The cackling stopped when Julia entered the room. Whichever direction the lazy winds blew before her arrival at the lounge, well, they'd quit dead and all mischief and debauchery would cease, with everyone suddenly maintaining strict levels of courteousness and digging deep into their dirty pockets, fishing for loose dollar bills. They'd sneak quick wettings of their palms with gooey saliva to slick back their hair in a sort of makeshift Sinatra do, hoping beyond hope that tonight could be the night where fair Julia might indulge them in a harmless drink and hardy conversation.
Julia had her routine too. She'd hold up two fingers, suggestively to the bar keep, willing him to send over two beers to the petite corner table and plushy parlor chair she'd sink into, methodically, and with sometimes ghoulish, aimless swigs from her bottle.
From what some in the bar had been able to gather during drunken rants - the devious truths of sour mash and suds - Julia worked as a "goddamn waitress" and that she didn't "make shit for tips." It was true; she waltzed in each night with a name tag and clicking high-heeled shoes, a sad curl fixed to her otherwise pouty lips. Her hair was normally fashioned up in a shell-like swirl before it ended finally in a tight bun at the crest of her head. Her eyes bore heavy black shadow, which within the dim saloon would reflect bony disposition to her face, a sunken socket pair that sometimes frightened those who were seeing it for the first time. Her curvy figure bowed left and right in an ancient dance with once-resilient physique, belabored now by an ancient affinity for alcohol. It wasn't Julia's body anyone cared about. It wasn't her eyes, or her hair, her lips or her desperate clicking heels; it was the holy match and clash of sorrow and benevolence that sat rigid and very alive on her face. Hers was a facade wrought with the sweet and the sour in equal measure, the dark and the light, the trinity of hardened, contemplative and forgiving all at once. She was a gift to man to learn the ways of man. She was the key to a heart too big and too bold for Earth. She was it.
Paul felt that he must have known Julia in another realm in time, that she must have graced only his sweetest dreams and pucker-kissed his furled brow in times of cold and solitude. Her aura radiated manic reverberations around Paul's crazy, buzzing, numbed head with calculated frenzy, strategically straightening the dormant neck hairs to a full and respectful attention, like frightened privates saluting a war-hardened general. Paul thought that finally, finally, this could be love. This could be it...
Paul awoke at 5 AM to the pre-sunrise mist of old, cruel , crumbling, sleeping New York. His virgin white walls sat lifeless in the void, still. Today was like every other day with regard to measure of repetitiveness. His keen awareness of place seemed still intact, unshakable somehow, save for the previous night's zombified focus upon his Julia. He wiped the sleep from the corners of his eyes to slander the mental image of her swaying bosom, her surly taunting and simultaneous tenderness with which she carried herself among the evening jackals at the lounge. The fuzzy silhouette mutilating his inner eye began to rival the stoic brood of Paul's antiquated day-to-day. His cell phone flickered and buzzed, luring Paul to rise, shower, get to work, never break the cycle, never falter from the winning formula that's brought him so many riches. The time was now 5:30 AM. And though Paul's workday did not officially commence until 8, he always arrived for the the pre-game tipsters at Emilio's Cafe.
Emilio's was a swanky, sueded den for moral arbiters and degenerate gambling swine to huddle and hunt for hidden trade secrets, to smoke cigars, to drink coffee, and to operate in generally mischievous fashion, even after the morning bell had rung. Before Paul began his regular jaunts to the lounge, Emilio's had been the impending degradation of his outwardly plastic disposition. Still, he managed to swindle his way into their circle. Except for today.
Paul hammered hard onto his buzzing phone. Everything grew brisk. Every focus mounted weerily upon holy wooden planks and the heavy steps of department store flats that were being planted on them. The pickled rows would bend, creak, bow at the insistence of ambling progression. Old maple stock sunk in pitiful angles 'gainst meaningless lunges and lurching toward the fabled tomorrows of the men and women of yesterday's promise. There was a twitch there. Paul blinked with rapid panic. His vision fuzzy, he rose from what he thought was bed. He phantom-felt for familiar paths to the bathroom where he could cool his head with brisk cold tap water and maybe a miracle pill. He tripped at the doorway when thinking that the bookshelf would balance his sway. Were it dreams that made the mind so crystalline? Were the heavens really there? Was Paul dreaming? Was Paul Paul? Suddenly, and with violent accuracy, the glass came down on the crown of Paul's head. Hot blood rushed down his face, burning his eyes, flooding his mouth. He heard the same faint steps of department store flats, quicker now, in an unknown direction. He fell asleep, and wouldn't wake again until the following winter.
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