By Barry Peters
I always arrived before eight. Any later, forget a table, I’d be lucky to find a seat at the bar. I’d have to crane my neck to see the stage. I hate craning my neck.
That last night at The Blue Garden, though, something had happened, and it was after eight. There was one empty barstool, between a woman and an older couple. I thought about standing, maybe leaning against a post in back until a table opened up. It seemed preferrable to wedging myself between the woman and the couple, then having to crane my neck.
I didn’t want to think of the couple as old, but that’s the word that popped into my head. I’m fifty-two, which is old to some people, like the two bros sitting at my favorite table wearing ballcaps. They’d probably leave after the first set when they couldn’t take the music anymore. They could still tell their hipster friends they’d been to The Blue Garden.
The bar or the post, I had to decide. If only I hadn’t been late. That was another story, one I might tell the woman at the bar if I was able to strike up a conversation with her, if I didn’t choose the post. I hadn’t seen the woman before, but she looked like she belonged in The Blue Garden. Her hair was short with abrupt edges. It was both dark and silver, the way women’s hair sometimes defies color. She wore a blue dress with a spirally blue pattern that matched the décor, the lighting and artwork, the curtain that framed the stage. Maybe she planned it that way. I could be happy about that.
I stood there, not being able to decide, bar or post. It was crowded. People backed up behind me in the small path between tables. The Blue Garden, accessible by a staircase off a busy avenue, calls itself an intimate venue online, but it’s really just a well-appointed basement. A garden is mostly underground, I suppose. At least that’s where the important work happens.
I stepped toward the bar. “Is anyone sitting here?” I asked the air between the woman and the couple. The three of them turned. Even the bartender, large and bearded, in blue vest and bowtie, stopped shaking the drink that he was making. He held the shaker shoulder-high. It was a statuesque pose. He was a new bartender. The Blue Garden went through them quickly.
“No,” the man of the couple said. For a second, I thought he was denying me the barstool, No, you can’t sit here, but then he put his palm on its back, meaning No, nobody is sitting here. It was a kind gesture. They were nicely dressed, the couple, he in a pale button-down, she in a black jacket that made me think of supper clubs. In another life I could have been their son. I pictured the man teaching me how to putt on the practice green at the country club while members watched from the veranda, drinking brightly colored drinks under brightly colored umbrellas and exclaiming, “That putter is as big as he is!”
The barstools at The Blue Garden were in fact tall, generously padded chairs made of extremely heavy wood. You had to be a furniture mover-slash-gymnast to pull one out, sit down, and scooch back in gracefully, all while trying to interpret the smile of a woman you’d never met, what percentage was greeting and what percentage grimace.
She went back to her phone. Her index finger was dismissive of every screen, the nail like a red arrowhead flicking away mosquitos. She wore two rings, elaborate contraptions, neither on a ring finger. I thought about the plain gold band buried in my underwear drawer.
There is a wall-sized mirror behind the bar at The Blue Garden, probably to make the intimate venue look bigger. I checked my hair, which at least wasn’t sticking up, and the status of my white shirt and blazer. I worried that my new barstool partners would think I was mirror-staring them, so I looked at the beer taps instead. They reminded me of steeples, the pastoral images and medieval lettering pointing toward the sky. In this case, the ceiling.
I wished I hadn’t made the rule about not looking at my phone in The Blue Garden. I folded my hands on the bar, felt its heft. It wasn’t going anywhere. The tables, you never knew. The people, too. There were always new people at The Blue Garden. The bartender, for example. The woman, the couple, the ballcapped bros. The musicians would be familiar. I saw the same musicians, often in different combinations, in the year I’d been going to The Blue Garden. My therapist called it my weekly ritual, church with music but no prayer.
I side-eyed the woman on her screen, the couple leaning toward each other. Then the bartender began his banter, which I navigated deftly despite his beard. I ordered a gin-and-tonic with a lime, the same drink I always had, though he didn’t know that. I kept my voice steady in case the woman was listening.
I tried to eavesdrop on the couple. Were they aware of the proper etiquette at The Blue Garden? If the audience engaged in table talk during the music, there could be tense moments, depending on the musicians that night. Table talk always made me anxious. I worried that smack in the middle of a ballad, the pianist might stop playing and yell at the table talkers. Maybe the drummer would throw a stick. The worst I’d seen was a scowling bass player who went about six-foot-five, two-eighty. The entire night, he scowled at the table talkers. I understood how he felt.
I told myself that the older couple would simmer down when the music started. I hoped the bros wouldn’t be rude.
There was a lot going on at The Blue Garden.
“It’s very crowded.” The woman had spoken.
I replied quickly, “It is.” Banal, but safe.
Her wrists and forearms were loaded with bracelets. She picked up her drink and they jingled-jangled. I worried that such jingle-jangling would disturb musicians more than table talk.
I was trying my best. It had been a long year. Sometimes I’d lie awake half the night wondering why the word actor is male and actress is female, but widow is female and widower is male. I’m glad that actor covers everyone now. I wanted to argue the same thing for widow. If she asked, I’d tell the woman I was a widow and see what happened. Maybe she’d correct me. That’s the kind of place I was in. Willow, weep for me.
And what about her? What kind of place she was in? Divorced? Widowed too? Maybe never married. Or married but ringless for some nefarious reason. Maybe she wasn’t interested in men, or any human. Why couldn’t a middle-aged woman put on a blue dress and go to The Blue Garden by herself? Men sat by themselves all the time. I just had to look in the mirror.
“I wasn’t waiting for anyone,” she said, apropos of nothing except the third degree in my head.
I itemized possible responses: hello my name is, where are you from, what do you do, do you come here often. Several weeks earlier I had written out dialogue with actual pen and paper, speech bubbles that ballooned in webby directions. They looked like schematic charts that coders or philosophers might use. After practicing for a while, I decided the script made me sound rehearsed. Then I reconsidered: Aren’t those who appear most natural at what they do, like athletes or musicians, the most practiced? That’s the advice I gave my reporters at the station: Practice until it doesn’t look practiced.
The woman touched her hair with her left hand, the bracelets doing their thing. Was she signaling for another drink? Or the tab?
I noticed that the bartender had inconspicuously placed the gin-and-tonic in front of me. Thank you, Beard. Now I had something to do with my hands and mouth.
“Do you like music?” She apparently wasn’t finished with me
“Yes,” I said, hoping to sound spontaneous. “Though I don’t play an instrument.”
She squared her shoulders, both hands on the glass in front of her. It was a strong posture. “I’m in human resources,” she said.
“I’ve always been curious about human resources.” I was going off-chart, but it wasn’t a lie. “What’s it like?”
“Part psychology, part therapy,” she said. “And a lot of rules and regulations.”
“Documentation,” I said.
She nodded. I waited for her to ask what I did. Her drink glared orange.
“No offense,” she said, “but I never ask what other people do. That’s an American thing. When you meet someone in Europe, they don’t want to know what you do. They want to know who you are.”
“Are you from Europe?”
“No. It’s what I’ve been told, though.”
Was this her way of asking me what I did for a living? Who knew? I said, “I’m in production.”
She had a small, round face. Her stare was intense.
I elaborated. “Television. Local.”
“I’m Guthrie,” she said, raising her hand to shake. I took it softly, trying to be tender with its bones.
“I’m Ron.”
She drank straight from the glass, ignoring the straw. I worried it would poke her in the eye. Then she said, “Ron. Ron in production.”
Everyone probably asked about her name, so I didn’t. The only Guthrie I’d heard of was Woody. Wasn’t there another one, too? Arnie? Argo?
Because of the phone rule, I wore a watch. It was almost eight-thirty. I worried about our table talk.
“You have to crane your neck to see the stage from here,” I said.
“Not me,” Guthrie said. “I’m not going to crane my neck. I just like to listen. I don’t need to see.”
Silently, I disagreed. I liked watching the musicians. Some were quite animated with their facial expressions. I admired the ways they communicated during the songs, the raised eyebrows and exaggerated nods.
“The music is the thing,” Guthrie said, continuing her explanation. She gestured toward the room. “Who made The Blue Garden? Yet here we are.”
I didn’t know how to respond. “That’s an interesting position for someone in human resources.”
“I’ve become cynical,” she said. “But I’m not always happy about that.”
This Guthrie was a disruptive presence. I was fascinated and a little frightened. And it was eight-thirty. What if she didn’t stop talking? I swiveled halfway around so that I could see the stage and, in my periphery, a little bit of Guthrie. It was a gambit. Would she think I was ignoring her?
True to her word, she continued looking in the other direction. At the mirror, I assumed.
I’d seen three of the musicians before–the drummer with the gray afro, the ponytailed bass player, the pianist who had a green cross tattooed on the back of her neck. They were fine musicians with very expressive faces. But there was a new player, a trombonist. I was alarmed to see that he wore an untucked Hawaiian shirt and a trilby. I was always doubtful about trilbies.
They were going through their last-minute fidgets, adjusting their instruments, whispering to them, asking them not to fail. It was an affectionate moment. Even the drummer seemed a little in love with his kit. This was why I’d been coming to The Blue Garden every week. The music was fine, but the moments just before the music were better.
The first song was a medium swing. Each musician took a short solo. I was happy that the trombonist with the shirt and the trilby didn’t play the way he was dressed. His tone was warm and purposeful. He sounded like a nocturnal animal roaming the neighborhood, but not the kind that would knock over a trash can. The drummer rolled his mallets on the ride cymbal, the pianist bopped along, and after a few minutes the trombonist lowered his instrument, signaling to the others, let’s stop now.
The crowd applauded. There had been no table talk, not from Guthrie or the older couple. I couldn’t see the ballcaps, but I hadn’t heard anything from that side of the room.
I was relieved, especially when Guthrie turned and smiled.
The quartet proceeded through the set, the requisite Latin, bop, ballad, and jazzed-up pop songs. I bounced my leg to the music. Nothing too perceptible, but moving nonetheless. It was difficult to stay still.
I was also considering how things would be when the first set ended. Would Guthrie and I return to the interesting conversation we’d been having? Would she want to begin a new one? Maybe she would leave.
The trombonist announced a twenty-minute break.
I expected Guthrie to say something about the music, but that might have been against her policy. Instead, she asked, “Why were you late?”
“How did you know I was late?”
“You like watching the musicians, so you probably like to sit at a table down front, right?”
I asked her if she’d developed her intuition from working in human resources. She said that I was confusing intuition with logic.
“I’m glad there aren’t any children here,” she said. “Though I suppose I wouldn’t mind a well-mannered boy or girl, dressed up like a little adult, listening with their parents.”
In the middle of the second set, between songs, Guthrie said she had to go. I asked her if we could meet again.
“Yes. But enough of The Blue Garden.” She handed me a cocktail napkin. In black ink she had printed her name and phone number.
“I’ll tell you why I was late,” I said.
“Not now,” Guthrie said, turning to go. The next song began. “Just listen to the music.”
About the Author:
Barry Peters and his wife, the writer Maureen Sherbondy, live in Durham, North Carolina. His work has appeared in Baltimore Review, Grist, Image, New Ohio Review, and The Southern Review.