Kristan Mourning
    
The sound of her laughter is silence: a mute melody fluted on her lips, voiceless chords in the hollow of her throat.  When she laughs, she laughs coldly, calmly, issuing quiet in waves of good humor.  To focus on that sweet, sad laughter, that inviting moment, I'm lost, forgotten.  I lean into the dark that divides us.  She brushes a hand against my cheek as if to capture me.  Her knuckles linger then pull away.  "I like it when you play it cool."
     
"I don't even know you," I tell her - a small lie.  
     
Lightning flickers through folded blinds.  Rain scatters across the roof: frantic, confused.  
     
She, too, seems distant.  She carries distraction, spreads it around.  And there again: her laugh, so close at hand but absent.  I've seen so many different laughs: the bellowing cough working an entire abdomen in drum-like beats; the snickering gasp caught at the back of the tongue, moving only corners of lips to form a mad half-grin; the short air-burst, muffled as if by custom; the asthmatic wheeze like a mare's poetry, held in check by a hand on the chest as if protecting lungs; the arrogant grunt, stagnant and sinister; the simple human breath aroused by a joke, turn of phrase, moment of perfect clarity.  Courteous or discordant, true or false, inspired by calamity or indiscretion - I love the feel, the look, the taste of it like sugar.    
     
She smiles.  "It's not about me.  I want to know about YOU."
     
"Don't worry," I promise.  "I'll keep you entertained."
     
She lights her cigarette with a slow, sexy thumb-stroke, then a flame's caress.  She holds it to her lips as if to moisten them like it's an icicle made of fire.  She inhales deeply, but when she breathes no smoke comes out.  I study her throat's twitch, the indecency of its gyrations as she casts off what she consumed.  I'd like to trace the curve with a kiss.  But she offers my lips another fix.  She extends her hand and stretches the cigarette toward them.  
     
I wouldn't refuse her my life just now if she wanted it.  I take a puff, struggling not to cough, then exhale leaving the grim flavor of tobacco and mints in my mouth, tears in corners of my eyes.  Pulling my hand away, I leave the menthol dangling from my lips.  Talking in a steady, deadpan voice, I tell her, "I don't smoke."
     
"Neither do I," she says, snapping the cigarette back with a cobra's strike, so quick I don't see it coming.  Dropping the menthol, she watches it drip to the floor, then crushes it beneath a gray sandal.  "Whims," she explains with a shrug and a cavalier turn of her head. 
     
I grin.  She's a woman given to whims and, like I said, distractions.  Am I one?  Am I pause from the rituals and routines?  Would I care?  "What interests you?" I ask.
     
She mocks me with a turn of her head, exposing her cynical side, her left profile.  It's as if she still has the cigarette pressed to her lips.  Shadows behind her, surrounding her, add to the illusion, so I see a wraith of smoke fade up.  It haunts the night - beautiful, perverse.  
     
She faces me.  "Tell me about your lovers," she says.  She pauses to enforce her silence.  It drowns out pool balls clacking behind her and the jukebox groaning rock'n'roll to my left.  "I want to know everything."  She stares into me and through me, her heavy black eyes refusing to look away until I give her what she wants.  
     
When I answer, it's to alleviate the pressure of that stare.  I tell her, "I don't have any."
     
She starts to laugh but stops, shaking her head.  Her eyes, haloed by darkness, take on a look of disappointment.  Just the same, her voice wields subtlety, amusement.  "Oh," she sighs, "surely someone like you has flings . . . a taste of sweetness on the side."
     
"I've had my share," I confess.  "Not now."
     
"Being good, are you?  Or playing at it?"
     
"Hard to say.  Maybe I'm just passing through."
     
"The night?  This bar?  My life?"
     
"States of mind."  This time, she does laugh.  I revel in the soundlessness, joining in although unable to mimic her or complement her quiet.   "It's true.  Right now, there's only you."
     
"Common's vulgar," she says.  "Don't be like that."
     
"What do you want?"
     
"Play it straight.  Tell the truth.  Everything so traditional, so typical makes me ill."
     
"I'm sorry."
     
"Don't apologize," she scorns.  "That's part of it too.  Stop thinking like yourself and step outside.  Don't apologize, never hesitate, and never hold back.  Those are rules.  The only rules.  And if you do feel the need to throw out a line, make it grand.  Don't be basic.  That's boring.  Dazzle me with words.  Other than that, believe me, anything goes."  It sounds like an invitation, but it carries the weight of a warning.  
     
I look away.  Through dusty, cracked blinds I watch each note of lightning marked in some minor key on a measure of rain.  The melody disarms: a song of light.
     
"You with me?" my companion whispers, her voice soothing like the rain.
     
"I could never leave."
     
She presses fingers to her lips, mocking the cigarette or a blown kiss.
     
"All right.  What do you want to know?"
     
"I recognize a face with a history," she tells me.  "I wonder: are you a living poet plagued by melancholy, a dreamer filled with regret?  Or is there something deeper? Do you have scars?  Blemishes on the soul?  That's what makes me curious."
     
"You're psychoanalyzing me?"
     
She shakes her head.  "That'd be too easy.  Your mother's to blame.  Take your medications and go to bed.  No, I'm going further, searching for a different you.  I want the question marks and exclamation points that punctuate passages from your life."
     
"But I don't even know you," I tell her again.
     
"You don't?"
     
"Maybe I don't."
     
"Maybe," she agrees.  "So learn more about me as you talk about yourself."
     
To get what I hope for, I have to give her what she wants: a fair trade, the exchange of body and mind.  "You want to know about my flings?"
     
"As good a place to begin as any."
     
"Why?  Do I look like I've been around?"  I pause before adding, "Please don't answer that.  It's probably better if I don't know."
     
"Ignorance is bliss, right?  Best to be stupid and happy."
     
"You don't pull any punches, do you?"
     
"Can't be helped.  Stupid and happy aren't my style."
     
Nodding, I wave her off with my hands, urging her not to say more.  I draw a breath thick with smoke that's thick all around us.  "It's hard to figure out where to start.  There's so much to say, so much I shouldn't say."
     
"Even better," she replies.
     
"Well, there's this one I met some time ago.  Last year, I think."
     
"Hold up a sec," she interrupts.  "Before you go on, I think I'll need a drink.  Rum and cola.  That should do the trick."
     
I smile, saying nothing.
     
"Good," she says, receiving my silence.  "Go get it.  I'll find us a table."  
     
I pause, stumbling over nerves.  Then I nod, adding another second while I contemplate her looks.  She has black gypsy eyes that seem to trail off in tunnels.  I can't read those eyes, not without learning a different language.  Even so, I'm seduced by their vocabulary.  Her hair's dark too, although not as much so as the barroom lighting depicts it in dull, yellow flickers from above.  I'd say it's red perhaps, or auburn.  She has more color than she reveals.  In contrast to the dark features, her face stands out, slender and spectral.  Her cheeks' narrow architecture bends toward the soft curve of chin and merciless thin lips forming a picture like an eye set in stained glass.  A hint of a naked earlobe's visible at the back of her jaw on the left side where waves of hair meet her neck's extended arc.  Her other ear's more modest, prudent, hiding in the dark.
     
She wears almost no jewelry except for a wristwatch and one insignificant ring.  Nor does she carry a purse.  Her clothes are subdued: tight, faded blue jeans that highlight slender legs; a brown and white shirt like a man's, too poor to be a blouse, too refined to be a tee; stylish sandals as gray as the moon through a cloud, accentuating the sultriness found even in her feet.  Neither extravagant nor blasé, she looks as if the world belongs to her and she rejects it, or as if nothing in that world can faze her, either to move her or cause her grief.  

     
I step to the bar, blinking as my eyes adjust to brighter light.  A large, older woman meets me from the other side, her form impenetrable despite the tight-fitting cowgirl-like costume she wears.  "How many saloons and brothels in the old west were run by women like that?" I wonder.  The ones in the movies always sparkle, having found a certain peace and respectability after years among the depraved.  This woman doesn't possess that quality.  Her lips haven't quite sunk to a grimace, but their little upward movement comes from cleverness and the business of pretense.  Her brown eyes are blinded by distrust.  Closed to slits and swollen as if with tears, they scan my face searching for sympathy, kindness, or the look of money.  "What can I get you?" she asks, her voice hard, lacking what courtesy her words imply.
     
I tell her what I need.
     
"Coming right up," she says and turns to seek the ingredients.
     
"Bring me another draft while you're at it, Mary," prods a middle-aged drunk beside me. 
     
"Sure thing, Pete."  She nods his way but doesn't look at him.
     
Nor do I.  I look around him, behind him, through him, studying the tavern. Toward the back I see the three parallel pool tables-the first two topped with green, the third with red.  Only the third's in use.  Rows of tables, chairs and booths fill the area between, covering green carpet and bordered by hardwood floors.  A few poker machines and a trivia game take up space, leaning idle against the nearest walls.  The counter has a typical horseshoe shape, an entrance on each side.  
     
Behind the bar, sitting isolated amidst rows of half-empty bottles rests a lone styrofoam cup filled to the brim with topsoil.  A marigold struts in bloom, healthy and detached from pollutants around it.  It lives and thrives, knowing nothing of anxiety, depression, the weakness of the will.  It's beautiful for that reason alone.
     
The tavern's self-portrait's there behind it, drawn in multicolored chalk on a small, rectangular blackboard.  The tavern's name draws attention: "Jormungandr's."  A spiny serpent flashing red eyes and fangs like golden daggers wraps in and around the individual letters, completely interwoven with the design.  It seems to grin as if reveling in the apocalypse it lives for and beckons.  Just below, a once mighty Viking warrior lies sprawled out, drowning in what looks like a giant pool of beer.  What artist designed such a masterpiece of desolation?  
     
This place is the sort in which one of Hemingway's protagonists might find himself hopelessly lost, given to his weary condition just before a plague of heroism overtakes him.  It has that overbearing bleakness when it's empty, that same false gaiety when it's full.  Even the smoke scenting the air is thick both with grief and overcoming.  
     
My thoughts have spread.  The middle-aged hipster to my right moves closer and taps me on the shoulder.  I turn and recognize him right away, though I don't know him.  I've seen him around.  I've passed him on campus or down by the river, out walking his dog: an ugly little monster like he is, though probably just as harmless.  I presume this guy's an alcoholic because I see him in here every time I come.  He's in his late thirties or early forties.  His face never stands out.  It's almost featureless except for a short black beard that gives him definition.  Traces of gray streak through it.  Whenever I see him, he's always wearing a pair of jeans along with a blue denim jacket over some sort of striped, button-down casual shirt.  Tonight the shirt's pink and gray as if it, too, has a beard superimposed on the drunken flush of its face.  When the guy talks, which is most of the time, he has a voice that's loud but always happy.  Friendly, too.  He looks me eye to eye without really seeing me, offering a typical Appalachian greeting: "Hey, Buddy."
     
I smile.
     
He repeats himself, adding, "Didn't I see you in here with that real pretty girl?"  It's clear he recognizes me, and yet he doesn't. 
     
"Yeah," I say.  I know who he means.  She's with me more often than not, though never around.  Even tonight.  Still, at first I suspect deviousness.  I figure he's playing a scam for drinks, hoping I might buy him a round or two while he talks about "that real pretty girl."
     
"Right," he says with a constant nod.  "You were standing over there by that table.  You were with her.  The real pretty one."  Creepy enough, but all in introduction.  He starts shaking his head.  "She has such beautiful hair.  You know that?  Really beautiful.  And her eyes..."  His words trail off, becoming mumbles.  It's kind of scary.  It's obvious he's been watching, even if he can't quite remember what he saw.  He's been standing off to the side somewhere, searching the bar with his eyes, studying "that real pretty girl" from a distance.  It disturbs me like an unremembered nightmare.  Still, I figure he's safe enough: a poor wretch whose only entertainment comes from seeing the blurry world around him through blurred eyes.  
     
"You're a good man," I say, laughing.  "Take care of yourself, my friend."  Paying the bartender, I collect the booze and head back, searching for the woman who waits in shadows.
     
The guy's still rambling incoherently about beautiful hair when I leave.  It's worth another laugh.  I was just thinking of Hemingway's characters and all their crazy scenes, and here I went and found one of the former engaged in one of the latter.  He can't take it further, though.  This poor creature won't put his nature behind him.  He won't emerge from his stupor into a life of heroism and experience. Why should he when he can stay here, merely experiencing madness?  He's stuck in the first part of the novel, with Hemingway's tired hands unable to write a better a scene, a better day.  If he's meant to be a hero, he's the one painted crassly in chalk on the sign: weary and uncaring, preparing at last to drown in the venom.  The world's serpent poisoned him before he had a chance to fight it.  He's a saxophone broken before he could be blown.
     
I sigh now to think I can't imagine what single step separates him from me.
     
     
     
My companion sips from her drink and smiles.  Her world is so uncomplicated like that poor man's.  I'm getting a sense that she keeps herself company with her thoughts.
     
I grin and relax, leaning into the hard groove of the bench.
     
"What are you thinking?" she asks.  "What's suddenly so heavy on your mind?"  It's the right question at the right time.  I tell her everything: the bartender, the marigold, the sign, the drunken rambler babbling about beautiful hair.  I explain about Hemingway and drowning heroes.  That sets me at ease, preparing me to tell other stories, ones more personal.
     
She looks away toward an approaching stranger.  He's a tall man in his late twenties with jaundiced eyes like golden spirals of dust.  His face, long and thin like an egg, is less than flushed.  His teeth glow their vivid white correctness.  The man goes down on one knee and stretches arms toward her, grinning gauntly as he receives her.  The rain-moistened sleeves of his flannel shirt constrict around her neck and shoulders, holding her face to his chest.  When he starts to pull away, he hesitates, meeting her gaze and staring desperately.  I think he intends to kiss her, but the moment fades and he sets her free.  Straightening his back and resting an arm on the table, he stares, consuming her face while paying no attention to me.Ý Breathless, he says, "How've you been, Kristan?  It seems like forever."
     
"It has been," she replies.  "We've never met,"  the tone of her voice dry, affectless, like a bailiff calling the next case.  She sounds so frightfully serious, so removed from this man's intimacy, that I almost believe she means it and she's never seen him before.
     
He blinks.  Then it seems he recognizes the cold, deadpan humor.  Closing his eyes, he throws his head back and laughs artificially, exhaling grunts that almost form words.  "It really is good to see you.  You haven't changed a bit."
     
The girl says nothing.  She laughs along, also falsely and making sounds.  
     
He doesn't notice.  "You almost had me there.  Thought I'd made a mistake."
     
"Happens to the best of us.  We all make mistakes.  That's part of being human."
     
The tall man on his knees shakes his head.  He's too overcome with himself to realize that she isn't.  "I guess so," he replies, struck dumb by her aloofness.
     
She wears him down with her eyes, but says nothing at first, waiting for him to figure out he's not wanted.  She's smiling all the time, pushing him out with pretense as easily as he pushed himself in.  Eventually she breaks eye contact.  "Anyhow, it was good to see you again."
     
"Right," he mumbles.  "Maybe we'll run into each other another time."
     
"You never know."
     
"Until then, I guess.  Take care of yourself, Kristan.  I'll keep an eye out for you."
     
"You do that," she says, still not using his name.  How easily she puts him behind her.
     
The stranger stands, grins madly, and leans forward to offer another embrace.  Then, eyes flickering, he pulls back as if having bumped his head.  I doubt she would've refused him, but she's disoriented him.  "So long, Kristan."  He's gone before she has a chance to reply.
     
"So long," she whispers to the empty shadows where he'd stood.  With that, she turns her attention to me as if this scene hadn't taken place.  "Where were we?"
     
At first I feel like laughing, though it'd be macabre laughter, cold and possessed.  I choke it back, then say, "Kristan.  That's a beautiful name, simple yet passionate like a love song."
     
I think I see her blush before she turns away.  "Don't be trite," she tells me.Ý "Why praise my name?  It wasn't mine to choose.  It's something attached to me at birth like race, sex, or mother's love.  Don't commend me for that.  Flatter me by applauding the way I fixed my hair, the clothes I'm wearing, or better yet, the words I use and the way I use them.  But for God's sake, don't waste time with, ‘Oh, you have such a beautiful name.'  I've heard all that before.  You're the poet.  Be more careful with your words."
     
"The poet?" I say, confused, thinking she knows I'm an attorney.
     
She ignores me.Ý "What's a name anyway?  Just a word or two to describe you so your friends don't get you mixed up with someone else, and so they can call out to you in a crowd.  All it does is tell people who you are on the outside without revealing much about the person you are in here."  She points at her chest, just off center to the left.
     
"A name's a title for the book of your life."
     
"Exactly," she says, nodding.
     
"No, really.  Think about it.  Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a name like Charlemagne, Zane Grey, or Sir Laurence Olivier?"
     
"How about Fyodor Dostoevsky?"
     
"Right," I agree.  
     
"Or Simone de Beauvoir."
     
"What about Glinda, good witch of the north?"
     
"Wouldn't that be magical?"
     
"Names might not be the best things to compliment, but they tell our stories.  It's with a name that one's world spins into focus.  How do you know this - to use YOUR term - this poet?  By words that echo from a few caustic meditations?  Or by words that precede them, the ones that whisper, ‘This is who speaks, who says so much?'  A name summarizes your story, inviting others to open you up and read.  You're an ongoing autobiography stereotyped with a single label devoid of connotations."  Again I hesitate, collecting air and words.
     
Her eyes lock on mine, darkly focused.
     
"I can learn as much from the title of an author as from the titles of the works which define her.  You can't imagine how many times I've read the classic novel HERMANN HESSE by its author Steppenwolf, and of course ALBERT CAMUS written by The Stranger.  Sentimental as I am, I confess my favorite poem is ‘Pablo Neruda' by the eminent poet Leaning Into The Afternoons.  And don't forget, God has names, so many names, defining Him each in its way.  So, you see, names are important for what they do.  They supply a certain truth about a person."
     
She stretches out her right arm as if to take hold of my left.  Instead, she uses the cushion of her middle finger to trace a cross on the back of my hand.  Her touch has a feathery feel, tickling at first but growing erotic as she completes the perpendicular line.  It gives me the urge to jerk away while making me plead for more.  My fist tenses up, then relaxes, ready to receive another stroke.  But she withdraws her hand, hiding it under the table.  "It makes sense in an odd way."
     
"What's so odd about it?"
     
"Well," she says, pausing, "suppose I accept the importance of a name . . . I mean, how does that help me?  What's the point?  What is it you want me to do?"
     
"Ah," I sigh.  "Got you."
     
"Then what?"
     
"Speak the name intimately, showing it courtesy and respect.  Or shout it out and call your image forth.  Reveal as much of yourself as you can without becoming embarrassed, ashamed, afraid.  Say the words and set yourself that much freer in the act."  
     
A wearisome calm fills the void between us.  I inhale deeply, but still taste burning mints and tobacco at the base of my tongue.  Not in love with the aftertaste, I wash it away, sipping rum and cola as Kristan does the same.
     
When we push our drinks aside, the oily bubbles bursting and fading in our mouths, she smiles, looks away and back, away and back again.  "All right," she says, and nothing more.
     
"What?" I ask.
     
"I'll do it."
     
"Good," I tell her.  "That's a small step.  So what is it?  What's the name?"
     
"Kristan Mourning," she replies, waiting to gauge my reaction.  Apparently, she doesn't find it favorable.  Her voice grows quiet and defensive as she explains, "It was my mother's idea.  She thought the combination sounded spiritual."
     
"She was right."
     
"I think it's annoying.  It sounds like a dull flower."
     
"Or a colorful one," I argue.
     
"Dull, colorful, what's the difference?  It's still just a weed with perfume."
     
I can't tell if she's serious or joking.  "That's a bit nihilistic for a spiritual girl."
     
"Isn't most spirituality that way when you go deep and get to the point?"
     
"Well said," I agree.  
     
The quiet builds between us for a while.  We drink, smile, drink.
     
"Well, Kristan Mourning," I tell her at last, "it's a pleasure to get to know you.  Your name reveals more than you realize.  By the way, I'm..."
     
"Stop."  She almost shouts the word.  "Don't reveal too much.  I think I already know you as it is.  Besides, I'd prefer to find your revelations chapter by chapter and verse by verse rather than have them imposed on me from the start."
     
"Whatever pleases you," I say.  "However you like it."
     
"What other way is there?"  That tells me the whole story.  She has control, and she intends to keep it.  Where we go from here and where we're headed are up to her.
     
I don't know why exactly, but at first that bothers me.Ý I refuse to give in right away.  "So, who was that guy?" I ask, thinking the question might give me power-a facade.
     
"Why?" she replies.  "Are you jealous?"  In that instant, I'm lost.  She answers my question with one of hers, and hers is the stronger of the two.
     
"No," I tell her.  "Of course not." 
     
"Not even a little?"
     
"Not even a little," I lie.
     
"Then it wouldn't bother you if I said he and I were good friends?"
     
"No, it wouldn't."  Another lie.
     
"I mean EXTREMELY good friends."
     
"It's not my place to be jealous about a thing like that."
     
"I'm not sure that's an answer," she says.
     
"Best I can give."
     
"Okay, I'll accept that.  What if I said we used to spend nights alone together just like this, sharing our thoughts, our emotions, our whole lives?  Would that bother you?  Would it hurt?"
     
I lie so poorly.  "That's what friends do, what good friends do."
     
She laughs.  "Let's take it another step.  Suppose he kissed me."
     
"It happens."
     
"No.  Wait.  I kissed him.  I pulled him aside and I pressed myself against him.  That's what it was.  That's when I kissed him more passionately than I've ever kissed anyone in my life.  Tell me the truth now.  Does that get under your skin?"
     
"It gives me the creeps, I confess."
     
"I thought so."
     
"But not because you did.  Only to hear you talk about it.  That's what's creepy."
     
"Then you'd be quite annoyed to hear me describe how frantic we were making love."
     
I stare at my glass.
     
"Sometimes silence is a confession," she says, arguing the way lawyers do.  "I'll take that as a fact.  Yet you said no to all the rest.  I wonder, can the line be drawn so clearly?  Everything's okay but sex? Anything short, there's no problem?  It's never that easy.  One snowball starts an avalanche, wouldn't you agree?  Once you open the door on that slobbering brute of a green-eyed monster, don't you think he'll squeeze his way inside?  Tell me the truth, that's all I ask.  How far does it go?  The touch?  The kiss?  The friendship?  The first hello?"
     
"You've got me," I concede.  "It's all the same."
     
"I had a feeling," she says of my admission.  She drinks, sips slowly, savoring the taste.  
     
When she's finished, I ask, "Are you going to tell me about him?"
     
She shakes her head, not interested in any stranger but the stranger inside.  "I don't think so."  After hesitating, she adds, "No, definitely not.  It'd bother you, however intimate the relationship.  It creates a problem, don't you see?  It adds tension between us.  Conflict.  I wouldn't want it looming over us for the rest of the night.  He's best forgotten.  Really, I can't remember his face anymore.  Besides, YOUR history we need to explore."
     
"Is that fair?"
     
"It's not fair," she says, "but it's reasonable.  You're the story.  You want me happy.  You need me entertained.  It's the game you chose to play." 
     
I nod, accepting.
     
"Give me your stories.  That would make me happy."
     
"What do I get out of it?" I ask, though I regret it immediately.
     
My companion laughs, long and slow.  "Isn't that obvious?" she says, masking innuendo with sarcasm.  "You get to learn about yourself."  She feathers another finger over the back of my hand.  "Come on.  Show me what you're made of ... what you are.  Break yourself down to your principal parts.  Then we can work on putting you back together."  

It sounds so inviting, and yet so overwhelming.  She wants me to tell her my darkest secrets, show her everything that makes me ugly, give her all the blue notes that make my jazz so beautiful in its chaos.  I have a feeling she'll get all she wants before the night's over.  I'll give this dark-eyed, darkly-red-haired woman with her sweetly silent laugh a history of my entire life.
     
"What's it to be?" she asks.  
     
I say nothing and smile.  Once again, silence seals the deal.