Another dimension.”
“Yeah I feel that way too sometimes. Well, the gas station is up here. The people are usually helpful.”
Michael says “Thank you,” and he crosses the street.
Inside the gas station’s attached convenience store, he is greeted by a wall of warmth. His skin welcomes it like a host welcomes important partygoers. His feet and backside are still chilly, but the rest of his body is becoming warm. He closes his eyes and feels a soothing sense of temperature regulation. Every nerve in his body enjoys the transition.
“Sir?” says the pudgy teenager behind the counter.
Michael opens his eyes. “Hello,” he says.
“Anything I can do for you?”
“There was, yes, but I don’t remember what.” He takes a breath of warm air, and asks “Do you have any fish oil?”
“No.”
“How about tomato paste?”
“If you’re hungry, there’s a restaurant down that way.” The teen points his finger behind him.
“Alright,” says Michael.
“It’s a pretty good spot.”
“I’ll go there.”
“Have a good night, then.”
“You too.”
“Enjoy your dinner.”
“Okay.”
Waiting for his seat at the Italian restaurant, Michael is reminded of home. The waiters and waitresses look jubilant every time they talk to a customer, as though they’ve learned whatever secret it was that everyone took for granted where Michael was from.
One waitress prances over to where he is sitting. She beams at him and says “We’re ready for you! Right this way, please. My name is Jessica and I’ll be your server. How are you today?”
“I’ve been better,” Michael says. “How do you waiters and waitresses stay so happy?”
She leans toward him and says “Between you and me, acting like this is the only way to get good tips.”
“Hmm. Everyone always tips exactly twenty percent where I’m from.”
“Wow. Where are you from?”
“Uh, Texas.”
Michael orders a seafood fettuccine. Each bite is culinary perfection. He orders another one. When the second plate is halfway empty, his stomach bulges and feels as though it might rupture.
He takes a crisp 100-dollar bill from his wallet, examines Benjamin Franklin’s portrait, and hopes the currency is valid. Putting an empty glass on top of the bank note, he stands up—with difficulty—and leaves.
His cheeks and ears are reacquainted with coldness outside. Joe’s Tavern was not cold. Michael’s gut tells him that being warm, sitting on that comfortable sofa near the corner, and silently digesting pasta are the only three things worth doing.
His pace is fast. He desperately needs to find a way to get back to his home where he was always okay. He was never euphoric there. He was never negative either. Home is a place of stable balance. This strange new balance of eventuality and scarce abundance has more potential. It is potentially broken.
He recognizes the spot on the sidewalk where the drops fell from his eyes to become splatters on the concrete. He has passed Joe’s Tavern.
Inside, there are less people than before and Tracie is sitting alone at the far end of the bar. Michael tiptoes to the only sofa in the tavern, out of her line of sight.
The leather couch engulfs him. It embraces the vagabond, relaxing his tense joints and muscles. It is warm and soft. He is sleepy. His eyelids droop.
“Where did you say you came from again?” Tracie is sitting beside him.
“It’s a long story,” says Michael without opening his eyes.
“I went to your house.”
“I live in this town?”
“Your wife would have wanted to see you. She is still very concerned about your drinking habits of the past.”
“I’m married, too?” Michael is awake and alert.
“When I got there, you were wearing one of those ugly sweaters you like, and you had been playing board games with your wife and children since six o’clock.”
“My sweaters are ugly?”
“You’re Michael, but you aren’t. I don’t know what’s happening.”
“I don’t either, and I tried to tell you, but you walked away and left me feeling the opposite of good in every way.”
“The word for that is bad.”
“After I felt bad, you won’t believe what happened.”
“Maybe we should have this conversation somewhere else,” Tracie says.
The teacher and the learner of feelings stroll through a snowy gravel parking lot. They get into an old Chevy Blazer.
“Turn the heat up,” says Michael.
Tracie revs the engine, flips a switch on the dashboard, and drives down the empty road. She had been drinking nonalcoholic apple cider all evening. She lights a cigarette. “So it was a big glowing circle that brought you here?”
“Yep. I tripped and fell into it.”
“And you landed in the snow outside Joe’s Tavern?”
“Yes. My body felt very bad when I hit the ground.”
“You mean it hurt,” she says.
“It hurt. It was bad. Do we really need both of these words?”
“You’ll see.”
“Could you turn the heat off? Too cold is bad, but too hot is bad.”
Tracie flips a switch. “So, what was it like before you fell into the glowing circle?”
“It was the same as it had always been. Everything felt good or didn’t feel like anything. You could still get frostbite, but it didn’t hurt. You would still be mistreated from time to time, but it never felt bad. People knew what wasn’t good, and they tried to avoid it, but if they couldn’t, it didn’t usually matter. Everything else was exactly the same as here.”
“Sounds like a paradise. I bet you’re trying to get back as soon as you can.”
“I should go back.”
Tracie turns on her CD player and a melancholy song plays. It has acoustic guitar, tambourine, and raspy female vocals. The girl sings about meaninglessness.
“This music is making me feel both good and bad. I don’t like it. All I’ve ever heard is dance music.”
“Yeah, this song is sad.”
“Sad?”
“It’s somewhere in between bad and hurtful, but for your mind. And most of the time there’s a bit of goodness in it.”
“Confusing.”
“Exactly.”
Tracie turns down the volume. They continue to drive. A lit-up sign appears in the distance.
“Did you eat?” Tracie asks.
“Yes, I was going to tell you about it. I ate pasta. It was fantastic. The sauce was delicious and the shrimp was succulent. There were breadsticks too, and the texture mixed with the flavor of them was—”
“Let’s stop at this diner. We’ll get you a piece of cake for dessert.”
“Alright.”
The diner is filled with fluorescent light. Michael and Tracie are the only customers. They sit in a booth.
“Two pieces of German chocolate cake,” Tracie tells the waitress. “You’re gonna love this,” she says to Michael.
“I really have to use the restroom,” he says.
She looks over his shoulder and says “It’s in the corner.”
The white linoleum of the floor shines bright as he makes his way to the blue sign with a white arrow that indicates the restroom’s location. The hallway leading there is long. Michael sees a blue sign with a blocky white person that indicates which gender is supposed to use which restroom. His bladder feels like his stomach did. It hurts but it won’t burst. At the urinal on the wall, gazing at opaque tiles, he learns the true meaning of relief.
His hands washed, Michael is eager to experience what cake is. He opens the door and emerges with zeal.
A blue glow causes him to hesitate.
It causes him to stumble, but he doesn’t let go of the door knob. Down in the circle, people are smiling. Those people would not know what to do without him. This new place had been nice to see. He would miss it, if he left.
Michael creeps around the circle, struts down the hall, and sits across from Tracie. She looks lovely. On the table between them are two pieces of cake.
Simon M. Brooks grew up in Southeast Alaska, where it rains about 13 feet every year. He spent his formative years in a puddle and moved to Oregon, where the weather is comparatively dry and the people are more contemptuous of water that falls from the sky. After college, he stayed in Oregon and began attempting to write good stories, among other things.
