On Sunday night at Chez Lucien a man in his mid-30’s sits drunk at the bar. Wearing a white t-shirt and a Jack Daniels baseball cap, he has a wiry frame and a construction worker’s tan. He’s not creating any trouble, but he’s at the point where he’s morphed into a different version of himself,and slipped into an alternate dimension where gravity increases and everything becomes dream foggy.
His voice heavy, his face melting into the palm of his hand as he leans sloppily upon the bar, he asks for another beer having lost all definition of himself but the need for one more drink. The bartender is kind and embarrassed for him, and she speaks to him gently, an idea of love in her voice. He keeps asking for another drink but she won’t give him one, offering him water instead. The man is frustrated by this, probably by a lot of things, and his countenance suggests that he cannot believe this happening to him. The last idea he has is to say please, as if this recollection of manners was proof of both his decency and sobriety, but there was an edge of resentment to this soft and small utterance, as if he felt it was cruel to make him stoop to such an expression of vulnerability.
The staff is sincerely concerned for him, upset at the sorry stated he’s fallen to, even, and they’re doing everything they can to help. Slowly, respectfully, they try to get clear information from him. Naive Melody by the Talking Heads is playing on the juke box, and then so very gently, as if he was a frail and ghostly incarnation, they take him by the arm and like beautiful angels escort him outside to a cab, as if returning him to the person or point in time in his life where he most belonged.