The Dark Room(110)

He woke in the dark of his room near midnight, sober again.

Even before he placed himself, he was aching.

He swung his feet to the floor and sat drinking a bottle of mineral water, and then he picked up the phone and dialed his home number. By the fourth ring he knew she wasn’t there and he hung up. He was hungry but didn’t want to eat, and he didn’t want to be awake but knew he couldn’t sleep. More than anything, he wanted not to be alone, but he remembered how it had gone with Bridget in the morning and the way it had all come to an end before he’d walked out of his house. He knew he would be alone a long while.

He went to the bathroom and took a shower. Then he dressed in the only clothes he had, and went out of his room and down the stairs again to the lobby. He stood at the threshold of the Pied Piper, but it was crowded now, and loud. Standing room only at the bar.

He left and walked out of the hotel, standing on the corner of Market and New Montgomery in the blowing cold. Fingers of fog moved down Market Street and mixed with steam from the street vents as it blew toward the bay. If it weren’t midnight, he could walk up to Union Square and stand by the ice rink and the lit-up tree to watch the skaters and scratch open that warm memory until it was flowing and sticky.

He wondered where Bridget was right now.

That was a trap, but he went there anyway, picturing her in the cold fog and the dark, crying. Or in her studio on Bush Street with a bottle in one hand and a brush in the other, slashing the canvas with paint. Or maybe she wasn’t cold, or alone, or thinking of him at all— Across the street there was a bar. It looked open, but it was very dark. The only true light came from the sign outside, each letter traced in red neon:

H



O



U



S



E



of



SHIELDS



Cocktails





He stood with his hands in his pockets and looked at the sign. A few of the letters had bad transformers and flickered. After a while, he crossed the street without looking for traffic, and went to the door.



There were ten or fifteen people in the place, but the only sound as he walked in was the distant, metal-on-metal screech of a streetcar grinding its way down Market Street, and then the door closed behind him and there was silence. There was no music. A few faces looked around from the bar to see who had come inside with the draft of cold air, and after they registered him and marked him as nothing of consequence, they turned back to their drinks and to each other and to the low murmur of their conversations.

Other than the bar and a few vacant booths, there was nothing to the place. He went to the end of the bar away from the group and took the middle of three stools. An empty reservoir glass with a slotted spoon sat on the bar to Caleb’s left. There was a faint lipstick mark on it. One of the two bartenders came over and took the glass away and wiped down the bar. He looked at Caleb but didn’t say anything.

“Jameson,” Caleb said. “Neat. And a Guinness on the side.”

The man went away to get the drinks, and Caleb looked around. The high ceiling was painted black so that it disappeared into the shadows. The wall behind the bar was paneled in dark, oiled wood, and the front wall of the room was split up by thick, wooden columns and recessed alcoves holding bronze art deco goddesses. Each nude statuette held aloft an olive branch, and from those twigs sprouted soft incandescent bulbs that gave the only light in the place. This was a high temple of alcohol; there was nothing on offer here but drink. The bartender came back with the Jameson and Caleb took that and drank it, then waited for the beer.

He smelled her before he saw her, that shadow-flower scent, and as he turned to his left the room blurred a bit from the whiskey, but steadied when his eyes settled on her. She was sitting on the stool next to him. Her hands were folded atop a black clutch bag. She pivoted at the waist, and eyed him head to belt and back again without moving a muscle in her neck. Then she smiled.

“He took my drink. I wasn’t quite finished with it.”

“I’m sorry,” Caleb said. “I thought this seat was empty.”

“Your seat was empty. I was sitting here.” She reached out and used a lacquered fingernail to trace a small circle on the bar top in front of her. “And there used to be a drink sitting here.”

She spoke with an accent he couldn’t identify. It wasn’t a voice that came from another place, but maybe a voice that came from another time. Or maybe that was the dress she wore, and the choker of pearls, and that dark perfume. As if she’d stepped out of a silent film, or crawled down from one of the alcoves where previously she’d been holding up a bronze olive branch, casting light and shadow. She could have been anywhere from eighteen to thirty-five, but whatever her age, she didn’t belong to this year or even this century. She reminded him of a painting, but he couldn’t wholly remember which one—maybe it was one he’d just dreamt. Seeing her was like finding something that had been lost for centuries, then restored to its rightful place: he was in the hush of a museum near closing time. He felt the distant heat of the overhead spots and the spent awe hanging in the gallery’s air, like old dust.

He leaned toward her.

“What were you drinking?” he heard himself ask. It didn’t take much more than a whisper—the room was that quiet. “I’ll buy you another one.”