The Grass is Always Greener

Inside the bar was dark and smoky. The green-glass shaded lights above the pool table were the only things piercing the darkness. Old gamblers and pool sharks swam around the tables anxiously waiting their turns to enter the feeding frenzy that is college I.D. night. Stoned hippies, drunk jocks and coked out frat boys are easily parted from their money and their women as the chemicals artificially inflate their confidence and ability. The air headed sorority girls, who accompany them, make the best trophies of the night. The locals love it when the college kids go slumming in their bar.

The aroma of stale beer and cigars hung heavy in the air, almost as oppressive as the noise blaring from the ancient jukebox that still plays seven-inch E.P.’s. A group of peroxide blonds flipped through the menu giggling over names like Wayne “The Train” Hancock, Waylon Jennings, and Merle Haggard while looking for the most recent top forty single.

Some drunken fools pranced about on the dance floor, each with a drink in their hand spilling it down the back of their date. It was autumn and the bar brought in hay bales and pumpkins for decoration. The hay bales wouldn’t stay baled for long and the pumpkins would mysteriously walk away by the end of the night to find new homes on front lawns or smashed in the gutter.

Every stool, table and chair was occupied by at least one person and in some cases two or three. Each booth was packed with five or six people. All of the booths were bastions of laughter and good times, except for one. People looked nervously at this booth and shied away from it with the feeling that if they sat down there they might never get off the tattered Naugahyde again. This booth sat in the farthest, darkest, and dankest corner of the bar, hosting a single tortured soul in this house of merriment and mirth. Situated next to the restrooms, the sour stink of vomit and saw dust lingers in the air. This booth was usually reserved for pimps and their merchandise.

Jonathan had been occupying this spot for the better part of a month, his company credit card ensuring that he gets to wallow in his misery for as long as he damn well pleases. The seats are torn and are stained with what one can only hope is beer and not a more foul liquid. He drinks his first beer in three swallows and then asks for a shot of rail whiskey because he has lost all self-respect. Any man who respects himself would order a whiskey by name from a shelf. He slams the shot and gets another beer. Round after round this cycle continues as Jonathan sits and cusses like a sailor under his breath and chases away anyone who would try to sit with him.

Jonathan was in his early twenties, too young to be so full of self-loathing and anger to be drinking his life away in a dive bar on the outskirts of town. He hasn’t even lived a third of his life yet, but he can’t stop thinking about the choices he’s made. The big choices: picking one girl over another in high school; saying one thing to a friend when you really meant the other; choosing to party instead of doing homework. In short the kind of choices that you make when you’re young that shape you into the adult that you’ll become. Each time he thinks about the choices he’s made he can’t help but assume his life would be better if he had chosen differently.

His second hand suit was crumpled and creased in the wrong places. He knew that he shouldn’t sleep in his cloths. He’s usually so blind drunk by the time he gets home that he passes out on the couch with the T.V. on. He hasn’t shaved in over a week and the blue-ish stubble of his midnight colored beard gives his face a deathly pallor. He knows he looks like shit and doesn’t care. Each time he looks in the mirror he just smiles and says: “No rest for the wicked.” He couldn’t remember when he stopped caring about hygiene.

Every night Jonathan sat in the booth at exactly five p.m. after his incredibly boring job as a sales rep for a small box company. He doesn’t eat, he just drinks. He’ll stop at White Castle on the way home. Like clock-work, he would look at his watch at exactly 11:11 p.m. at which point a tremble would touch his lips. The tremble continued until it became a slow, steady, labored breathing. The heavy breathing led to a soft crying which in turn led to a silent sobbing. Every night Jonathan would sit in his booth with his head down and his body would heave and shudder with each ragged, tear choked, breath from 11:11 till 11:34. At 11:34 his tears would dry up and he would lift his head up feeling like a newborn baby facing the world for the first time. His head, filled with that great emptiness and calm that follows an emotionally charged sob, took over and he could look at the world, this bar — his life — with new eyes. A sense of awe and wonder would fill his alcohol-addled brain. Absentmindedly he would lift the pint glass in front of him and drain what was left into his mouth and order another round.

One night after he finished work he went to his usual seat, ordered his usual drinks, and did his usual crying. This night was different. The leaves had begun to change and there was a crispness in the air that Jonathan didn’t recognize. He new something different was going to happen, he didn’t know why and he didn’t know how he knew but, none the less, he was sure that tonight would be different. At 11:35 someone approached his booth. He looked up ready, and even a little excited, to chase them away with some creative insults he had been cooking up. He looked up when the spectral shape of a woman’s shadow drifted across his beer soaked table. When he tried to speak his tongue wouldn’t move. It couldn’t move. It was as if the booze had finally pickled his tongue and left it to sit in his mouth, useless. He couldn’t possibly let any of the vile things he had prepared slide past his teeth to fall upon the ears of this angel. To say anything to this heavenly creature at all would be as profane and contemptible as kicking god in the balls. Jonathan remained silent as she stood there waiting for him to invite her to sit.

As she stood there waiting for his invitation and peering into his eyes, Jonathan took the time to look her over and to decide if she was real or an alcohol induced hallucination like so many pink elephants before her. She was wearing tight blue jeans and a low cut black tee-shirt as was common for girls from this part of town. Her arms hung limply at her sides with her thumbs threaded through a belt loop, her hip cocked out to one side. Her raven black hair hung in loose curls around her shoulder and framed a face of delicate white skin. A roguish smirk hid under a pug nose.

When Jonathan looked at her eyes he could feel time lurch to a halt. They were the most wonderful and terrifying eyes he had ever seen. They looked like the reflection of a moonless sky at midnight in a still pond. He could feel himself gazing into these quixotic pools of eternity and felt a sense of tumbling through space towards an unknown destination at an accelerated speed. He pulled his eyes away from her hypnotic gaze, and looked at her as a whole. She was a stranger to him to be sure, but there was something incredibly familiar about her. All the same, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. It made him feel dizzy.

“May I sit here with you or is your foul language going to scare me away?” she asked with a smile.

His jaw moved weakly, trying to form words. Instead of speaking he stood up and held out his hand, gesturing for her to sit. He had to show her that chivalry was, in fact, still alive. He was speechless and found it hard to believe that a woman of such perfect beauty was talking to him. She sat down with a smile.

“So chivalry is not dead,” she said with a twinkle in her voice, “It’s not often that a man gets up for a lady anymore. You look like you need a drink, can I buy you one?” she asked him. He could only nod. He felt like he was dreaming. “What are you drinking?”

“Uh-uh-uh…” stammered Jonathan.

“How about one bourbon, one scotch and one beer?” she smiled at her reference to the song. She never got tired of that joke. Jonathan noticed the laugh lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes and thought for the billionth time that she was beautiful.

“Yea, uh, th-that sounds great.” He stammered. “Sorry, I’m not used to company. Not many people talk to me here.” he paused feeling the blood rush to his cheeks and the quickening of his pulse, “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Oh I’ve had lots of names, but tonight you can call me…” she paused, thinking, “Lucy.”

“Muh-mines Jon…”

“Jonathan. I know.” She interrupted, “I know a lot more about you than you know.”

He had never been very suave with the ladies but he was a drunk now and riding the same wave of artificial confidence as the jocks at the pool tables. “You are too beautiful to be here in this dive, at this time of night, on this side of the tracks, on your own, talking to me; the lonely, sad, pathetic drunk in the corner.” He paused wondering if what he wanted to say next would amuse or frighten her off. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to happen. “Did one of my friends hire you to come cheer me up?”

“What?” she brought a hand to her mouth to hide a smile.

“uhhh, never mind. I just thought that… never mind.”

“Thought what?” the woman asked. She was curious what it would be this time. She’s had this conversation literally billions of times and the questions were often similar, occasionally unique, but rarely dull. This was one of the interesting parts of her job.

“Well I just thought that maybe you were a call girl hired by one of my friends. Beautiful girls like you don’t come up to me and buy me drinks.”

She just smiled and giggled to herself. Just then the drinks arrived. She lifted her bourbon and motioned for him to lift his. “Not quite…” She winked, clinked his glass, swallowed the shot and set the glass down with a thud.

Jonathan gave a nervous little laugh after he set his empty glass down.

“So, why so glum chum?” she asked him after she took a long pull from her beer.

What the hell, I might as well tell somebody. “I broke up with my girlfriend for very stupid and selfish reasons.” He felt a little better after admitting that. He hadn’t really talked about it with anyone till now.

“It can’t be that bad…” She replied. “Believe me, humans have been around for a very long time and they have made some pretty boneheaded decisions.”

Jonathan lifts his scotch in salute and takes a sip.

“Well I ran into two old high school sweethearts around the same time and they both started flirting really hard with me and I was like ‘Hey these girls are hot and my girlfriend is like old news and stuff.’ So I dumped her. I thought it was time to get some new action. I’m still young and in my prime, why should I be tied down with just one girl right now, you know? Unfortunately my motives must have been obvious because both the girls from high school stopped talking to me, and the ex wouldn’t return my calls. After I realized what I had done, who I had hurt, and what I had lost I decided to come here and start drinking till I either ran out of money or the will to live, so far the company credit card hasn’t been maxed out yet.” He felt better for admitting all of this out loud to the strange woman and himself. He felt a burden lift from his heart. A sort of weightlessness and warmth filled him, something similar to a sip of warm bourbon on a crisp autumn evening. A small smile parted his lips.

“Well that’s not the first time I’ve heard that type of story. Why is it that people never seem to be satisfied with what they have until they willingly give it up?” she said.

“Well you know what they say about the grass always being greener…” he replied with a dismissing wave of his hand.

“Not really. I’ve never understood that particular saying. I’ve always been… well I’ve just always been.” A frown began to touch the corners of her mouth and Jonathan thought his heart might break. She checked the pocket watch hanging from her belt. “I’m sorry Jonathan, but its time to drink up. This is the last round. It’s almost time to go.”

At first he was confused. Where were they going? He refused to believe that he had made that good of an impression that she was going to go home with him. That was just plain impossible. He reached for his glass and watched in awe as his hand passed right through it. He tried again two more times just to be sure it was happening. Then a spike of awareness stabbed him in the brain. He knew who this woman was. To make thing even more strange, he remembered where he knew her from. He remembered her bending over his crib when he was a tiny baby boy, and she whispered something in his ear. Something that he felt was part welcoming, part gentle warning; like he was just a visitor in someone else’s home and would have to leave after a while. The words were just faint echoes in the back of his memory, a little too distant to be heard, but he could feel them, feel the power and the weighty meaning that they carried. He stopped grabbing at his glass and accepted his fate. “How long have I been coming here?” he asked her.

“Well you’ve been coming here for a little over a month but you’ve been dead for about a week.”

“How come you didn’t come to get me sooner?” he asked feeling like a child for some reason. Probably it was because he was in the presence of a being of infinitely vast knowledge and experience, an incarnation of one of the fundamental forces of the universe. Perhaps it was because he realized just how foolish he had been in the last month and would not be able to make a better choice next time. Perhaps it was simply that the most beautiful woman he had ever known had come to help him.

“Well it seemed to me that you needed a little extra time to mourn your loss. Sometimes heartache is the worst punishment of all. But you’re going to a different place. A slightly better place than here.” She said.

“But don’t suicides go to hell?” he asked nervously.

“Well if you want, that could be arranged, but it’s not the only option. You see, you didn’t even realize what happened so you are sort of exempt from his little guidebook. The truth is, I don’t really know where most people go. I just help them along to find the door.” She finished her beer and swallowed the last of her scotch. “Its time to go…”

Jonathan sighed and finished his drinks. He was still a little confused but took the woman’s hand and let her lead him out the door and into great beyond.