Our first story by Carl Wooton, whose short fiction has appeared in a number of small literary magazines — two recently in the Hudson Review...
Harmony Romero felt the stares even before she walked through the door of The Fashion Spot. Four men at the bar all turned to watch her as she came in, and her skin tingled like something was crawling on it. She really didn’t want to be there, but Eric had insisted. “I need you,” he’d said.
“You always need me.”
“And you’re always there. That’s what’s so great about you.”
And she thought it was true. It had been true for nearly a year. He said he needed her, and she was always there. She said she needed him, and he was hard to find, usually a recorded voice on an answering machine with a message that made him sound like the world’s greatest gift to women. But he always called back.
This time he said he needed to see her because he was leaving town for a few days — and the rush of sensations at the thought of his being gone made her not register what he was saying about meeting him at The Fashion Spot until it was too late. She searched for the name of some other place to meet, but he was already saying, “See you at six, Harmony. Ta ta!” He sang the last two syllables.
He hung up, and she’d held the phone for a moment and tried not to understand why he might have chosen The Fashion Spot as a place to meet. Weekend tourists looking for a singles scene in New Orleans thought it was a place to go, partly because it was in the area known as Fat City. Harmony knew it really was a meat locker, one of those bars filled with plastic-chic decor and where every woman who walked in was on display and thought of as probably for rent. She hated it, Eric knew it, and she was there. He was not.
She looked along the bar and the row of tables against the wall. There were only the four men at the bar and most of the tables were taken by couples. Five women sat around one table, however, looking, Harmony thought, as if they were trying to figure out how to divide the four men at the bar among themselves. Two of the women glared at her. She was bewildered by the hostility in their faces and felt an impulse to stop and tell them not to worry about her, she was meeting someone — he would be here any minute, they didn’t need to worry.
At the bar, one of the men stood and made a gesture as though to offer her a stool. He was nice-looking, taller than Eric, and maybe younger, but it was hard to tell in the dim light. He smiled at her. She looked at him and felt the others watching her, then she walked past him to a table in a rear corner and sat facing the door with her back to the wall. The man who had offered her the stool and the others at the bar were laughing. The five women at the round table looked at her, then turned away. One of them muttered something that started them all giggling. Harmony tried to ignore them, but the high tilted mirror that ran the length of the wall behind the bar reflected everything in the room.
She was startled by the image of herself in it, her hair down, falling almost to her shoulderblades, and her face with the dark glasses still on. She took off the glasses and put them in her purse. A waitress appeared at the table and Harmony told her she was waiting for someone, she would order when he arrived.
The men at the bar laughed again. One of them slapped the bar several times with his hand, and even the bartender moved closer to see if they would let him in on the fun. Harmony heard one of the men ask him, “Is she a new one?”
The bartender shook his head and squinted through the dim light toward her. Harmony had only been there a few times, with Eric, and she didn’t remember the bartender. She couldn’t tell how well he was able to see her. He shook his head again and leaned forward to whisper something to the other men.
They laughed, and the one who had stood to greet her turned and looked at her. He got off his stool and leaned back to say something to the others. Where was Eric? He was definitely younger and taller than Eric, and he walked toward her in a way that made her think he was easily impressed with himself. She stood and looked around, then followed the sigh to the ladies’ room, hearing the word “fox” and louder laughter at the bar as she pushed through the restroom door.
She touched up her lipstick, combed her hair, and straightened her blouse. Eric’s voice had had a special pleading in it that she had learned to recognize, and she had dressed for him. She wiped off her lipstick, then put more on, feeling like an idiot for letting him put her in a situation that made her run to the ladies’ room to hide. She looked at herself in the mirror and thought about the last time she had told Eric she didn’t want to see him any more. He had called the next night with that pleading tone in his voice and asked her to meet him at the Cafe du Monde at ten. She had waited at one of the small marbletop tables until almost eleven, until she’d been asked to order something or leave. She could still remember the embarrassment that had flooded through her and swearing she would never wait for him again. She also still remembered how especially tender he had been later that night at his apartment.
Harmony looked at her watch. She didn’t know how long she’d been hiding here but she made up her mind that if Eric was not in the bar when she went back, she would leave. She would keep her promise to herself and more. She would go home and go about her business and when he called she would tell him she didn’t need to see him anywhere. She would mean it this time.
And she so much expected him to be there when she came back into the bar that she felt momentarily helpless and paralyzed when she looked around the room and couldn’t find him.
The waitress asked her, “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Is there another way out of here?”
“This way,” the waitress said and pointed down the narrow hall that led to the restrooms. “Take a right at the end and you’ll see the exit sign. It leads out to the parking lot in back.”
Harmony hesitated and looked back to the bar.
The waitress said, “Maybe he’ll come in a minute.”
“What?”
“The one you’re waiting on. Maybe he’ll show up in a minute.”
Harmony said, “He’s not coming.” Then: “Is there a pay phone?”
The waitress pointed again down the hall toward the back.
Harmony followed the hall and found the phone on the wall next to the rear exit. She rummaged in her purse to find a coin, dialed Eric’s number, and waited. It rang three times, then there was a click and a whirring sound and the answering machine was playing Eric’s greeting.
“This is Eric Andrepont. I can’t come to the phone now, but at the tone, leave your name, age, measurements, and phone number, and I’ll call you as soon as I have a clear spot on my calendar. Ta ta!”
Harmony had once told him the message offended her, and he had laughed and said it was only a joke. That was the same night he’d given her a key to his apartment to show her how much he trusted her. She had given him a key to her apartment several weeks before. She said, “Eric, I can’t wait in this place. If you really want to see me, I’ll be at home.”
She hung up and went out the door to the parking lot. The air had turned grey and was full of fine mist. She didn’t have an umbrella and had to walk through an alley to get to the street, so that by the time she got to her car she was wet, cold, and mad.
When she drove into the lot of her apartment complex, she looked around to see if his car was parked in the visitors’ parking area. In her apartment, she immediately felt its emptiness. He was not there. She hadn’t consciously expected him to be, but the sense of aloneness still caught her by surprise. She had to stop for a moment and take several deep breaths to smooth out the ragged edges of her nerves.