Looking over my shoulder into my bedroom my eyes ached as the sunlight was leaking in through the plastic blinds. Begrudgingly prying my body off of the couch, I knew I had to deal with the fact that it was Saturday morning, after all, and that meant Saloon with the rest of Graham Street and that circle. The creaking in my ceiling also told me that my neighbors were mulling about, and they never got up early, so I needed to throw myself together and get some work done. I always had something new to present at Saloon, so I needed coffee and creativity stat.
Squinting into the noon sun, I wandered into the street side café and grabbed a mocha, hoping that something would justify the adjectives so often thrown my way like 'charming'� 'inspiring'� and 'published.'� With a huff, I rubbed my eyes, and my mind dwelled on the realization that there wasn't anything in my rattling brain that could be spewed onto paper and presented to anyone else.
Saloon started months ago when Ellen, Ilean, and Brooks all decided that there wasn't anywhere for daily 'art' to be showcased, and since artistic people needed to congregate somewhere, to have some place to call theirs, Sunday evenings at Brooks' flat on Graham street was the place to start. I had never been invited, but people generally knew me, so when I went with a friend one evening, I became expected. Every blues guitarist has one trick that they can lean on in a solo, every person has that one party story to tell, and every writer has that one poem they can read. I had heard that every good author has one solid story that they frame in different lights with different characters over and over. Well I had my one poem that I knew I could always lean on, and it didn't fail me.
When my mocha was empty and the mug cold, I left for dinner with a marginal piece that I wasn't at all happy with.
Searching the room for Cole, I bumped into people whose names I knew and others whose faces I could nod towards, with a smile, until I eventually found myself in a small circle of people talking about how Palahniuk's crutch was novelty at best and should have worn off by now.
'He only has one story, and he can't even write it in a halfway decent setting, so he just shoots for a reaction,'� Cole was explaining.
Kezia, crushing her clove cigarette into a brown fake-marble ashtray, let out a final stream of smoke. 'When he came and spoke here, he told stories of people and their masturbation accidents, and the whole time I was looking around at people's shocked faces. That's all he wants to get out of people. I don't know if he can get more out of them or not, but that's all he wants.'�
'It isn't like he is a neo-Kerouac and is infusing his crass nature with some other kind of creation either.'� I felt a strange heat boring through my skull. 'At least Jack had merit and was kind of creating the stream of consciousness writing. Besides, he lived a much more interesting life. I think that should count for something.'�
Cole snapped his fingers and he licked his lips. 'That's what I am saying, man! He's a one trick pony, and one horse town, like there's nothing in him anymore. He got it all out of him in Choke and Fight Club and now he's floundering.'�
Somewhere a glass broke on the floor.
'Damn it, man. You kids be good,'� Cole said as he rushed off.
Kezia and Cole were what all kinds of people could refer to as a 'well suited pair,' even if you didn't know anything about them. As far as I knew, they had been together as long as they had been alive. Having seen them together, I couldn't imagine them ever being separate.
'More and more people keep filing into Saloon every week. I can't decide if I should be excited or frustrated,'� she said as she let her back drop into the wall behind her. 'What do you think?'�
'I can't help but feel like everyone is so tight, looking around, waiting for someone to do something worth talking about, watching to be seen and seeing to be watched. Everyone is afraid,'� I answered.
She continued to make sure to introduce me to people who passed by, as if to affirm to them that I was something special, something noteworthy.
'Maybe,'� Kezia said. 'Just between you and me, I have been feeling distant lately, like I am watching everything happen instead of happening along with it, you know what I mean? It feels so futile and I feel so antsy.'�
'You just graduated, didn't you?'� I continued. 'That's when you need to watch out for yourself, you know. You hit a growing up marker, and you need to be reassured of your charm. You feel like you need to have something new so you can have some boy's unqualified devotion. Be careful, kiddo,'� I half joked.
'I never have anyone's unqualified devotion,'� she remarked, with a surprising amount of resentment.
'Well everyone is afraid of Cole. They love him.'�
Wrinkling her nose, she frowned and tilted her head slightly, as if to think disparagingly about the whole situation of growing up and inner dreams and romance. Her length of attention and personal conversation gave me enough confidence to wander around for a little while, having meaningless conversations with people I barely knew about what was keeping us busy. Everything seemed to be here, in this moment, in this little house. All the future of this town, and of this pulsing artistic mind, the well dressed people and the lovely girls. The skyline of trees looked sluggish under the balmy summer sunset.
But the whole time, I couldn't stop thinking about Kezia's last comment and wondered what it meant. Everyone was in love with Cole, and she didn't comment on that. As demure as she came off, it bothered me how haunting her boyish face was, as she worked the room like the social butterfly she was. I tried not to notice her glancing over at me, checking up on me conversing with people I had never talked with, and only half of me was flattered. I had always been a conversationalist, so why should she worry? Or was it something else she was checking on?
I sat next to Katrina, Cole's sister, and said a flustered hello. 'Your brother has become very well established, you know. A real person of promise and talent and all that.'�
'Just because I live in another state doesn't mean I don't keep up with him, Nick. And it doesn't mean he doesn't talk to me about his friends either. I hear you're not so far behind him, from how he tells it. But we have always expected a lot out of Cole.'�
'That's surprising. I always figured that the family would never have high bars set for the youngest son who sets out to be a writer in an artsy city.'�
'Oh no, not at all. We all knew that he had a great talent for words, and he was plenty smart in high school. He had a drive unnatural for the youngest kid, too.'�
Standing by the half bar, and making eye contact with me, was the extremely friendly, extremely heavy drinking, Jay.
'I lost six hundred dollars last week, Nick. But it wasn't my fault at all! I flopped the top set, with no flush or straight draws, so I bet small hoping to keep some people in, right? So the next card comes out, and the board pairs, so I'm sitting pretty with kings full of threes. I check and the kid next to me pushes over one hundred in, so everyone folds and I'm really excited, hoping he had a set of threes or maybe a smaller boat. The river is an ace, so I check again and he pushes all in, two hundred and fifty more, and of course I am going to call. The bastard had aces the whole time and never hit anything until the river, man. Drawing to two cards in the whole deck to beat me! That's like, four percent, man! Come on! Damn, I was pissed. The rest I just chipped away, but I lost almost five hundred dollars with that. It's like'�..'�
But then someone was reading and it drowned out our conversation. He slapped me on my arm, and I shook my head. Shrugging, he went off to fill his cup as I wandered into the next room to see who was reading what first tonight.
As Nelly finished her piece, everyone was thoughtful and appreciative, but no one was biting at the open mic as eyes sifted faces for a volunteer like miners looking for gold among river silt. Her smile from across the room pushed me forward, and the lack of Cole from sight left a void where restraint could have been. 'OK, well this piece is a little bit serious, so if you all don't mind?'� They didn't.
After the first few lines, a pang of doubt hit me as I looked up for the first time upon the faces, cradled by wall lamps, curious and listening, but without a ghost of a smile or a thought anywhere. Only Kezia and Katrina had eyes that encouraged me to continue with fervor.
At two thirds done, there was a rustling noise in the back of the room towards the left, towards the hall way to the porch. Some encouraging faces here and there, some snickers at the dry sarcasm I read, but when I finished, I was floating in a sea of uncomfortable silence and followed by polite and forced applause. The group, collectively breathing in deeply seemed to roll their eyes in unison and sigh gossip laced with disappointment at the sullen mood I had seemed to have set.
Only Kezia greeted me as if I had been an unparalleled success, as if everyone had liked it, as if her never vanishing smile wasn't forced. Jay toasted my leaving, and, even though I looked around for Cole, I was only met with the same vanilla looks that I had received from the people I didn't know as when I had first arrived. Back at my apartment, sleep was the great escape, the antidote, so I gripped it tightly.
It wasn't until the bus ride the next morning when I realized the bungle that was the night before. But when I checked my voicemail after I reached campus, Cole was apologizing for not being around when I left, but there were, apparently, two very drunk boys in his kitchen who were fighting over a girl named Greer, who they were both apparently in love with. It provided a strange comfort to know that I wasn't going to be the talk of the after party. The next message was more of a surprise, though, when I heard Kezia's voice, natural and unforced, telling me that I was 'one of the most enjoyable people at the Saloon the other night'� and that I 'had to come back next Sunday. Everyone was hoping I would be able to.'�
It was nice of her to give out a kind hand. For a feverish minute, I replayed the entire evening in my head, like a detailed movie.

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