Empty boxes litter the ambiance, people ruin the atmosphere. It was a time for solemnity, but the jukebox were apropos worst enemy. Eclectic commodities only a sole proprietorship could own were in and out of the cardboard. No chain would allow this type of individuality. The owners couldn’t afford to close today. Forget the bar, it died long ago.
Concentric circles of Indigo and Ebony pressed the light waves with its heroine like narrative. Behind her eyes were a commodity of flours. Inapposite, they should have been boxed up. The only aesthetic remaining were institutional. Even the eccentric paint had been colored over to operate a higher resell value.
An archetypically feminine woman littered the look of nonconformity. Like the orchids were a contradiction to the inanimate industrial appearance, the woman was a contradiction to the working-class outliers and homeless dissidents stenciled into the air.
Her eyes hyperbolized to William, him concentrated to her center. She looked like she was standing, intentionally showing herself off to him as she sat normally. She was noticed by all, but he saw her focus back on him by the corner off her, as if, if she were showing herself to him; she was showing herself to all, that she was looking to him. The room played with a jealous atmosphere, as all those noticed this.
Him being an outlier was palpable to all, him wearing the getup of a tourist. He had stumbled upon a local establishment, for outside half the population was dressed as he, and it felt normal. For William inside here, he was different. All those wondered how he had gotten so lucky.
His shorts, we’re a little too short than anything he usually wore, and he wore them like such. Like he was out of place being on vacation, the floral of his shirt was uniform, resonating red. They were patterned on top of a light green. He wore a matching sun visor, which he quickly hid after he noticed her looking his way. He got up, and his heart pounded. He was excited, but felt like an eccentric runway model, who all others were watching during his stroll.
As he approached, she looked away, seeing from him her grinning profile. She wore a skirt, not short but of mediocrity.
Right at a yard away she met him preemptively and began to speak (the beginning still muffled by distance), “…dress like,” is all he could hear.
He responds, “Did you say something about the way I’m dressed? I know you like it. I look like every person out here walking around, but hey, at least I had the money to make it hear.”
“Yea that’s all good, unless you went on an economic suicide mission. You might not even have the money to make it home.”
“Hah,” As he takes his pockets, empties them out, several coins falling hitting the floor.
She tells him, “I care absolutely zero, how much money you have in your pocket or anywhere else for that matter.
He motions to the bar tender and says, “Why don’t you bring us a drink. I’ll have what she is having.”
She says, “Tequila,,” and he smiles.
“That’s my favorite.”
“I wonder what else we have in common.”
He says, “Let me take you out tonight and let’s find out.”
Before she can respond with more than a smile, a song starts to dance with every note touching their pores. The inconspicuous nature of waves of sound become felt on their skin. There eyes see every cyclic wave like a Wall Street savant, and they know exactly what has come and will reward them in the future. It plays to their ears and they know for certainty what’s just beyond their reach, like someone cheating of a market. All the olfactory nuance becomes bold and like a schizophrenic, they can smell sound.
Their proximity was paradoxical. With every note, they felt alone, but with every thought they were together right where they were.
Having closed her eyes, weighing her head back and forth, she widens her mouth, painting her own on the ones that floated in the room, but it was more important and less sophisticated as the past few seconds had been, like a two year old who painted a wall in an art gallery. If you were there to see it, it was fascinating, but if you watched after the toddler left and forgot of its owner, the song would seem to have been perverted. But as they stare at each other with each and every syllable, the stroke of a brush, (their interest in each other puts everyone else from the room) and the background noise is eliminated from the notes that would ruin the song. So for every person they heard and every eyeball they saw, those were muted, and only the jazz and the pitches of sound played.
She asks him his name and he opens his eyes, preventing a proprietary event of the senses and he looked to another painting, one where her curves moved to the music, but his periphery stayed muted, instigating a perfect tango of the eyes and the ears.
He hits the perfect beat as several notes pass behind his he says, “William, my name is William.” He smiles and she opens her eyes, having been led by all five senses through a garden of music.
She tells him, “What exactly is music how can you define it. I mean is it definite somehow or only 100 percent relative. We know for sure that one man’s trash is another man’s music, but what of do they both have in common. I think it’s patterns. There must be some type of pattern or code to define it as music. Some measurement of one sound relative to those before and after it’s ephemeral life, living on past death and predictable before it’s birth, like a zombie who was always alive in some way. It’s prophetic for the patterns just before its existence, then you live with it as you hear it, then due to its mother and itself it lives on. But it is an empathetic zombie. One that is good. What if their were zombies but they helped you?”
He says, “I think you are right, when that change hit the floor it wasn’t music. There was no pattern at all to it. That’s probably it.” He takes his fist and hits the counter and makes a beat. “You see now that can be music. I don’t always agree with Webster. I find truth in pattern recognition, the brain to tell me the nuances of language, not a dictionary. Sometimes though it is a good place to start.” He places his hand from the top of the counter into his pocket, pulling his cell phone and wrangling it before his frame, giving the signal for one second with his finger, as if he controlled her and the music and wanted everything to stop and pause for him, but as he felt that pattern in the background, he remembered hers and the dance they did stopped. The music and lyrics felt acapella. Missing the sounds she made when she spoke, he fiend for her to answer him.
He read from a dictionary definition, “Okay, ‘vocal, or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion.’Beauty of form? That seems relative to me. I mean, it might be undefinable. Even if it’s not a pattern though, it feels like there must be some measurement throughout spacetime of those sound waves to make beauty. But honestly your words sound like music to my ears, and I know they would probably not be defined as such.”
The song ends, and they both can once hear again the eclectic conversations around them and they notice it’s ugliness.
She says, “It sounds like there is no pattern at all now. It’s just noise. Not even really language because I can’t decipher each one for the others. They are too many, and they are too far.” She smiles and looks into him and surprises him with a substance that seemed impossible to forget, but yet he forgot it. “You never asked me my name did you? It’s Esther. Esther,”
“Hmmm,” he tells her. Next he says something just as another song begins like he was perfectly on beat and again the two drowned out the chatter, and this selective hearing was both selfish an altruistic, like a non sequitur that made since. It felt like someone or something could be anything. Like they were the first to discover the behavior of subatomic particles, in a world where all were screaming of the infallibility of Newton. He coughed, and when he did it was ugly and beautiful. She laughed at the latter of this, and he commented upon her name.
“Your name it’s unique, but held from the most popular book in the world. It’s rare but sounds common. It’s magnanimous and classy.”
Esther grabbed his hand and as if she emitted a musical electromagnetism, he excited. Knowing of the power of music and of sound, they realized it’s not contained to noise and even the most quiet of ambiances can forfeit boredom. They stood and walked hearing themselves as a piece of artwork intended to smooth its surroundings, and as they got to the ocean, they heard its music, staying near to it and it played with there voices, how it played.