It was a night wedged between blizzards — the streets were clear, but more was on the way. Half a foot or more. Don Maclellan on Channel 8 News had worked himself into a fit about it that morning, but Paul never watched the news. His apartment was across the street from the Bravehound Brewery, and he showed up as usual to play the piano. Whether or not he was playing for a packed house was immaterial. More snow only meant he wouldn’t have to go to class tomorrow.
Outside, the bright moon loitered in the icy black as cold as the wide front window. It was a slow night that brought only a few regulars. When a middle-aged man in a suit came in, the gust of wind through the door turned everybody’s heads. The bar was mostly for students and young folks, but it wasn’t unusual. There was a hotel a block away that drew his sort, but this man wasn’t even wearing a coat. He went directly to the bar and ordered whiskey.
Ryona and Leslie sized up the newcomer at once. Paul watched them plot in their usual booth. It didn’t take long. They joined the lone man at the bar, each on one side, and their tug-of-war started. Paul meandered through some improvisation, selecting chords and then disassembling them.
Three engineers who’d been playing pool had their food arrive, and they settled at a table close by. They were friends with the management, which meant they wanted to hear Brubeck’s “Take Five.” Paul played it here so often that he’d begun hearing it in his sleep.
He played it straight through and then waltzed around it, stretching and changing the refrain. The engineers disassembled their spread of hot wings and drained a pint of Bravehound IPA each, and then left a few dollars in the tip jar on the piano when they went. At the door they bristled and shrugged when the cold wind hit them, but they looked eager to move before the next snow came.
The man at the bar, the one the girls had sunk their teeth into, was in his fourth glass of whiskey. His coat had been replaced with Leslie, who was nearly in his lap. On his other side, Ryona had her back to Paul, but he could tell from the tilt of her head that she was giving him the look.
There had been a time when that look had been reserved for Paul, when he was still a fresh face around the Bravehound. Ryona mistook his silence for mystery and spent the evenings around the piano. It took two weeks for her to realize that he was ignoring her.
But Ryona seemed to lavish the attention this man twice her age was now giving her. Paul began to play something more lively. Sometimes that got people on their feet, which sometimes got them out the door.
A few late-nighters came in to soak up some beer. The girls and their prey were given a berth as the newcomers took their pints to a window seat and watched the snow. The heat kicked on and tinged the room with a smell like burning dust. Nobody was listening to the music just then, so Paul went outside to cool his fingers off a little. Ezekiel was smoking a cigarette right outside the back door.
“It’s freezing out here,” Paul said.
Ezekiel shrugged. “It’s hot in there.”
“You can’t be talking about the kitchen. Nobody’s ordering food.”
“You’re right. I meant mister suit at the bar,” Ezekiel said with a smoker’s laugh. “We’ve gotta get him out of there. You know those girls don’t mean no harm, but that last guy…”
“The guy whose wife kept calling for weeks to yell at management?”
“It’s not management’s fault that he decided to flirt with those girls.
“Well… how do we make him leave? Turn the heat off?”
“We’ll switch places,” Ezekiel said. “I’ll play piano and you can cook.”
“That does sound like a disaster.”
“Come on. He’s probably got a wife at home. One with nothing better to do than to tie up our phone line.”
“He can fend for himself.”
Ezekiel stubbed his cigarette out on the wall and flicked it out into the falling snow. “Last call,” he said, opening the door for Paul.
“You don’t get to make that decision.”
“Do you see a manager here tonight?”
“No.”
“Exactly. I’ll tell Alec,” Ezekiel said, making for the bar. And then, over his shoulder, he said, “I guess you can take off.”
The kitchen lights were already off. Paul went back to the piano and witnessed the news pass from the bartender to the girls and their quarry. The man in the suit nodded and went unsteadily toward the door with Leslie trying to support him. Ryona finished the bottle of beer in front of her. Alec had already taken away the empties, so it was hard to say how many she’d had. She gave Paul a little wave and then followed Leslie out with the businessman.
Paul removed the contents of his tip cup, three dollars and change, and stuffed it in the pocket of his jeans. Is that how this night shakes out? Paul wondered. Leslie and Ryona leave with a guy old enough to be their dad and I go home alone?
Cold wind can have a sobering effect. Not for Paul, who had the sweet promise of snow day waiting for him. But Leslie was too drunk to be wearing high heels and Ryona had lost her grip on the man, who had now assumed an apologetic tone. He was saying his good-byes to the girls and doing the best brisk walk he could manage.
“Hold on,” Ryona said. “I needa give you my phone number.” She slipped and landed on her butt with one leg out in front of her. The man came back to help her up.
Beside the Bravehound Brewery loomed an office building, tall and gray, that presently seemed to eat up all the moonlight. Paul watched a city bus carve long black lines through the snow in the street. There was no other traffic at the moment, but he decided to wait a little longer before he crossed because Ryona already had the cap of a marker in her teeth.
She loved to give out her phone number. She always carried a marker in her pocket, and now she was peeling this man’s sleeve back to write out seven large digits. He muttered something Paul couldn’t hear and tried to pull his sleeve down.
“I didn’t write my name, Roger,” Ryona said. She took two steps after him, but had to stop and steady herself against the Bravehound’s front window.
“Roger, I can’t believe you,” another woman was saying. “That’s you, isn’t it?” The new woman crossed beneath a streetlight two hundred feet down the road. The man in the suit went toward her and the girls followed after him.
“Who is that?” Leslie asked.
“She’s nobody,” Ryona said. “Come on, Roger, come back.”
A pickup truck passed and then a snow plow came through and turned one side of the street gray, almost black. Paul looked into the front window to verify that the Bravehound was dark and everyone else had gone. The footprints on the sidewalk here were haphazard: the girls were dragging their feet and Roger’s toes were pointing every which way. The wind let up and the snow fell thick now.
Ryona and Leslie were shouting after Roger and the other woman leading him off. It was the drunk kind of shouting that you only hear after 1 o’clock in the morning.
“He doesn’t want you,” Ryona shouted. Her voice was drunk and tired and too full of emotion. Leslie tried to hold her back, but Ryona pulled away and trudged after them. Paul overtook her in just a dozen strides and held her back. She swayed and nearly fell.
“You’re disgusting,” the woman was saying in the distance. Paul couldn’t tell who she was referring to.
“Paul, he was so nice,” Ryona said. Her face was red from crying, or from the cold, or maybe both.
“He was,” Leslie said, pausing to hiccup, “he was so nice.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Paul said. He led them back to the Bravehound so they could stand in the doorway. “You both look too drunk to walk home. And it’s too cold out.”
“I’m not drunk,” Leslie insisted.
“Yeah, me too,” Ryona said.
“Give me your marker,” Paul said. When she handed it over, he threw it on the roof.
Ryona flapped her arms like a bird. “What’d you do that for?”
“I think that guy was here just to have some drinks. His wife’s going to think he was trying to cheat.”
“Maybe he was,” Leslie said. “Who fucking cares? Paul?” She stabbed him in the chest with her finger.
“I’m calling a cab for you two,” Paul said.
“He was so mature,” Ryona slurred. Her teeth began to chatter.
“We can walk home, Paul,” Leslie said. “It’s not that far.”
“I don’t wanna walk,” Ryona said. She teetered for a moment and then started to clear a spot on the sidewalk to sit down. “We’ll wait for the cab. It’ll be nice and warm.”
Leslie pulled Ryona to her feet. “Paul, why don’t you drive us back?”
“I don’t have a car.”
“But don’t you live around here?” she asked. Her voice carried the question so high that it cracked at the end.
Paul’s apartment was just across the street. In the blizzard it looked like a lump of concrete wrapped in string lights. He did not want to bring the girls there, but he had little choice. As they crossed the street, the girls clinging together like ballroom dancers on a capsizing ship, he called a cab. The clouds above, solid and dark, crippled his reception. When he broke through, he was told they’d be waiting at least an hour for a ride.
“Oh my god, Paul,” Leslie said. They were walking from the stairs (the elevator didn’t work) and he was leading them to the door. She seemed to lose her train of thought and said suddenly, “I don’t feel good.”
Paul had never unlocked the door so fast.
Ryona held Leslie’s hair while she vomited, and then ten minutes later they switched places. Paul’s apartment was a mess, but they were in no condition to care. He wanted to go to bed and just be rid of their retching and sobbing.
“Let me know if you need anything else,” he called, and then he closed himself in his bedroom with the lights off. The cab might never make it in the snow, he knew. He was afraid the girls wouldn’t pass out right away. They might try to go after him instead of that man in the suit that got away.
“Paul,” Ryona said piteously. And then Leslie started up. He came out to find them sprawled across the threshold of the bathroom. They were not unattractive girls, but the look was unflattering.
“The cab is coming. Go sit on the couch.”
“Do you have any Advil?” Ryona asked.
He grabbed the bottle from a cabinet and dropped it to her. “Take as many as you want. Take ’em all.”
This made Leslie laugh uncontrollably. The bottle passed from Ryona to leslie, and once they had each taken two, Paul dry swallowed the last pill in the bottle. He managed to peel the girls off the floor and move them to the couch, where they sat very still and seemed to focus all their attention on not throwing up. The night grew still and quiet.
“The cab is coming,” Paul said for what seemed like the fifth time. If he kept repeating it, maybe it would happen. His hands became restless, but he had no piano to play.
“Paul,” Leslie said. Her voice sounded far away, like it was already falling asleep before the rest of her. “Thanks for helping us.”
“I had to,” he said. There was more to it, but he couldn’t explain.
He didn’t approve of their antics when they got drunk, but their support had been invaluable when he first started playing at the Bravehound. Even when he missed notes, they never noticed, or pretended not to. He used to get so nervous he would forget how to play the songs, but they still tossed pennies into his cup. He cared about Ryona more than most friends even though they never really dated. She needed someone beside Leslie to watch her back, someone a less impulsive.
Paul was watching from above when the taxi finally arrived, its headlights splaying morosely across the snow. Ryona went along easily down the stairs, but Leslie had to be coaxed. Regret had replaced their humor and they clung to Paul’s coat as they descended. He guided them through the gale and into the cab, ducking their heads in one after the other.
Ryona held the door open and looked at him too long, her red lips parted like she wanted a kiss. Paul closed the door. The cab pulled off, pursued by a whorl of flakes lit red by the tail lights.
The bathroom was going to be a mess. Tomorrow, Paul’s day off mercifully granted by the snow, would be spent cleaning it. Even so, he hummed the melody to “Take Five” on his way back up while the rest of the city slept, the Bravehound along with it, all robed in snow and the cold quiet of the night.
