(no subject)

 “Day” shifts at the bar went as followed: whoever was on shift would force themselves awake and get down town for 11am. If anything was out of place, they would clean up. This might take anything up to an hour as they scrubbed toilets and made glasses shine – though not with the same washcloth. When that was over, they would open up and wait. Day shifts were always better, with less work. Only a few hardened drinkers would slide into their booths, with most choosing to drink after five. By that time, of course, about six hours of their eight hour shift had passed and by the time it grew really busy, the day crew could hand over to the night crew.

“Night” shifts at the bar went as followed: at 7pm, whoever was on shift would slip behind the bar, taking over from the day crew. They would chat up customers and keep an eye on the rowdy ones, directing the bouncers to any truly badly behaved customers. Acts would play and their bonus for dealing with the crowd was listening to music; singer-songwriters who only knew three guitar chords, bands full of white beardy man-boys and singers who thought that if they vibrated their voice they’d sound just as good as Whitney Houston. The bar closed in the early hours and the night shift could escape to their tiny apartments, to their struggling dreams and to the gentle embrace of exhausted sleep.

Tonight, they were both on shift. Tonight, the band was still setting up. They weren’t in any way big, nor did they have the loyal following of other small acts. A few regulars had whistled and cheered politely when they were announced, but most of the people in the bar had gone back to chatting amongst themselves once it became clear the band wasn’t ready to play yet. No doubt they’d continue to talk through all of the songs, too. Mari was leaning on the bar, one hand rubbing her pierced ear, the metal of the stud that ran through the cartilage rolling between her thumb and forefinger. The short sleeves of her uniform shirt had ridden up, revealing one of the tattoos that stood out like blue-green stains on her skin. Moirine, beside her, her thick-framed glasses falling down her nose as she peered out at the band. “Have you heard these guys before?”

“Nope,” Mari replied, stepping back as a customer approached the bar to order a drink. People only ordered from Moirine when they were both serving, usually peppering their order with compliments that she either missed or didn’t know what to do with. Every so often two men would come up to the bar at once and one, designating himself the wingman, would deign to speak to her. Thankfully, most of their customers got the message that neither of them were interested pretty quick, and the bouncers were more than happy to step in the prove the point if things got a little out of hand. As the customer left, Mari indicated his drinks order with a wrinkled nose. “See, that’s what I’m talking about.”

“What is?”

“That!”

“You talk about a lot of things, which one is this?”

“The beer, his order there. American beers are fucking pisswater, man!”

“Don’t play the Welsh card. I looked Wales up. You guys only drink cider.”

“We have beer too!” Mari argued, although it was true; before coming to America she’d only drunk cider. Usually illicitly and in parks after school. “Great beer,” she said, uncertain, then picked up steam again. “We’re right by Europe, you know! Belgian beer, German beer! Dutch deer!”

“You said ‘deer’.”

“I say a lot of things. The important thing is, we can totally do better.”

“We are not microbrewing.”

“Why not!”

“Because I said so,” Moirine hissed at her as a customer approached the bar. She mixed them a drink that Mari didn’t catch the name of and that apparently involved both milk and soda water as ingredients. The customer didn’t complain and as he left, Moirine turned back to Mari. “Besides, the last time you tried to brew anything it was wine, and that exploded. All over us!”

“And we smelled delicious for a week.”

“No,” Moirine said.

“Microbrews are a growth industry. We’ll make millions!”

“No!”

“C’mon,” Mari said. Moirine punched her gently in the arm.

“No.”

“Ugh,” Mari collapsed back on the counter, barely watching the band as they set up. “Senorita No-Fun.”

“Senorita Wants Her Deposit Back.”

“We’ll get rich and then you won’t need it.”

“No.”

“Ugh.”

“Shut up,” Moirine said, and tapped her lightly on the hand. Mari tapped her back and let her rest her head on her shoulder. “How long do we have left?”

“Couple of hours,” Mari answered, watched three guys with scraggly beards argue about records over drinks and wondered: how can they live with themselves? Was ranking Pavement’s output really so important that one had to debate each record? She moved her hands to her beanie and pulled it down, over her ears.

“I’m tired,” Moirine said.

“Tough.”

“Now who’s Senorita No-Fun?”

“Still you.”

They polished glasses, made drinks, watched the band finish setting up. The lead singer had one of those dumb moustache-side-burns combos, so he looked like an eighteenth century soldier. The rest of the band was sporting facial hair that was just as ridiculous. Moirine leaned on the bar and Mari leaned on Moirine, watching as the singer stepped up to the microphone.

“So hey,” he said, not quite managing to cut through the murmurs of the bar’s patrons, no matter how many had turned their chairs around to face the stage. “We’re First to Die. Hope you like us. Or whatever, you know?”

The drummer counted them in, and then the guitar and the bass stormed into the air, the music roiling through the Tuesday night crowd. Something about the discordant mess of the music, the desperation of the singer as he nearly shouted lyrics into the unresponsive, chatting crowd, their ratty second-hand guitars and the awful beat of the music struck something in both of them. Below the bar, Moirine reached for Mari’s hand and Mari squeezed her fingers with all the tenderness inside of her. The band fell so far short of decent they could see themselves reflected deep within it, as though it had cast a spotlight on them. As patrons caught each other’s eyes and smirked it felt more as though they were laughing at them for trying to look as though they’d stopped caring than at the band for trying.

The set lasted for perhaps six or seven songs, each as amateurish as the first. With every strum of the bass, the first song was deeper imprinted in their breasts as though it’d always belonged there, as though it flowed from them like water. The band finished to scattered applause and packed up. Mari and Moirine uncoupled their hands and looked away, as though by pretending their didn’t exist they could pretend whatever had just hit them hadn’t happened at all, that they felt just as ordinary as they always did. One of their regulars approached the bar and shook his head with a grin that was partially hidden behind his ironic lumberjack beard. “I’m telling ya,” he said. “They’re no Vampire Weekend.”

“Everyone’s got to start somewhere,” Moirine snapped at him, then turned away and went into the back room. Mari didn’t speak as she fulfilled his order, didn’t say a word when he undertipped on his tab. Moirine didn’t come back out until the band had packed up and left. Mari didn’t say a word to her either. Not until long after they were done clearing out the bar and cleaning for the day crew, armed with mops and dishcloths.

They walked home in the same cloud, barely speaking to one another. Fifteen minutes from the bar to their apartment building, then another five minutes spent pressing up the narrow stairs in single file and searching for their keys. Mari had left hers at home and Moirine had lost hers in her purse; yawning and drowsy they searched through their pockets until Moirine pulled out her door key triumphantly. Inside, they dressed for bed, lay down, and couldn’t sleep.

They shared the cost of a futon. $50, second hand. Barely big enough for the two of them, unless they pressed up against each other when they slept. Curled together like cats, they spent sleepless, restless nights. The studio was too hot with the windows shut and far, far too cold with the windows open. A few times a week one of them would get a day shift and the other could stretch out as far as they could and ludicrously miss their squashed up, huddled nights together.

If things got too tense inside the apartment – as they inevitably did, neither of them being great to live with – they would leave and walk, sometimes in opposite directions, sometimes in the same direction. There were only two directions they could take; leaving their apartment building and going right would take them to the park, dark and foreboding by the time either of them got back from the bar. Left took them into the city, back towards their day jobs, the site of a million indignities heaped upon their shoulders.

“Can you sleep?” Moirine asked, at four.

“I cannot,” Mari admitted. So they got up and got dressed again and left the apartment, turning right.

In the park, they traded cigarettes back and forth, talked about the creative projects they’d lost all energy for. “Nearly finished the poem,” Mari would say, referring to the epic verse she’d planned before moving here, which she’d managed all of one line of in all of her months in the city. And Moirine would nod and lie, “I have my next painting figured out, you just wait.” They’d head home, and go to bed and lie awake, fused together on top of the futon and Mari’s notebooks remained empty and Moirine’s canvases stayed as unmarked as the first snows of winter.

Tonight, they saw the world through a haze. Unsure of how to broach their shared malaise, an unspoken ennui that had somehow become stark and clear. “Do you remember when we first got here?” Moirine asked suddenly. “It feels like a dream. A lifetime ago.”

“Sort of.” Mari did remember. She remembered perfectly. She remembered swinging Moirine around the empty apartment, singing the chorus to America by Simon and Garfunkel at her, as she giggled. Those heady post-college days when the world had stretched out before them like a promise.  Lying on their futon together at night, with nothing to do but live off their savings and write and paint, had seemed like the most incredible, romantic, crazy dream. Now she reconsidered the song: ‘”Cathy, I’m lost” I said, though I knew she was sleeping. I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why…’

If Moirine had a follow-up, she didn’t broach the topic again. They passed two cigarettes between them, breathing out lungfuls of smoke, then turned to go home.

The memory of that song hummed in their chests as they trudged home together, but by the time they reached their cramped studio, it’d faded into a shadow of the feeling they’d once had, just as all of their effervescent dreams had turned to air when exposed to the daylight of life.