In the Season of Ice

An amber filled shot glass sat on the old wooden bar top scarred and dented with 100 years of service. Condensation rings from recent ice filled highballs fogged the newest coat of bar wax, but the shot glass Joey twirled between her hands was neither hot or cold, it reflected only the neutral heat of her hands “ How long had it been?” Joey gave the shot glass bracketed by her palms a half turn to the left.   “Five years now? No, six.”  She rolled the heavy shot glass clockwise now, so smoothly the liquid inside barely moved. 

God she was tired…… so God-damned tired.  Joey hung her head and a long soft sigh rippled the amber liquid’s surface.   “I can’t think anymore, I can’t even feel anything.”   Joey shuddered in a lungful of breath.  Jesus, it was almost too much effort to breathe.  She felt empty and flat.  “This must be what it is like to be dead” she thought.  Joey guessed that this was a relief of sorts.

There was nothing left of her. Inside, where the all-consuming fear had lived for so long, she could only feel heavy, dull numbness. “When had that happened?”  When had she lost even the capacity to feel fear?  

Slowly, Joey pushed her drink an inch to the right with her left-hand fingertips, paused, then pushed the drink an inch back to the left.  Joey sat in blank empty stillness for a long time, mindlessly pushing her glass back and forth. Then, the acrid scent of whiskey finally reached her brain, offending her nostrils.  Joey lifted her head and wearily leaned back into her bar stool. Movement caught her attention and she met the gaze of a haggard, hunted looking woman in the dusty back bar mirror.  It took her a moment to realize that the hollow looking, dark brown eyes she was being dragged into were her own; fatigued deep into their sockets, bruised with lack of sleep, looking as dull and dusty as the surface of the mirror which reflected them. “Who was that?”  Who was this woman with the dry, dull skin, and the uncombed, brittle hair?

“Tap, tic- tic tap”  Joey heard soft clicking and glanced down. She was tapping her fingernails on the bar top. She needed a manicure. Her normally well-groomed, painted fingernails were chipped in places and her nail polish had begun to peel. Her hands looked like the rest of her felt. 

 Music began to play and Joey interrupted her contemplation of nails and life long enough to look around the old dilapidated bar to locate it’s source; it was an old jukebox in the back, the kind with neon lights, and that old drunk shuffling back to his table must have sacrificed a drink to play the old love ballad now floating on the air. A drink to mute the misery, a song to make it blaze. It was the amber-liquid-fire’s always comforting, vicious cycle in action.

Joey started to turn back to her own gut burning comforter but noticed an old fashioned phone carrel with silver pay phone and paper Yellow Pages hanging from a chain. It took a moment to register what she was looking at. “Yellow pages.” she murmured, “ Let your fingers do the walking.” “Information at your fingertips.” “Answers.” 

“So what was the question?” She turned back to her drink and stared into it like it was a crystal ball. “Was there a question?” “Was there any question at all?” Joey dipped her finger into the shot glasses’ whisky and began to draw wet circles on the bar top. “Circles, cycles,  -  coming full cycle,  -  the fullness of seasons.” Abruptly, Joey stopped drawing and slid off her barstool to stand swaying for a moment. Then, like someone in a trance, Joey crossed the distance from her place at the bar to the phone booth in the very back of the ancient, worn-out establishment. She picked up the Yellow Pages and began leafing through them. “Beauty Salons, Contact Lenses, Drug Abuse and Addiction – Information and Treatment, Fish and Seafood –Wholesale, Glass-Auto, Plate, Window, ……. Ahhh- there it was, Guns and Gunsmiths.” Joey dreamily tore the page out, stuffed it in her pant’s pocket and returned to her seat. Climbing back up on her bar stool she looked at her mirror self, and then, after a long moment, down at her unconsumed drink. “How long had it been?” and after a moment of reflection, “Thirteen years last February.”

Finally, taking a sip of comfort, Joey took the crumpled yellow page sheet of Guns and Gunsmiths from her slacks and smoothed it out on the bar. She stroked it and patted it as if it were a well-loved pet. “A time to be born, a time to die;”  Joey began to carefully fold the sheet of yellow pages in half, “A time to kill,….”, then in half again; “A time to plant and a time to reap.”

Joey made the flimsy yellow page into a tiny little square and put it back in her pant’s pocket. A little jolt of energy suffused her being.  Direction had been decided on!  Joey didn’t know where the decision had come from, or who had made it in the vast emptiness of herself, but she savored the trickle of strength she suddenly felt. Scrounging around, she located a tube of lipstick in one of her jacket pockets, and looking into the dusty mirror, she watched her mime self paint a cheerful mouth. Then, Joey watched this well-known stranger quickly empty the amber laden shot glass into that cheerful mouth, and get up. 

Joey lost sight of her mirror self as they both moved towards the bar’s front door. There, on the threshold of before and after, she paused for a moment’s thought, “ ……NOW…..”, and flung the portal open, rushing with purpose out from the dark, cool, cave-like skid-row bar into noisy July’s hot, blinding sunlight.