OUT NOW
The Twelve Bar
Ellie Keller
It was the first rain since early May and it came down in a concentrated fury. The grasses and new buds of growth around Boise sighed with relief, but the way people ran for shelter it seemed more like someone had just pulled the pin from a hand grenade. A violent crack of thunder ripped the sky in half, sending pedestrians scattering across streets, under canopies, and into small businesses for shelter.
It was Happy Hour at the Twelve Bar and despite the weather there were no customers besides himself. Duncan saved his change for the juke box instead of tipping. He lowered his eyes to escape the piercing glance of the bartender and to spare himself the guilt. He sipped at his whiskey.
Duncan had a narrow face and a jaw line like a machete. His teeth were tall, not perfect but clean. He breathed slow, mouth slightly parted, breath smelling of stale cigarettes yet sweet from alcohol. He slid three quarters into the juke box, infecting the barroom with a smoky blues number, and claimed a booth in the far corner.
His palm clasped the back of his neck like a wet rag and his head hung low with long eyelashes spilling downward below shut eyes. If the room wasn’t empty, it would have been her there with him, instead of just his own shadow at his feet. But when his eyes were closed, Rosie would always be there, motorcycle helmet under her arm, or a single red rose laying across her chest. She was always either utterly fearless or helplessly fragile, depending on the circumstances.
His old man had once told him that a person’s company was only as good as the kind of company he himself was. Duncan didn’t agonize over what that might mean for the sole customer in a murky old barroom. Behind closed eyes, she could be company to him—and she would be fine company indeed.
He walked outside for air. The trees shook droplets of rainwater onto his flushed cheeks. It felt cool to his skin. His anguish had stirred up a fever in him that desperately needed to be soothed. If there was one thing he learned in life, it was that a man’s anguish could never be soothed once he’d fallen in love, though some things could help. To Duncan, love was always a two-sided blade. Whatever goodness it brought, the other side always cut to an equal bleed, with equal inflection. There was no rivalry that could be won this way, he thought, not unless a man should rival against himself by turning the blade.
He thought the act of falling in love was not unlike suicide, although there was never as clean of an ending with love. Fire and ice would always continue to alternate, indefinitely and without satiety.
He had learned long ago to hold tight to whatever came along that might help quench that terrible fire. Even if it was just a few leftover drops of rain.