Black Velvet, If You
Please
by JOHN YATES
I
was sitting at the Barclay bar and talking with my friend, Eddie, who
owns the place. It was well past closing time and we were alone, talking
and drinking, as we did almost every night after I finished working. The
doors were locked and the curtains were drawn. The only light was above
the bar and from the jukebox. The rest of the room was dark. There
was a knock at the door. We looked at each other and shrugged, and Eddie
went to the door and cracked it open. “We’re
closed now. It’s 3 a.m.” “I
know,” a woman’s voice answered. “Let me come in.” “I
can’t. We’re closed.” The
woman pushed the door open and took a seat next to me. Eddy locked the
door and faced her from behind the bar. “You
have to leave.” “No.
I don’t want to go." “If
the cops come, I’ll get busted. You have to leave.” “He’s
here,” she said, gesturing toward me. “He’s
here because we’re friends. He’s not a customer.” “Then
let’s be friends. Give me a double Black Velvet on the rocks.” Eddie
looked at me and shrugged. I shrugged back. “Looks
like we have company, compadre,”
I said. Eddie poured her a drink and set it on the bar in front of her. “I’m
John.” “I
know who you are.” “Who
are you?” “Maria.” “Maria
who?” She
looked me in the eye and hesitated for a moment. “Just Maria.” A
lot of people in Anaconda thought they knew all about me. Let’s just
say that I had a rather visible job for a small town, and almost
everybody knew my identity and thought they knew me. I was a stranger
there, though, and I knew almost no one. For the most part, I wanted to
keep it this way. I had the kind of job that makes many more enemies
than friends, and it was a lot easier to do when I could see myself as a
stranger. Ironically, I met Eddie because I had heard that he hated my
guts. The things he was saying about me had hit the rumor mill, and a
guy who works for me made sure I knew about it. That guy hates my guts,
too. He has his reasons. I was spoiling for a fight one night, and
stalked into the Barclay to confront Eddie. My intention was to provoke
him into a fight, but Eddie is only about two-thirds my size. We wound
up drinking together instead, and we stayed together pouring whiskey
after whiskey and talking until long after everyone else had left and
the doors were locked. By the time I staggered off to bed, Eddie had
become my only friend in this town. In the year that followed, he became
one of the best friends I’ve ever had. We
began to drink together night after night and, until the night Maria
came, we never had company. “What
brings you here, Maria?” Eddy asked. “Him,”
she said, gesturing once more toward me. “What
do you want of me?” I asked “I
don’t know. Maybe nothing. Maybe I want you to bear witness to
something.” She
looked at me levelly for a couple of minutes, and then removed her black
heavy wool winter coat. She wore a black velvet dress and her hair was
long and very black. She touched my cheeks and lightly stroked my face. “I
never saw a face that ravaged,” she said. She
stood up and walked toward the jukebox, and I heard her insert a dozen
quarters. “Who
the Hell is she?” I asked Eddie. “Just
another drunk. She’s crazy as bugfuck, too. She closes the bars every
night. She used to come here all the time, but I haven’t seen her for
awhile. She comes alone and she leaves alone. She’s married, but I
have never seen her husband.” “What
do you mean, crazy?” “Just
strange. Half the time you can’t even understand what she’s talking
about. It’s like she’s talking to somebody else, and you aren’t
even in the room. She has a pretty important job down in Butte, but I
don’t know how she keeps it.” The
music starts and she is standing in front of the jukebox listening to a
song. It’s “Black Velvet,” by Alanah Myles. Black velvet and that little boy’s smile Black velvet with that slow southern style A new religion that’ll bring you to your
knees Black velvet, if you please Maria
returned to the bar and Eddie refilled her glass with whiskey and ice.
She drank slowly and didn’t look at us or talk. The same song repeated
on the jukebox, and repeated again and again and again until her
quarters were all used up.
“What
do you make of that?” Eddie asked. “I
have no idea what the fuck to make of it.” The
next night, we heard the same knock on the locked door. “Not
again,” Eddie said. “Let
her in, Eddie.” He
unlocked the door and she took the same seat at the bar next to me. She
wore the same dress she had worn the night before. Eddie poured her a
double Black Velvet on ice, and she sipped it silently for a few
minutes. “I
knew you’d be here,” she said. “I
knew you’d be here, too.” “I
don’t want to talk.” She downed her drink quickly and got another.
Eddie set a third next to her on the house, and she downed them both. Once
again, she went to the jukebox and put in at least a dozen quarters.
Once again, “Black Velvet” was what she played. The first time it
played, I could see her in the glow of the jukebox, just standing and
looking. The second time, she began to move to the music, swaying almost
imperceptibly at first, and then beginning to dance. She moved in and
out of the shadows, sometimes floating through darkness, sometimes
gliding through the glow of the neon lights and the jukebox, and
sometimes within the range of the dim light over the bar. She
moved slowly, sensuously, weaving her body from shadow to light, to
shadow, spinning slow circles and reaching toward me with her arms, only
to withdraw them and dance again into the blackness. Her body moved to
the music until she was totally absorbed by it, dancing in a trance,
dancing through all of the songs that her quarters bought until, for the
last song, she was dancing directly before me. When the music was over,
she stood beside me and watched me silently. “Good
night, John,” she said, and put on her coat and walked through the
door. “What
was that about, Eddie?” |
“Thank
you,” she said. She stood up, put on her coat and left. Eddie locked
the door behind her.