CoffeeBeanShop

Impact

by Matthew Black (bio at end of story)

The dimness of the bar was calming. There were no direct light sources; some previous owner had wisely concealed all fixtures to give the impression of radiant light from atop the bar back and several ceiling recesses. The resultant glow was reddish, it was soft and warm. he ceiling fans spun on their lowest setting. They were poorly grounded and hummed with the alternating current they were being fed. They did little more than push the humid air and churn the smoke with their whhuuum, whhuuum, whhuuum. No one had bothered to put money in the jukebox and no one was talking. An occasional car would pass by on Chartres Street and reflect the hazy summer sunshine over and under the swinging doors or some gabbing tourists would wander by the door with their shrill voices insistent on penetrating the room, but the atmosphere in the bar was like a great sponge that sucked up the invading brightness and noise and dispersed it over a greater area and kept the homeostasis.

Marshall sat at the bar, his hands wrapped around his glass. Through the smoke and the dim glow he was reading the dollars. His focus wasn’t working, which made it hard, but he could make out some of the names, could see different variations of mustache on George Washington, could tell the difference between the loopy, bubbly stripper script and the hard, all-caps print of the various bartenders and drunk, high school glory days’ tourists over the years. He thought of these people and wondered if they, by writing their names on dollar bills and having a bartender post them above the bar, thought that they were creating a legacy. And he wondered if it was good or bad to take money out of circulation in such a manner. He thought of the men that worked on Wall Street that would be screaming and scrambling to figure out where the dollars were going. He thought of the men that worked at the mint and the men that worked at the lumber companies that made the paper that was sold to the mint. These were all viable and true occupations. Each man, in turn, had contributed to this scene. They had made an impact. d

His thoughts turned to the bar itself. It was made of hardwood. Not mahogany or walnut – nothing as pretty as these; rather, some unknown wood that mattered not to Marshall nor the bartender, nor any of the other patrons in residence. A wood that hadn’t really mattered since the bar builder had been approached by a new bar owner or since that bar builder had approached some lumber company, an employee of which, on some morning long before the drinks and the graffiti and the cigarette burns, had approached the rooted wonder of nature, spit on his palms, and started chopping through all that hardened xylem and phloem.

Then stripped and planed and shaped and connected and sanded and varnished and assembled and finally rooted again to a floor made of red painted concrete. The bar came out of the wall near the entrance’s impenetrable swinging doors, curved once at ninety degrees, and then ran straight down to the far end of the room where the bartender’s entrance was. There were four feet between the bar and the bar back. The back was made of the same nameless wood and the craftsmanship that had been lovingly shaped and carved was now concealed by crude dollar bill graffiti. Both the bar and the bar back were well worn. Like the room itself, they were warm and soft and inviting. Countless years of activity and use and bartender scrubbing had removed any and all sharp edges. Everything now was smooth and curved and harmless. Recessed and inlayed within the back was a three-foot mirror that ran the length of the bar. Looking up from his glass, Marshall’s eyes met his own in the mirror. He felt the moisture in the air and listened to the fans above him and searched his eyes through the glow for answers.

He was drinking a bastardized version of Irish coffee of his own creation. Ice, cold coffee, and whisky in a highball with no sugar or whipped cream. He wanted something bitter. Here where the drinks are all sugar – all mint juleps and hurricanes – and if the sweet, warm, calming and true Irish coffee is the prefect drink for a wintry, blustery day; Marshall’s manifestation of the drink was just right.

He had taken flight ten hours earlier. His destination: French Quarter vacation. He had planned on his usual forty-eight to seventy-two hours of debauchery and general erasure of concern. It was just something he did every now and again – harmless benders designed to bring perspective to his normally structured and, well, truthfully, rather boring existence. He did not really have feelings one way or another about his life: his job, his girlfriend of the month or six week relationship. He could take them or leave them. He needed the job to pay for the apartment that allowed him to sleep comfortably after work and to pay for the car that allowed him to drive to and from work. The job allowed him to take the girlfriends out on dates. It allowed him to save a little money so that he could take these bender vacations to Las Vegas, to New York, or, in this case, to New Orleans. His main lament, one that certainly wasn’t overwhelming, was that he did not truly have an impact. He had no results to show for his work or his driving or his dating.d

So Marshall would save-up, take flight, and he would let loose and not worry about this day-to-day existence. Ten hours ago he had landed in New Orleans, checked-in to the Marriott on Canal, pulled some money out of the ATM in the lobby, and walked out through the parking garage. He figured he’ d start at an off-Bourbon strip club to get worked up before moving on. He had learned various lessons on these vacations and the first was to start both cheap and easy.

He walked across Chartres and to the corner. Turning left, he saw what he had expected to see and heard what he had expected from an extremely large man in suspenders on a stool in front of a questionable establishment. Marshall allowed the man to feel that it was his convincing spiel that swayed Marshall’s decision to enter the place. He walked into a storm. The place was devoid, really, of customers, but the bar was full of strippers swaying unrhythmically to the pounding bass and shower of treble. Marshall thought that he had found heaven. On the single stage was an angel. hile she danced, she had all the grace and charm of the ethereal. She floated on the stage and her skin looked pure and good and clean under the stage lights. When she came off the stage and asked him to buy her a drink, well, how could he refuse an angel? And it was champagne she wanted and so champagne she got and the ordering of champagne sent up a cheer from the unlikely crowd, like a stadium full of football players watching football and cheering for a well-known and respected play’s perfect execution. His angel whispered that she and Marshall should have some privacy and so he took her hand and she walked him back to the closed red door in the rear.

Marshall was no stranger to champagne and private rooms and the things that happened in private rooms with champagne on Iberville Street. His angel was pure and good. And as the building up of purity and smooth, warm flesh and the wetness of champagne led to climax and a coming down was had, Marshall looked into the eyes of his angel and saw there something he had never seen before in other eyes in similar situations and all purity and softness and things angelic were replaced by things fearful and loathsome and harsh.

She was crying. Not the sobs and heaves of loss. Not the rage and panic tears of being wronged. This was the soft weeping of an angel that had been cast out of the heavenly host. Marshall gathered and donned his clothes. His angel did not move. She sat in the overstuffed chair, her grace and charm gone now as she slumped forward, elbows on knees and face in hands; naked and wingless and earthbound.

Marshall ran back into the storm and was greeted by cheers and backslaps and ass pinches. He fled into the hot street and around the corner back onto Chartres and went into the bar where he would find himself staring at himself over a bitter and cold Irish coffee several hours later. He would spend those hours contemplating men and what men had done and what it is that men do and how he, Marshall, was a man.

© Matthew Blake. All Rights Reserved.

Finalist - Impact by Matthew Blake

Matthew lives in Oakland, CA and loves writing for the fact that it allows him to look productive while he's drinking coffee.

Editor's Note: "Impact" is another Matthew Blake whopper, one to add to his contribution, "Hum," a winner in the Love and Coffee contest here at CoffeeBeanShop. I'm particularly fond of Matthew's take on life, as well as his writing style. I hope I never have to judge his work, as I'd know immediately who the writer was. Distinctive, disruptive, disorienting, and delightful.

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