Packed into this little ballroom on 13th once I saw a thing. Something. I forget the name of the venue but the ceiling looked like the renaissance. We were in rome. Portland oregon. The drinker, I go for drinks at one of the barstands. The show had sold out and everybody's toes are involved meandering to and from and homeward. Looking for C w a gin and tonic and two double shots of scotch pinched in theright for myself, half expecting to find some meathead chatting her up by then I immediately drain one for backers on the way back. Returning I find her still going it alone. Must've fished a middle finger out of her pocket for the lot of them, I'd been away at sea for half an hour. I don't deserve this girl.
Conversation is impossible and we play the charades for a few minutes and hear every word before giving it up. The main act arrives, they play their newer stuff and it's kind of slow and lame. The band is letting me down bad and I her, and on fifty dollar tickets we're just standing it. So I take her hand and dancing backwards into the crowd lead her closer to center stage. Kind of in the mood anyhow with vessels dilated on all 4 rounds. Nobody cares how rudely you push by when it's madlad adonai in his workshirt ferrying an atom bomb over. Catherine of irishland and the snowplow kid.
Still, the music is shit and we try but neither one of us can really get into it. We persist and get a resounding.. "eh". In a manner of apology I finally kinda just rest an arm on C's shoulder. Well then. Like you would your stud in a chapel full of pussy. Baddest in the house.
..Unless?
Bored, I look around and over my shoulder. Sea of faces. There's movement directly behind, over a few heads and I turn. I spot a couple, each in all black and matching derby hats, spanned off a ways in the middle of the audience looking like doc holiday and his poker beretta fresh out of the saloon. I scan the eyes behind them and nobody seems to notice. Odd.
I look down at C, look back. The lights are swimming the crowd and his hat and shoulders blaze over hers, red green blue red. It's almost psychedelic. Surreal. And I begin to wonder if maybe somehow Id been slipped something. No, I don't think so. I nudge C to have a look. She sees them too, thank god, laughs and says something inaudible. Yeah I guess that's what we'd call getting down huh. They seem to be hearing music from another stage somewhere, stepping triangles in this insane waltz, woven together like a couple of mambas. Fucking. Muted, synchronized, sublime. But to have brought a spotlight down into them like in the movies would have killed them flat. I'm certain they would have shriveled into a plume of smoke and mirrors, ghosts. I didn't know what to make of it and turned away.
The show ends. Anxious to get back and reset the mood to something good like meat puppets or skip james, or anything, we make our way out ahead of the crowd. I take her hands and ship her through, plowing backwards again. My bad, my bad, sorry. Didn't see you there. Step aside and go to hell. Both you and your shitty music.
Looking back through the mass I spot the two in black again, the lights now dimmed. Still there, slow dancing alone on a floor all their own. A dance floor from somewhere else altogether. To something nobody heard.
To that something, whatever it is, I tip my glass.