Nighthawks

It was her 17th wedding that day and she looked gorgeous. Once more, she floated down the staircase to the beach barefoot. The line-up of husbands-to-be were exceptional on that evening. This time it was Brad Pitt. Last time, a young Paul McCartney. She slowly walked to her future husband, looking in his eyes, flooding with love. Friendly faces in the wedding party had tears rolling down their smiling faces.

No one knew her in the village where the wedding was celebrated until only a few years ago, when her fiancé and her moved there – the paradise she saw on a postcard once. Now, she had a true home and all the locals loved her deeply. They were awfully close, exchanging pie recipes and movie reviews. Each neighbor had a nationality and a skin color. They were young and beautiful and together they looked like a college brochure, laughing in circle formation on the grass with their naked legs being kissed by the sun. No one missed her wedding day, except for her parents. The beautiful perfect couple was shot dead in a black and white alley by the horrible gangsters she saw once on a television show. Everyone looked at her, half of their tears were because she looked perfect and the other half because of her tragic back story.

“After all, everyone loves orphans.”

“What?” – asked Isaac, the bartender. He could swear he had just heard the woman he was serving at the counter say something about orphans.

“Nothing.” – said the lady, quickly and so under her breath that not one of the other three lonely souls at Phillies Bar & Bistro could hear.

The woman looked like a cartoon character. Her red glowing dress squeezed her breasts so tightly Isaac was preparing to be hit by a button at any moment. Her hair was tied up, except for one lock across her forehead – Superman style.

Her lipstick was the color of red wine and she had an intense stare. Isaac could believe it if he were told she was an international spy or a woman that saw, loved, and lived a lot, if it was not for her order: “one hot cocoa, please.” She was only a girl. Her clothes and her loneliness meant nothing. She was only a girl.

Another man, three chairs away, read his newspaper, smoked a cigarette. Isaac believed he was an art critic, one of those famous ones, the type that does not pay to enter, does not stand on lines and quotes 17th century Belgium authors mid conversation. He looked like a very distinct intellectual with ideas worth stamping on newspapers. He was alone and must enjoy silence. As soon as he entered, he turned off his cellphone.

For the intellectual’s bad luck, Isaac thought, the man right beside him was all but silence. Loudly complaining about the cold and the city’s unkindness, he ordered a beer, asked about the results of the soccer game. Laughed even when there was no joke to laugh about.

They all lived in one of those enormous cities, one of those that barely has parks and a person can only sit without having to buy something if they are sitting on a commercial building’s staircase. With only $0.50 per coffee, Isaac’s establishment was a refuge. There was no one on the street. And as far as each of them could tell, there was just one person at that bar. Isaac - the bartender, the intellectual and the woman in red were lost within, except for the man who would not stop talking. That one seemed to not find shelter even in his own mind.

He did not want to be alone. None of them wanted to move. The woman in red with her dreams, the screaming man with his words, the art critic with his silence, Isaac with his attentive eyes. Four strangers in a somber night shared a moment without barely looking away from their drinks. Words are said, but not exchanged. A weird comfort hangs in the air. Hours passed. Each of them, in their own time, leaves Phillies and walks into the night silently wishing they could, one of these days, meet again the characters they had just encountered. They matched, each one being exactly as they are. It was a weird comfort that they felt that day, sharing the same space. It was like they were put on this earth to be together, a magical circumstance no one could ever explain. It is a shame they never met again.