Indie

The sound of the alarm clock not going off woke me. When I sat up realizing this I though I ought to cry, but decided against it and took a shower instead.

In spite of my logical assertion that bathing was best done before one goes to sleep, for well thought through reasons which I'll not go into at present, I find myself stumbling into the stall each morning (and I use the term lightly, as it was five o'clock in the evening at present) and I'm halfway through the process of cleaning myself before it dawns on my that I'm breaking my most reasonable of rules. Still, I'm not ready to give up on myself just yet.

After dressing and such I stood in the middle of my bedroom and tried to figure out what to do on this, my day off. Being that it was too early to safely go on a long walk, I figured I'd save that pleasure for later at two or three in the morning (when even the bad guys slept, I thought) and set off now on a short one that would end with me at Hale's bar.

I didn't drink...or smoke...or experiment with drugs and sex...or with much else in fact, but at least I was easily entertained--so while I didn't often make an appearance among my peers when they were intimidatingly concentrated in one place, every now and then I made an exception so as to witness the surreal transformation that people are capable of. Besides which, I liked to glimpse Hale in her current natural habitat before she succeeded in changing it past what she could stand. Television is exceedingly dull when you've got a good seat for your ever amusing version of real life.

January's End was three and a half miles from the house, so by the time I got there it was probably seven. Hale still had some time before she wanted to take her break, but she separated herself long enough to get me one of the three occupied booths to have for myself. I couldn't tell you how she did this, but it was the same each time. She walked up to our favorite booth with a view of the whole bar, regardless of who sat there (at the moment there was a grave looking couple looking as out of place as I probably did) and said just a few muted words. The woman paled steadily and the man hopped up and pulled his lady friend out of the bar with him. It had taken thirty seconds. Hale turned and grinned at me and I walked over and sat down with a confounded expression spilled onto my face, but I didn't ask. "I'll see you later," she told me before she pushed herself back across the crowded room.

There I sat half in waiting but happy there, a single person in a booth meant for a comfortable six, so that I occupied the only space in the entire room which would allow outstretched arms in just about any direction but back. This was a position I meant to take full advantage of, if only for the sake of rarity, but unfortunately I opened myself up for the following remark, "You look like you could use a hug," shouted at me over the din by a Brooklyn-accented kid, aging before my eyes from somewhere between 24 and 29 on.

I promptly put my arms down and squinted up at him, taking care to cock my head slightly to the right. "I think you're lying."

He draws his eyebrows comically together as if thinking real hard before deciding to ignore me. "I suppose I could help you out," he says like a first-rate creepy-guy, then he presumptuously slides around my booth without the slightest invitation to sit. Though I don't move away for pride, my knee rises of its own volition and lays down beside me, forcing him to stop his progress a foot and a half away.