DARKNESS OVERCOMES TIME

An angular blond woman sat two barstools away from me and ordered a Guinness. I couldn’t see her very well. The bar was dimly lit, no overhead lights despite the darkening outside, just several neon beer signs that glowed grotesquely on our faces like a sci-fi noir movie. Steam from the glass-washer hovered.

A brown-haired woman about the same age glided onto the stool between us and faced her friend, away from me. The two of them hugged, exchanged how-are-you’s. The brown-haired woman deflected comments about how great she looked. I laughed at that. Yeah, we all look great... for our age... in darkness...

I overheard that the blond’s name was Barbara, and the brown-haired woman was Tina. Tina had three vodka-and-tonics before Barbara finished her Guinness. Perhaps a rough day of being retired...

At one point, Barbara asked Tina how Gillian was. I’d gone to high school in the distant past with two sisters named Tina and Gillian, one in my year, one the year behind, and I went back in time to consider that. Stories rolled around and I smiled at the hazy reflection of myself in the mirror behind the liquor bottles.

And then Barbara asked Tina if Preston was still a cop. Tina said he was retired. Tina and Gillian in my life had a brother who became a cop. This couldn’t be a coincidence.

I tapped Tina on the shoulder and she turned. Even through the slash of shadow that crossed her face from somewhere, I thought, yep, had to be her, still gorgeous. “Excuse me, are you Tina Petterson?”

“Before I was married and divorced, yes,” she said. “Do I know you?”

“Look closely.”

She wandered over my face, squinted a bit, and then I think she shuddered. She seemed to want to sound surprised but then settled herself and said, neutrally, “Bill.”

I smiled and nodded, waiting...

She launched herself at me, skipping the time from sitting on her stool to enveloping me with her hug.

In the subsequent seconds I never noticed, she returned to her stool and said, to Barbara, “This is my friend Bill” – the word “friend” sounded distorted – “We went to high school together.” Together...

And then there were the usual normal introductions, explanations, distractions, peripherals.

The more I peered at Tina in the low light neon, the more I saw glimpses of her from fifty years ago – that smile, the twinkling eyes, the cheekbones that created an aura, the hair that was still shiny and flowing/waving as it tried to explode.

Then, damned if I wasn’t in a dream, Tina said to Barbara, “I had such a huge crush on Bill in high school.”

OK, I had to be dreaming and drunk and in another universe. I could come up only with, “What?!”

“Yeah, you knew that.”

I tried changing from being eighteen to the age I am. “Hell, no!” This still sounded eighteen to me. “I never knew that. Why didn’t you ever tell me? Why didn’t you... I mean, Tina, when you were eighteen, I mean...” I was babbling and I knew it, so I stopped.

Tina was still smiling at me and it didn’t seem to me to be artificial – both of us had had a few drinks and when you get older, you figure out stuff like that. I hope.

Something in the air. In moments I was only slightly aware of, Barbara left, and Tina and I rattled on.

I came back to consciousness when Tina said, “Do you want to come back to my place?” And it was surreal again.

We paid our bills, I think I paid her bill as well as mine, maybe she paid mine, I don’t think so, probably not, maybe, I don’t know, probably not, no, I don’t remember...

And we were on the dark street of broken lights, her arm hooked into mine, probably looking to everyone else like an old married couple.

In a moment of relative lucidity through ignorance and stupidity and inattentiveness, I said, “You live around here?”

“Yeah,” she said. “On Redwood for twenty years. Ever since my divorce.”

“I’ve lived on Burke for fourteen. How have we never run into each other before?”

“Luck of the draw, I guess,” she said.

Not sure what we talked about the rest of our trek. I don’t remember what streets we took, what building she lived in – but she went in first and didn’t turn back to me as we approached the elevator - the elevator ride – and she made me stand in front of her – walking down the corridor – her in front – the number on her door I don’t remember - the turning of the key – she pushed me in first and hit a switch that turned on a light at the other end of the apartment. She maneuvered me a couple of steps forward, turned me to the left, pushed again, and I fell onto a bed. She writhed up beside me and put her arms around me.

“You don’t want any light at all?” I laughed. “Are you old school? Sex in the dark?” I laughed again but couldn’t see her so didn’t know what her reaction was.

Tina said, “Do you remember what I looked like when I was eighteen?”

“Of course, that’s the last time I saw you.”

She propped herself up on her elbow and was looking down at me in the vaguest of light. Her hand rested lightly on my chest. “It was dark in the bar, dark on the street. We couldn’t see each other very well. And we deliberately, well, deliberate on my part, didn’t look at each other on the way up here. And it’s dark now. Fifty years of photo-memories are more significant than the past few hours. Imagine me when I was eighteen. I will imagine you when you were eighteen. Picture that. Time is relative, right?”

Bill Kitcher’s stories, plays, and comedy sketches have been published, produced, and/or broadcast in Australia, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Czechia, England, Germany, Guernsey, Holland, India, Ireland, Nigeria, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, the U.S., and Wales. His stories have appeared in Fiery Scribe Review, Ariel Chart, New Contrast, Spinozablue, Eunoia Review, Defenestration, Yellow Mama, and many other journals. His comic noir novel, “Farewell And Goodbye, My Maltese Sleep”, the second funniest novel ever written, was published in 2023 by Close To The Bone Publishing, and is available on Amazon.