Sometimes on Saturday

An original short story;


Occasionally one finds himself with nothing more important or more interesting to do than listen to a recount of an unfortunate story from a ragged looking piano player trying to make a meager living at a bar. And not just any bar, a run down, dingy bar. The type of bar you don’t see men walk into who have hope in their eyes. The type of bar you don’t see men walk into who have families and loved ones to go home to.
That man’ll talk about places he used to live or work, that nice 1969 Camaro he used to drive, and the beautiful blonde woman who had C cups and tasted of Jack Daniels and cigarettes and smelled of a pungent mixture of cheap perfume and body odor. The beautiful blonde woman who had cheap hooker red lipstick on her mouth and sadness in her eyes. The beautiful blonde woman that he used to love. Used to. 
He’ll go on forever about the first three topics, but never has much interest in dwelling much on the last. The man comes here every Saturday, every day I come to this hole in the wall, sputtering the same tired tale, hoping eventually it’ll find its way to the right ear and make some sort of a difference. He comes every Saturday, and sometimes a man has got nothing more important or more interesting to do than listen to a recount of an unfortunate story from a ragged looking piano player trying to make a meager living at a bar. 
The places he used to live is always in the middle of nowhere. Some city or town I ain’t ever heard of, with people I’ll never meet. Usually with people I’d never hope to meet anyways. 
Sometimes I even doubt he had a place. And the job is always death. When he tells the story, his words brush quickly over the death part as if it doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s because he’s desensitized to it by now. And I guess he would be. He looks pretty old, and he’s got death in his eyes. He probably had been doing it a while. The end of someone’s life is another wad of wrinkled, faded cash in his thin thread-bare pockets. 
But the place is always in the middle of nowhere. Some city or town no one’s ever heard of with people no one knows, and no one would care to know. And the death part, that doesn’t matter much to him, so why should it matter much to anyone listening? The only part that matters is the lover he finds out there. The lover, a beautiful blonde woman who had C cups and tasted of Jack Daniels and cigarettes, she’s something special. She’s not the type of woman men set out looking for and lose their minds trying to find. But she’s special. He always nods his head and closes those empty eyes when he gets to this part. He stops. Stops talking. Doesn’t move. Holds his breath.
The way that ragged man tells his tale, he could murder your sister and you’d probably still love him. None of the other sad, deranged patrons of the bar pay any attention to the man, but I suppose they’ve got a whole heap of their own problems.
 He’s got about a dozen nicknames, no real one I can put my tongue on. Not unless you know any self-respecting parents that would name their kid Butch, Duke or Crag.  But it doesn’t seem to matter anyways.
Sometimes the ragged man’ll explain that he had nothing better to do, or maybe he had no other choice, than to take another job. Then he’d spend a weekend with the blonde that had cheap red lipstick on her mouth and sadness in her eyes, and spend the rest of the week living on cold coffee, stale bread, and the words she whispered to him at midnight with her worn out voice, drenched with the sound of smoking too many menthols. 
It seemed like those words were what he lived for. Not the sex she gave him so easily, from the first night they met onward. Not the parties she dragged him to. Parties where he spent the night eyeing people suspiciously, wondering if they knew as well as he did that he didn’t belong there. Her words that she whispered to him at midnight after he poured Jack and Honey into a chipped plastic cup filled with ice and she lifted it to her lips, after the lights were off and the room was too dark to see beyond the tip of their nose. They let him know that he was handsome and interesting. That he was a professional, rather than a monster and that there was someone who was proud of him. 
Those words, more than his cold coffee and stale bread, were what carried him through the weeks. Those words rang in his ears and filled his empty heart. Those words were his everything, and she was always sure to give them to him, after her Jack Daniels and cigarettes, except for when she gave him fighting words.
He always describes the argument as petty, silly even, but the man doesn’t laugh. Usually by this time I have whiskey ringing in my ears so loud it drowns out the voice of the sad sack of a man leaning against the piano with the weight of too many years, too many sorrows. But I remember it had something to do with going out to dinner. The blonde with her C cups and red lipstick, wanted to be taken out to a fancy dinner. But what if they’d been caught? The haggard man always asks the question, but he’s long since forgotten the answer. Maybe it never had an answer. 
But this Saturday, a Saturday I found myself with nothing more important or more interesting, with nothing better to do than to listen to than listen to a recount of an unfortunate story from a ragged looking piano player trying to make a meager living at a bar, his tale went further than ever before. 
The nature of this job was insignificant to him now. Many years have passed and the details have rendered themselves obsolete. But he remembers this one job was especially difficult. His target wore a mask and a dark suit. Lacking the comfort of his usual whispered words, the words that reminded him that he was a professional who was good at his job, he was antsy. Impatient. Unprofessional. 
The bullet flew, the target dropped. He collected his check and didn’t stop to think twice, or even once. He drove home and everything seemed so simple. He returned to his van, his place in the middle of nowhere, in some city or town no one’s ever heard of, where insignificant people dwelt. On Saturdays, his lover always came to the van. 
It was Saturday, 11:59 pm and his lover had not shown her face. The man fumed. He shouted and cried. And then everything shifted and the world turned sideways.
He shakes when he tells that he drove right back the way he’d come to the place he was suddenly certain he’d shot the only person who’s life had ever meant anything to him. 
I picture him stumbling out of his beat up van, staggering down the alley. I picture him shouting the blonde’s name. 
The way he tells the story, he didn’t find the body in the alley. He insists that his lover is still alive, and she’s better off without him. He insists the target that night was really just a stranger. But I can see in his eyes that he knows.
Suddenly, glass clatters to the ground. I dropped my glass of whiskey. I mutter an apology as the bartender groans and walks around the bar countertop with heavy footsteps, shimmying in between the piano and the wall, and bends to clean up the broken pieces.
I blink hard, trying to force the haze from my eyes that forms from staring off into space for too long. I look left at the piano and see a man dressed in a white suit. Blonde hair and striking blue eyes about 35 years of age. I shake my head and the room spins. 
I rub my eyes and ask the bartender for my keys, but my words are heavy, thick, slurred. He tells me he has never seen someone drink so much in one night, and he calls me a cab. I nod in return, sending the room into another violent spiral.
I stumble past the handsome young piano player, and out to the cab. Beside me, the ragged man sits. 
He asks me if I’ve got nothing better to do than to drink myself into hallucinating. 
This isn’t a bar where people with families and loved ones to go home to patronize.