Power Hour #7 (Incomplete)

The city breaks people down. It’s this living, crushing monstrosity. People go in and shards come out. When Greg first came to the city, Greg was real. He felt life in all its brilliance; the rich, aromatic smells of the unknown, the sounds that ripple into the very core of a person, the feeling of wonder that changes a man and sculpts them into something brighter. Greg is no more. Greg is a statistic. Greg has a job. Greg goes to this job. And Greg functions. He gets by.

It’s said that living in a city is the survival of the fittest. People say they withstand the bastards and bitches that are their bosses because they will get a fantastic pension. People say that they will go to the gym, go to a yoga class, go write a book tomorrow. People bullshit themselves into this state of nonexistence. Greg is leaving his apartment to go to work, and afterwards he will get a drink to forget. Greg is now at work and is already wishing that it was time to leave. Greg is at the bar and doesn’t realize there is a work of art sitting next to him.

Sarah is the city. She is that woman you see in those magazines full of advertisements and complaints. She dresses as the pictures tell her. Everyday, people look at the clothes she wears, the way she walks and assume that she is a classy lady. Sarah follows the crowd and does not realize the crowd is following her. She has conformed to a predetermined definition of beauty for so long that she has forgotten what she looks like. What she looks like underneath the mascara, the foundation, the eyeliner, the blush, the perfectly curled bangs, the plucked eyebrows and the anti-wrinkle lotion. Sarah has eyes that used to see curves as part of her body, not as her enemy. Eyes that twinkled when she listened to her father’s saxophone. Eyes that watered when she first left home. Eyes that sob when she tries to look at herself and all she sees is nothing.

Sarah is at a bar not because she wants to forget, but because she wants to remember. Remember the heights and depths of emotion that a teenage girl laments. Sarah swills her brandy around her mouth because some food critic said that was the proper way to enjoy alcohol. She smells the acrid stench suffocate her nostrils. She swallows the booze because she must. Sarah sits here, pretending to enjoy liquor that’s overpriced and oversold. Sarah looks to her left out of habit and sees a man, or what used to be something.

She says hello, because Sarah has nothing better to do. Greg, in his fake drunken stupor jabs back, “What?” He looks at Sarah and he sobers up immediately. This woman looks like a movie star. She has that saloon styled hair, devoid of split ends and stray strands. She must be calling out to another man. She must be calling out to her boyfriend. That man must be living the life. Has a gorgeous girlfriend, and he must be rich, loaded. Greg clumsily turns away because he cannot deal with any awkwardness.
Sarah has no plans tonight. She has some routines and some work to attend to, but that can wait. There’s something about this man that seems so familiar. Sarah nudges him. Greg shirks from the contact. Replies with “Wow.” Sarah laughs. Greg blushes. But Sarah’s not laughing at him. She’s been courted by the most articulate, overly educated socialites the city has to offer. She has had poems of magnificent length delivered to her, oftentimes with a bouquet of roses. Sarah hates roses. They look unnatural. They’re harvested from some unknown greenhouse, doused in pesticides and diced up like cheap sushi. Sarah has had propositions of all kinds, but none as simple as just “Wow.”

Greg is trying to figure out his next move. This glorious woman is trying to talk to him. And, like the buffoon he is, he replied with a one syllabus utterance, “Wow.” “Wow,” Greg thinks, “Wow what do I say?” “I have to say something. She’s waiting. She’s getting tenser. She’s getting disinterested. I cannot let this pass by. What do I say?”
“Wow. You are something,” Greg incredulously states. “Fuck!” is what he thinks.
Sarah just smiles. She’s not a, “heaven-sent seraphim” or a “foxy lady”. She is something. She exists.
“Hi, I’m Sarah.”
“Um, I’m Greg, how may I help you?” he responds. “Fuck, fuck, fuck my goddamned job and my goddamned phone and my goddamned preset conversations,” Greg thinks.
“Are you as tired as I am?” Sarah asks.
“Yeah, work is killing me,” Greg says.
“Killing me too, by inches and inches,” Sarah says.
“Isn’t that from that old R&B song? The local radio station at home used to play that all the time.”
“Yeah, I picked it up from my father. He is, or was a musician. Greatest saxophone player I’ve ever heard. No one in the city compares. I’ve been to a dozen jazz clubs around and my dad would have scoffed at them. ”
“How bout that jazz club down on 5th Avenue?”
“Jerry’s? That was the worst of them all. Tacky decorations, and even tackier musicians.”
“Yeah, tacky.” Jerry’s was Greg’s favorite place in the city. But not anymore. “So where are you from?”
“Up north, near the border,” Sarah says.
“Out by Route 451?”
“Yup, that’s the place. Why you know of it?”
“Yeah, I grew up there. So what are the chances that two people at a bar in this huge city would both be from that hick county.”
“What are the chances,” Sarah states.
They both look down at their drinks. They’re not thinking about their drinks, or of each other. They’re thinking of that evergreen scent that they woke up to as kids. They’re thinking of the buttermilk the farms up there used to sell for fifty cents a gallon. They’re thinking of the squirrels, who hid from humans, who lived on the edge of sight like a flurry blur.”
“Home,” they both say at the same time.
“You miss it, don’t you?” Greg asks.
“More than words can express.”
“I’ve wanted to drive out there for so long but I don’t have a car.”
“Greg. Let’s go. I have a car. Let’s just go now.”
“Now? But, I have work in the morning and it’s an eight hour drive.”
“Greg. Forget about work. Forget about tomorrow. Just come with me and let’s just go.”
Greg downs the rest of his drink. “Fuck it, I’m game.”