A NIGHT OUT

by John Norris

It was like a golden waterfall over the side of a glass. Then the waterfall stopped and the whirlpool of foam settled at the top of the glass and flickered. Mitchell set the bottle down on the bar and held to it, thinking, it ought to be alive tonight. He looked around the room at the men mingled with their shadows and images. Everywhere glazed surfaces returned reflections-the bar, the mirror behind the bar, the shining tables, the glasses. Lights and shadows and men. Everywhere eyes were moving. The eyes in the mirror, the eyes in the glasses. the eyes on the bar, the eyes on the tables. Lights and eyes and shadows and men.

Mitchell looked at the youth in the mirror. Yes, said the lights and the shadows, the hair is blonde, but not as blonde as it really is. Yes, the lips are full. Yes, the eyes are laughing. Yes, the face. Yes, I am Mitchell. Mitchell looked down the mirror. There were eleven men at the bar. But it is still early. It should be alive tonight. Twenty-two eyes in the mirror. And all the eyes are moving. Some gazing at their beers. Some slowly swerving to the door. Some wandering across the room without stopping to focus. Some fixing on the ceiling. A swirl of living eyes. But always returning, as if caught by a magnet, to the mirror at the bar. A bartender in white passed down the bar and broke the contacts. Mitchell blinked and sipped his beer.

Everyone entered a circuit of communication. The dialogue of legs, the dialogue of eyes, the dialogue of gestures, the dialogue of voices. Mitchell listened to the music from the juke box, broken by patches of conversation from the tables behind him.

"Do you like tennis? Someday we'll..."

"Then this perfectly carnivorous woman flops down by me..." "Jesus! That Brahms' Concerto sends you.

"I thought I would simply die when...

"And this guy was p-o'd about the whole thing...

A perfectly carnivorous women. Christ, they've never had a woman, Mitchell thought. That's what MALE is, it's strength. It's like when I was on the track team at school or when I did the pole vault. I could feel the strength gushing into my muscles. That was power. I knew I was MAN.It's just like that to lay a woman. In bed with Sarah it's that way. There, on her soft breasts and thighs. I overcome her with MALENESS. Sarah is weak but she becomes strong-I give her strength. That's being a man. Mitchell rubbed his hand over the steel muscles of his chest. That's being a man, he thought.

Mitchell took a drink of beer and held it in his mouth. That was when it tasted worse, warm, mixed with saliva. He swallowed it and looked into the mirror. A tall man wearing horn-rimmed glasses was sitting down next to him. "A gin cocktail." the man said to the bartender.

"I'll have another beer." Mitchell said.

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