The Jersey Bar, Harlem
November 26, 10.35 p.m.
The interior of the Jersey Bar looked just like Harper felt and that was how he wanted it. He sat on a red velvet barstool with a rip right across the centre and looked into the dim lights peering from beneath old yellowing shades. There wasn’t a barman in sight, only the streaks of dried beer running the length of the counter. Up back, a small wooden dance floor stood empty and looked as sad as a three-legged dog. Four other customers in various shades of lonely were stowed away in darkened booths and none of them looked like they wanted to talk, which was just about perfect. Tom slumped his whole weight against the bar and waited for someone to serve him.
They’d driven back over from Long Island in the warmth of her little Honda with the dog licking his neck the whole way. They’d talked a little more about the case in sentences that seemed to get lost in the sound of the traffic, and at some point she realized that he wasn’t listening and the case drifted away into the darkness. She let him out just over the Triborough Bridge, but he only managed two or three steps towards his apartment before he felt the old familiar sense of dread. The horrible fact of being alone was that you went home dog tired but as soon as you were through the door the bright lights in your heart flickered on and you were trapped with your own carousel of memories. Home was a place you sometimes didn’t want to get to.
Four beers in and Harper was drumming his fingers to the country music and letting his memories pitch and recede like the tide. He watched the oddballs come and go with little curiosity and sometimes managed a smile of acknowledgement. Patsy Cline was soon drowning out all else in the bar with her sad stories. She’d just started an old song, ‘I Don’t Wanna’.
Tom sipped his beer. He didn’t need memories now. He listened to Patsy Cline singing about love and the lack of it. The beer and music were doing all the work his heart needed.
Love felt like a hollow echo of some once perfect time and place. Perhaps it was just a fantasy that kept emerging from the deep to ruin your life. He felt so mad at Lisa, his teeth clenched. It wouldn’t happen again. He’d keep things tight and impersonal. His eyes lifted. A couple danced in the gloom. He watched their hands clasp and their hips touch.
Sometimes it was hard to admit that it wasn’t anger eating him up, but something else entirely. Levene had it right. It was plain old loneliness. It was never easy to open the door to need, but the beer was helping and Harper knew that what he wanted was nothing more than to hug up close to someone and let the world drift away. He drained his glass and listened.
As the song finished, an attractive brunette who’d been catching his glances sidled up to him at the bar and pulled up a stool. She was mid-thirties, wore tight denims and a top with a deep neckline.
‘You mind if I join you for a conversation?’
‘I never mind a conversation,’ Harper said.
She sat. For a moment, Harper wondered where she was from and what she did. He took in the heavy perfume, the lack of a ring on her wedding finger and the tired look in her eyes.
‘What you thinking about tonight?’ she asked.
‘Why love passes us by.’
‘My, that’s a big topic.’
‘How about you? Love pass you by?’
She smiled. It was nice. ‘Well, it stopped in the station a day or two.’
‘Same here,’ Harper said. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Samantha. You?’
‘Tom.’
‘What do you do, Tom?’
‘Me, I don’t know. I really don’t know any more.’
She laughed. ‘Me neither.’
They talked for an hour — he told her all about Lisa; he heard all about her Frank. Then Tammy Wynette came on the jukebox, singing ‘Help me make it through the night’, and Samantha took his hand and led him out from the seat. She came up close to him on the dance floor and they slow-danced to the sentimental old song, her warm body comfortable against his.
It’d been years since Harper had felt another’s skin next to his own apart from Lisa’s. He felt strange, like a man doing something he shouldn’t. He was moving like a wooden marionette, and Samantha felt it.
‘It’s no big deal, Tom, just a dance: she’s not watching.’ She pulled him back towards her and leaned her head on his shoulder. Tom felt her hair brush against his skin. He remembered something Denise had once said to him. You want to get to somewhere new, let go of the ledge. Tom slowly moved his hand on to her back and let it lie flat against her shoulder.
‘Let’s enjoy tonight just for itself,’ she whispered.
That seemed the right thing to do. One hand off the ledge at a time. The two of them held each other tight and danced into the New York City night, momentarily parted from their loneliness.