A Record Year for Rainfall: End of the night

I don't consciously alternate between scenes that move the plot and scenes that grow the characters, but that is generally how it comes out. This scene, involving Tess alone at a bar at 4 in the morning, is one of those grower scenes.

[image error]

It was getting near four in the morning. Tess felt the air on her, closed her eyes slowly, breathing in through whatever pore arched feeling, before letting her back go limp and her feet leave the ground. She sat on a plush black stool, girded permanently to the floor with thick enough metal to hold the obese. The cushion was soft, a burnt dark red kiss that let her sink in a little. It made part of her feel good and left the rest to fend.

Tess' shoes, bright-silver bedazzled platforms the club demanded but didn't provide stuck to the bottom of her feet. She'd lost feeling in her heels an hour before, but blood was beginning to recirculate. Her legs, naked and smooth and warm, hugged one another and wrapped around the stool's cold thick single leg.

She wore a tassel-filled white vest, cut low and with the sides opened up. The outfit, meant to synchronize with the team of other girls than impress or titillate the crowd, looked less like clothes than a Halloween costume for a cheerleader. It was cheaply sewn, its half life barely a weekend.

She'd asked for a tall pint, and by the time it arrived she hadn't yet breathed enough to down. After almost every hard shift, Tess unwound in a nearby bar. She didn't always drink, but she always breathed deep. After too many hours of being a prop, she had to reemerge a real person, and that required a few minutes alone. She used to do more yoga. She used to go to a class. She thought, then, about finding a class here, and putting down a deposit and signing a contract. She blinked, her eyes staying closed longer.

Snaked around her index finger was a silver ring, and she liked to clink it against glasses of beer. She loved the sound, how it started high and held longer the emptier the glass. She once had a crush on a bartender simply because he had a silver ring on his finger, and every time he picked up a glass it made that same noise, that same tingggg.

The temperature in every Vegas casino drew inspiration from Disney World, always blowing the same drift of light air conditioning regardless of season or weather. It was a permanence Tess had come to know but never love, as she sometimes missed the surprise climatical turns of British Columbia. That Vegas became cool at night did little for the case that she often?and often in times of slow, post-work reflection like this?felt that she lived in a place without time, without a world surrounding it. Las Vegas reflected the world using various methods, but had nothing to do with it in any way that really mattered. People would miss Paris or Dubai or Melbourne. Tess thought, could the same be said of here?

The drink in her hand was cold, and her hand felt chill holding it, like an ice pack on a sore lower back. It reminded her a little of her old laundromat. It was a block away from her apartment, and she'd learned it was wisest to stay, to make sure nothing was lifted. Even in the warmer months, the laundromat was freezing, which made for a musical chairs of people jumping in and outside to keep balance. Every time her laundry was finished, she'd open the dryer, engulfed in a hot haze. It was so much hotter for having stewed in this freezer of a room, and she would burn her hands on the door. The air would hit her, and her too half would steam as her legs stayed frozen.

Later, when Bret and Tess got serious, she'd bring her laundry to his place, and she didn't feel two opposite climates on her skin anymore. With him, it became one feeling; the coupling helped stave off minor discomforts that come from going it alone. She didn't burn her hands anymore. She didn't drink alone. She didn't feel the elements attack.

Here, in a bar tucked deep in the Aria, she could all but touch the hot laundered air mixed with the frozen reality. She couldn't bring herself to drink, but she held on, letting her hand chill, her body heat up. The bartender sympathetically left her alone. Nobody came up to talk to her. She couldn't have handled company, but being saved wouldn't hurt. She thought about saving herself. It made her feel stronger. She thought about saving Bret. That made her take a drink.