A Beautiful Quest

I'm soaking wet, my body aches and I'm leaning on the bar. Drew
telephoned me today and told me that we had to go into town, that the
night promised adventure and a quest of the highest order. I needed a
break from my work, so I agreed to meet him in the billiard hall behind
The Old Collinger Hotel on Softway St. We began drinking heavily, and
then he gave me two tablets and told me to take them. I asked him what
they were and he said they would help us.

"On a night like this we need to see everything in as much detail as we
can. What we are looking for is easily missed."

I took the pills. He told me that he had awoken in the morning to a
blinding vision of God before him. The room, he said, was full of light
and in the distance he could hear a choir of Angels. God spoke to him
and told him that he had left Beauty in the city for him to find, but
that he would take it back the next day and it would never return. When
the vision had abated Drew took to the streets and spent the day
searching the cafes and bars for the elusive grail of Beauty. He asked
around, but nobody seemed to know of its whereabouts. Knowing that I
was a sensitive sort of person, he decided to enlist me in the search.
I asked him what the voice of God sounded like, but he told me he
didn't know.

"When God speaks to us, you never hear words."

We left the billiard hall a while later and began our search, wandering
the streets with our eyes wide open. We took separate sides of the
street in order to cover more ground, stopping occasionally to rest and
drink beer. Searching for Beauty is tiresome work. It got later and
later and soon the bars and clubs began to close and the streets became
deserted and still we hadn't found it. Drew was becoming agitated. It
began to rain. I thought I glimpsed our goal through the sheets of
water that struck the oily streets in countless tiny explosions of
star-like light. In all that chaos of movement I thought I saw a kind
of stillness that I took for Beauty, but I was wrong. I didn't say
anything, because all of a sudden we were running. My legs were burning
and my eyes were aching from looking around so much. The drug, whatever
it was, had begun to fade and the aftertaste was bitter on my tongue.
After an exhausting sprint through mud-like concrete and curtains of
rain we suddenly stopped beneath the flickering hum of a neon
light.

"What is this place?"

I had no idea where we were. Drew looked confused and muttered
something I only heard later on, and before I knew it we had walked
through a set of doors and the rain had stopped. I was soaking wet and
leaning on this very bar that now stands before me. I'm on edge.

****

At the far end of the bar the locals are shifting ominously in their
seats as the barmaid saunters reluctantly towards us. The neon lights
are humming over the repetitive clutter of raindrops on the street. I
turn to Drew to catch one of his eyes, but they are both transfixed on
the barmaid who is now standing directly in front of us and asking us
what we want to drink. Drew is speaking to her.

"Give us a couple of bottles to go Babe."
"A couple of beers to go. Ok."

Instead of catching Drew's eye I find myself staring at a rough shaven
alcoholic with a scar and too many tattoos. The menace in his cold gaze
is obvious. We shouldn't be here.

"We shouldn't be here." I whisper to Drew. He turns to look at
me.
"Why the hell not, we've still got time. Do you want another beer or
not?"

I can feel the decrepit hands of the tablet as it loosens its grip and
leaves behind a mess of uncomfortable feelings within me. My bones
ache, my muscles are tired and the hum of the neon is overbearing. I
light a cigarette and wonder whether Drew feels like I do. It was his
idea to come into this bar. He told me he'd never noticed it before,
that none of his friends had ever mentioned it. He said he knew every
bar in town. He said he had a feeling. He didn't like being
wrong.

"We just shouldn't be here."

One of the locals has risen from his chair and is walking towards us.
His face is chiselled from hours of labouring beneath the sun. He walks
with a slight loping gait, his left leg seemingly shorter than his
right. I feel a rush up my spine - adrenalin. The barmaid has returned
and Drew is paying for the beers and talking to her but I can't hear
him. He hasn't noticed the man that now stands beside him at the bar.
All eyes are on us and I feel sick to the pit of my being. I want to
wretch, but I take the bottle to my lips instead and try desperately to
act normal.

"What are you boys doing out here so late, all dressed up like penguins
and leaning on bars and talking to Betty like you were screwin' her or
something?"
"I beg your pardon", says Drew
"I said, what are you boys doing out here so late?"
"We're getting two bottles to go, and then we're going."
"I don't think you are somehow."

Drew looks at him for the first time, dead straight in the middle of
his eyes. He's giving him that look where he focuses right on the
bridge of the noise. All the other eyes are looking at him but he can't
see them.

"Why is that?"
"Because I said so."
"And who might you be?"

Betty is shifting nervously, edging away from us and looking anywhere
except at people. For some reason I only really notice her now. She's
striking in the most fragile sense of the word - a princess of withered
rags and tragic ruin. I stand transfixed and she seems to become
illuminated in my gaze. Drew is still talking to the man with the
chiselled face, but I can't hear him. I catch the girl's eye and she
looks at me intensely, staring straight into my drug-addled mind and
lending me strength, the light from her aura reaching out towards
me.

"You are the most beautiful girl in the world." I say, but my lips
don't move and no words sound against the neon hum.
"I know." She says. "That is why they come here. That is why you cannot
leave."

But again the lips don't move and no words are audible. I feel a knot
tying up hard against my gut and I screw my face to the pain, my
features contorting but my eyes still held in that gaze. Her face is
full of compassion and pity and I long for one morning in bed with her,
the sun lighting the solitude of her sleeping body beside me. I long to
hold her and be consumed.

Drew is shouting something at me. There's a violent movement in my
peripheral vision. The pain in my gut twists further in and I break the
gaze to look down at my stomach. The cigarette in my hand drops to the
floor and swims in a puddle of warm beer and broken glass. In my gut I
see the handle of a switchblade and a line of blood. Another blade has
struck me in the side and I feel it turning. I follow the drops from my
midriff to the floor where they stick in the hair of Drew's twitching
forearm. A fist strikes me in the temple, but my whole body has become
numb and I ignore the pain as the blows crash into me.

"I'm going to let you go now." I hear her say to me.
"But I don't want to leave."
"Then you should never have come."

The broken end of a bottle breaks the skin of my neck and like a
leaking balloon I spiral slowly to the floor and land in the arms of
death as he gathers me to him. In the distance I hear footsteps like a
heart beating and then all is silent and bright. Beauty is holding me,
but our bodies never touch.