text: A small cafe is just closing after a long day busy in the summer heat. There are trash bags stacked on the corner of a dumpster, a stray dog wandering past, and a heated debate over which soccer team will win which cup between four people as they laugh past the cafe. As all the employees dress themselves to leave the place behind, two waiters’ heads illuminate in the light of the street lamps above them as the rest walk towards home, down the street between tight colonial buildings. Loud music is screaming from the club across the road, and the two stand facing each other outside the cafe. “Do you want to go across the street?” “What’s across the street besides girls and beer *pendejo?*” “Nothing, that’s why we should go.” “You’re far younger than me, you’ll fit in fine.” “But I’m nervous, what if I get robbed?” “Why would you be scared of that?” “Well, I would lose my wallet, and maybe my ring,” the younger man says. The older waiter sits down on a brick bench, looking down the narrow cobblestone walkway where, floating carelessly over the bay is a blanket of light fog, green and purple and white swirling in it from the boats and houses on the other edge. “What would you have to lose besides that?” “Well, they might take my shoes.” “*En serio?*” the old man yelps as he chuckles. “What?” “You’re worried about your shoes?” “Oh, of course I am.” “And what else could you lose?” “I don’t know.” “So you have nothing to be afraid of.” “I suppose so,” the younger waiter pauses before speaking again. “Thank you.” “No, don’t thank me, enjoy yourself.” “But you want to stay and close the bar?” “I’m too old to do anything else,” he tells the younger man. The younger man nods his head in agreement, and begins walking across the street, lamplight flickering around the shadow of his feet as his legs move sharply in the direction of the club. The old man looks out across the bay; the fog is a deafening barrier between the mountain and the town below, of which is barely visible in the blanket of white and green and purple. He rests his head on the back of the bench, a cool summer breeze running it’s fingers through his grey hair. The staunch smell of food in the air sticks to his tongue as he breathes. He stares out and recognizes a shape along the water’s edge, he notices a schooner sailing in the silent night. He looks down at his left arm, through the hair to a faded tattoo, and he sits and smiles sweetly across the night at the lonely schooner. The young man reaches and opens the door to the club as the old man dissipates from his mind, stepping into a barrage of music and smoke. The telltale signs of a rave and a night of heavy drinking loom with the atmosphere. He immediately begins to shake, and he walks clumsily over to a long, black marble table lit by a red light, and the massive screen of a T.V. over the dance floor. “Hey,” the young man says loudly to a bartender as she makes a drink. “Hey?” he says again, uncertain she heard him. “What can I get you?” she says impatiently over the loud snare and hats. “I don’t know, anything at all.” “You need to tell me what you want, I can’t just make you anything.” “A beer please,” he says, hearing her sigh and watching her roll her eyes. “What kind of beer?” “I don’t know any different kinds of beer,” he says. “Then what are you doing here?” “I don’t know.” A woman and her friend bump into him as he’s speaking and shove him to the side, and for a moment he’s lost in a sea of people as blaring noise and bright lights reign over the bar and subsequent dance floor. He finds himself surrounded on all sides, being swept away like a raft in a thunderstorm. As he finally sees over raised hands, and the heads of taller people, he walks himself back on the bar and turns to talk to the bartender, but she’s vanished across to the other side, serving drinks rapidly with a bleak and annoyed look in her eyes. As a wave of colored light begins to blind him, someone steps in the shadow of the beam, speaking to him in a short and quaint Spanish accent. “Hello, sorry about bumping you earlier.” “It’s alright, I’m not used to this.” “I don’t think any of us are, but sometimes people stay the whole night.” “How could someone come here to get away from everything else?” “I don’t think it matters to them, *mi hombre*, *eres corto por aquí.”* “I don’t speak Spanish.” “Sorry, I couldn’t find the words in English.” “What are you doing here?” he asks, letting the awkward moment pass. “what does it look like I’m here to do?” He can see her as the green and red light fixture moves, and she has tattoos from the top of her shoulders down to the tips of her fingers in beautiful arrays and sequences. There are four letters on the hand holding her glass that say “Pati”. “What does *Pati* stand for? Is it Spanish too?” he asks as the music becomes louder. She speaks but he can’t hear her over the music. “What?” he says. “Pati is my husband.” “Does he know you’re out partying?” “No, he’s dead.” Her cheeks turn an obvious red, even in the dark lights of the room and even in the reflection from the marble bar. Her hair looks knotted in the dim lights, although it’s dyed and arranged perfectly. He sees dark rims now around her eyes, a contrast to the smoothness of her face. There is a small scar running beneath her neck, up to her chin. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to-” he says before she begins to cut him off. “It’s fine, don’t worry about it,” she says, her voice cracking. “So what brought you here in the first place?” he continues on. “I’m here to have fun.” “Is this really fun to you?” “When I’m on drugs.” “So you aren’t really here for anything at all are you?” “I guess I’m not.” “Are you okay?” he asks her, nearly having to yell. “When I’m on drugs,” she shouts back once again over the music. “Are you on drugs?” he replies. “Could you stop asking me questions?” she says, sounding angry. “Sorry,” he mumbles loudly. “You’re fine, why don’t you let me ask a few,” she shouts over a loud kick. “Go for it,” he replies as she sets her drink down. “Have you ever seen the bay up close?” she asks, continuing her request. “Of course I have, I live on it.” “And so you would know where *el parque de hombre rojo* is*?”* “Yeah, I live right next to it actually.” “I used to go there every weekend as a kid in the summer.” “I’m just staying for the summer right now, I don’t really live here.” “Ahhh, this place is only good for the summer *mi hombre simpatico.”* “Okay, are you trying to confuse me?” the young man says. “Maybe a little, you’re more interesting when you’re not talking.” “You don’t know anything about me.” he says in a stark response. “I know enough to know you’ve never been to a club before. I also know enough to know you haven’t been keeping an eye on your wallet.” He looks down and feels his pockets, turning them inside out. He looks back up and she’s disappeared into the crowd, her blue dress blending into the dim lights and her voice wisped away in the loud music. He turns, embarrassed, and walks towards the door of the bar, listening to the bits and pieces of loud conversation around him as he sulks and hap-hazardly shuffles. He spends the rest of the night wandering aimlessly in the club among the most beautiful people he’s ever seen. There are feelings of inadequacy in every short encounter he has with any one of them. Maybe it was a sideways glance, or a patient tap on the shoulder signifying a demand to “move over” for the more beautiful people to pass, it all felt like a haze regardless by the time he realized how long he had been there, searching for something he felt he would probably never find. He reaches the doorway finally after giving up, and he pushes it open out into the street. He moves back towards the small cafe across the way, where the old man once sat on the bench. He thinks of how like the old man he had become so tired, so melancholic around that swarm of people. He understands it in a small way. He walks around the entrance, under the street lamps and into the cafe; a large mirror showing the reflection of his dyed black hair in the dark hallway as he enters. He rolls his hand over his head anxiously, flipping his hair as he sits in a diner seat. He rests his head on a large oak table and looks out at the lights around the bay, knowing that much time has passed though it feels like only a second. There is a faint trace of the sun’s light, the leading beauty of another day poking through the dark clouds, casting a small glow around the mountain. As he sits and he thinks of how beautiful it is, of how beautiful that moment was with the woman in the blue dress, he hears a laugh behind him. “Hey *hombre*, you dropped your wallet.” He turns around, surprised to see her here. “I thought you were going to keep it,” he says. “No, I don’t need your money American.” “Why didn’t you just stay?” “Because I got bored of being- um, *mi aburri de estar borracha.”* “What does that mean?” “I told you, I don’t know English well.” “High? Drunk?” “Ahh, drunk is the word.” They both look at each other in the hollow light of the cafe, the walls slowly becoming lighter around them both. “It felt like I was in there for just a few minutes,” he says. “It usually feels like you weren’t even there, like it’s all a bad dream.” she tells him. “Isn’t it so much nicer here, alone?” he asks the girl in the blue dress as the sun meddles over the mountain, and the shadow on the bay becomes shorter. “It is,” she whispers. She looks at the houses beyond the bay, and the lights as they turn off slowly, as the shadow of that great mountain becomes a small triangle at the base of the bay. “It all seems so much smaller now, from here,” he says. “Yeah, it does doesn’t it?” she speaks before pausing shortly. “Sometimes I think it’s better that way.” she tells him as she sets her arms on his shoulders, relaxing around him and watching the sun rise.