In The Club In The Dead Of Night

She sat at the other end of the bar, hands tightly clasped around her Cosmopolitan, staring fiercely down at the bar top. You could see that she was different, somehow.

The music raged on, trapped notes straining to escape the confines of the large speaker-boxes hanging overhead. Bodies, bodies slick and wet as eels, continuously slithered around the club. Smoke trails flowed through the air, their camouflaged passage occasionally betrayed by the strobing lights. Everything moved, jangled, vibrated, brought alive with the magic of the night... everything but her.

There! A spirited motion, a flick of the hand, and her drink was gone. She brought her glass down, wrapped her hands around it, and resumed her motionless virgil. The bartender tottered over after a while, refilling her glass, careful not to spill any on her hands. And the cycle went on.

If she were quenching anything, it surely wasn't thirst.

The moment I approached her, penetrated the sphere of dead air around her, I could tell she was discomfited. It was the way her eyes twitched, almost as if she instinctively wanted to look at me but then stopped herself. I relaxed, back against the bar, legs stretched out. Two could play this game.

I took my chance when the music lulled, when even the tireless crowd tired of their vain attempts to dance away their worries and cares.

"I wanted to talk to you," I said. I knew she could hear me.

She mulled the request over, but not for long... all her instinctive shackles of caution were rendered useless against the lubricant that is alcohol.

"I don't even know you," she replied, voice tremulous. I was right, then.

"It's better this way, then, isn't it? I don't know you too."

She looked up then, transferring her steely gaze to me, giving sweet respite to that spot on the bar top that had suffered long enough. There was no way she could have seen my puffy eyes or my drained complexion or my uneasy smile in that light, but she must have seen something which told her all she needed to know. And when I recognized that look of understanding on her face, we both laughed.

"You too?"

"Yes," I said, "evidently me too."

She sighed, then after a short comfortable silence, "Makes you wonder how you're ever going to get through it all, doesn't it? Every sunrise seems dimmer, every night seems bleaker. No matter how many times it happens, it's always the same."

"It's never easier, whatever they say. But what can one do? Experience tells us if we keep at it, if we just concentrate on one foot plodding on after the other, there has to be some end to all this... darkness."

"Indeed."

My phone buzzed, and I casually fished it out. I read the message, replaced my phone slowly, and chuckled to myself.

"My friends. They're looking for me. I don't have much time."

"Oh? Then you better go," she said.

"There they are, in fact." I pointed over yonder, and she turned to look. But she was quick, this one. She examined my expression again, noted the grim tight smile I plastered on, and she understood. A meeting of minds.

"She's that one, that red one, over there?"

"Yes, that one. And I'm not even going to ask how you know. We're friends now. Friends. Just friends."

She laughed, a much lighter, tinkly laugh than the one we had just shared. She shook her head, then exclaimed, "Why, thank you, stranger. You made things a little better for me, knowing that there are sorrier asses out there!"

I got up to leave. I smoothed out my shirt, crumpled by this brief foray into the unknown. She had resumed her original hermetic position, and no one could have told that we had just had a conversation. A conversation, an exchange of words that meant something, that was now drowned in a sea of white noise.

I laid my hand on her shoulder. "Strangers we might be, but hardly as alone as you think. That will be nice to remember, yes?"

And I walked away. I never again met my friend in the club in the dead of night.