Seed Part Two: The Well

(i wrote this after meeting a charming bartender downtown.)

THE WELL

Jameson, rocks.
It is two in the afternoon on a Tuesday and there are only three people at the bar. Rebecca is not really used to it being real busy, maybe 45 minutes around lunch but she usually leaves before the night hawks come and ravage the place. She pours the older man his Jameson.
There ya go sir.
Thank you ma’am.
That will be four fiddy.
Open up a tab, will ya?
Sure thing. Would you like a menu.
Nope, ill just be drinking a bit.
Well good.
She has her brown hair tied back with two ink pins. No makeup ever. Naturally pretty.. The guy is some older guy who obviously is hitting on her but he is being sweet and inoffensive so she doesn’t mind. The dishwasher, some Mexican, runs up.
Glasses?
Yes sir here you go.
She hands him a bin full of shot and beer glasses.
Her body feels sore and her head hurts. A semi truck of an image explodes in her mind of her running down the side of this crisp blue ocean, naked, with somebody who loves her chasing right behind her. She never cares to imagine who he is. There are dark circles under her eyes but there is not the rot of depression or dread in her bones. Some people have it and are born with it but she is not. Still there is a red mask of sadness that you can inhale and wear every once in a while. This one of those red mask days.
I dropped out of college and now I am here in a bar with guys looking at my ass, not that I have an ass but they get drunk and anything will do. pays nice. Art school fuck. Art school, fuck. I hate this fucking job and I hate the people and…
The old man says something to her in German and starts laughing.
Do I even want to know what that means Henry?
I reckon you would slap me in the face if I did…hahaha…
He chuckles loudly and smiles. She smiles back.
Your something else Henry.
The bar is wooden and old, and everything collapses onto itself. Old newspaper articles about something that happened the year the bar opened or when a fire broke out or when word war 2 was won, the black words bleed ink into the floor and people leave inky footprints as they run out of the destruction and death of being a bartender in the afternoon.

Another Jameson please.

Later that night she is at her apartment and her roommate has just left to go to some reggae night at some stupid bar. She is in her pajamas and watching a sitcom where this dad has to put up with crazy shit from his bitchy wife and his insane kids. She rubs her hands over her legs and is disgusted with how long it has been since she has shaved them. Whatever, its too cold for shorts and there is nobody around to see them. They can be as hairy as I want. That red mask slips on for a second. She thinks about maybe masturbating, just out of boredom, but she doesn’t feel like putting the energy into it. off to the fridge and off pops the cork in the wine.

She is running naked again. The ocean is now black and it looks there are a million arms drowning in it. There is nobody running after her but she is not scared. The sky is red and there are pieces of it falling into the ocean, red square pieces. She stops running and cups her breasts. She looks down and her belly is big and pregnant, and there is blood running down her legs. All of the arms are wailing and dieing but there are only arms. She whispers to her self that the arms are the only things that are alive. The blood reaches her foot and runs into the sand. Some pieces of the sky fall on the hands and they explode in silent little blasts of blood. The blood runs down from inside of her, down her leg, over her foot and it starts to trickle down in a straight line in the sand. She hates the thing inside of her belly and she looks behind her for something to cut it out with. The line of blood reaches the ocean and all of the hands get pulled down and the sky just falls and now everything is red. The sand is red. She hates the thing inside of her.

She opens her eyes from the dream. She isn’t scared but she feels over her belly. Thank god she says and lights up a cigarette.

I don’t fucking care you don’t talk to me like that.
Hey girl I didn’t mean no harm baby, I was just letting you know…
You were calling me a fucking whore and no one talks to me like that. Go fuck yourself.
Sounds like you need to be checked girl.
What does that even mean? You would be very smart if you walked away from me right now.
How about I start over? Whats yo name?
How about you go somewhere and fuck yourself you big faggot.
Fuck you bitch.
You’re a faggot.

She leaves the coffee shop and lights up another cigarette. Some ghetto ass piece of shit who thinks he is a hustler or whatever wannabe wigger shit who thinks anything they say is gold and every girl will just melt. She has always been the first to make an advance, innocent or not, end quickly. Guys who talk like that should be fucking shot. In high school and even now her reputation is only that she will tell a guy off or that she is meaner then most girls, which she hates. That’s all I am? A chick who is slightly smarter? I’m different because I don’t blow guys ten at a time? What the fuck is wrong with this place. She walks to work, cigarette in her left hand and coffee in the other, thinking about how rad it would have been to pour the coffee all over his face and hear him cry and scream ow it burns! that’s not right, I shouldn’t think like that. But she giggles anyway.

Lunch is busy that day and she loves it because it makes the time go by faster. 3:00 rolls around and no one is in the bar and she is bored. She turns the radio station to ballads from the seventies and Fleetwood Mac starts playing. She does a little dance. She is so fucking bored. A guy walks in. He looks to be about her age. He isn’t immediately attractive but he looks all right and he says hi but really doesn’t seem to pay too much attention to her.
You want something to drink?
Well shit, what’s your cheapest whiskey?
Um I don’t know, let me look… everything from the well is four bucks.
Is there Jim Beam in the well?
Yes sir.
Well Beam it is.
Rocks?
Nope, no rocks.
She pours his drink. His voice is low and gravely. She likes him. He sits and doesn’t look at her and he is just in a t-shirt and jeans. His eyes, she likes his eyes. His face is shaven and his hair is short. He looks clean cut but his eyes say to her that he isn’t.
Never seen you in here before.
I don’t think I have been here before.
You from here.
No I live out in boonies. I’m in the city kind of site seeing.
There isn’t much to see, isn’t there?
Not really. I went into a catholic church. Never been in one before.
He sips his whiskey.
This is a nice little bar though.
Yeah it isn’t too bad.
You usually work during the day?
Yeah.
That sucks.
Not really. I get the evenings to do whatever. Tips could be better but I’m not complaining.
I guess so. What’s your name?
Rebecca.
My name is Mike. Nice to meet you.
They shake hands. He looks at his watch and downs his drink.
Maybe ill stop in again sometime.
Yeah, I’m always here.

She goes home and her roommate is gone again(she is always gone, Jesus, how does she afford the rent?) she goes into her room and locks the door and turns the lights off and takes off her pants and gets out her vibrator which is shaped like a little turtle. She gets off quickly and cleans it off and puts it back in her drawer and turns the lights on. She makes her self some noodles and watches the news. She thinks to herself that she wants a boyfriend, and that pisses her off.

She walks down a hall and every man she has ever had sex with or dated, every ones picture is hanging on the wall. Some pictures make her feel sad, other ones maker her furious; others make her happy sad furious and lonely all at the same time. The past is the worst kind of monster, every thing that is gone will always be standing in a hallway waiting for you to walk down it and feel it and remember with teeth that tear your heart out. She runs to the end of the hall and stands there. There is no tragedy in my life. There is no drama. There is just everything that was. I need to get something and blow it up. I need to live. And I know it and nothing is permanent.

The sky swallows up the bar and the bar explodes again into tiny shiny pieces. She is naked on the beach and she is not pregnant and Mike runs up to her. It’s not the Mike she met at the bar but some perfect lover, some perfect thing who loves her and doesn’t think she is just some mean independent chick who hates everything and loves cats and reads horrible vampire novels, no she is a good and kind person who knows who she is just enough to be ok. Mike comes up and looks at her and beer bottles are falling out of the sky and he holds her and she rests her head on his shoulder. She knows this is a dream but the warmth is real and she loves it and she loves him, this Mike, oh Mike you smell and kiss and make love and listen better then anyone else, you listen to me and like me and in my dreams my heart is big idiot but you love me right now, whatever subconscious figment you are this is love. The sky doesn’t turn on her, but the bottles keep raining.
She rolls over in bed. She thinks about work in the morning, and how much of an alcoholic her roommate is. She does not think about Mike, dream or otherwise. She goes back to sleep.