Velvet Rose

She sat alone at a table near the dance floor, fingers touching the stem of her wine glass. On the table before her a book sat open, though she hadn’t read any of it since she walked in. Mariel had come to the club tonight to hear a guitarist she knew whose band would be on stage in a couple of hours. She came early knowing that finding a table was difficult once the doors officially opened. Bringing a book was a guarantee of keeping the creepers away. Nobody was interested in a boring woman who read books while drinking in public. It was one of the more useful benefits of being a book lover.

The recorded pre-show music was the kind of stereotypical rock that one heard on the popular radio stations. Every song was one she had heard at least a thousand times. It was easy to ignore everything but the beat, making it a sort of pleasant background to her reading. She had finished a chapter a few minutes ago and reached out to pick up her glass of wine. As she did so, she happened to glance toward the door in time to see the most beautiful woman she had ever seen coming through the door.

Mariel watched as the woman went to the bar, ordered a drink, and walked toward her. Catching her breath, Mariel felt a strange fear that the woman was coming to sit by her. Her heart beat in her chest and she felt her face flush. Quickly taking a sip of wine, she was relieved to see the woman sit at a table nearby. As the other woman set her drink down and placed her handbag on the table, she caught Mariel’s eye, and smiled. Then she pulled her chair closer to the table and took a drink.

Now, she was fiddling with the olive in her glass. It was skewered on a toothpick, and the woman took hold of the olive between her pointer finger and her thumb. She began to twist it gently, almost absentmindedly, as she looked around the club. Mariel could see her leg bouncing in time to the music. Balanced on a rung of the tall chair, the leg was covered with black lace stockings with intricate designs along the side. Mariel was mesmerized by the pattern of flowers which emerged from the top of a black pump with an ankle strap and swirled around the leg until it reached under the hem of a short gossamer skirt that ended mid-thigh. Her eyes followed the flowers until she could no more, then let her eyes move up the rest of the perfect body until they met the eyes of the other woman.

Those eyes, brown as a wren, gazed for a moment into Mariel’s eyes as if to read her soul. The woman reached up to touch her sleek brown hair, tucking a lock behind an ear. She slowly placed one leg over the other, picked up her glass, and lifted it in a toast to Mariel. Smiling, Mariel picked up her glass of wine, tipping the lip toward the woman. Both took a sip of their drinks, setting them down in unison. In the background, drinks were being poured, glasses tinkling with the addition of ice. Shakers like maracas marked a musical pattern that mimicked the recorded beats that sounded from speakers placed strategically around the room.

The din of other customers chatting, finding friends and greeting them as they joined them at tables, filled the air. Bartenders hollering greetings to regular customers began to mix with the other sounds. The other woman checked her phone. Mariel sighed and wished she had the nerve to get up and walk over to the other table. Shaking her head as she realized that taking such a risk would be to lose the table she already had, she pulled her book a little closer. Soon enough her friends would be joining her anyway, better to save the seats.

She lost herself in her book. ‘It’s a good story, but rather depressing,’ she thought as she was transported to a post-apocalyptic world in which a man and his son walked lonely roads without hope. The writing style wasn’t her favorite. Mariel preferred quotation marks around dialogue and higher hopes for happy endings. Perhaps the lack of punctuation reflected the bleakness of the setting, part of the author’s world-building. The juxtaposition of the bereft world of the story and the lively sounds of the bar crowd began to clash, so she closed the book and slipped it into her purse.

The music had transformed from the canned background sound to the mini-riffs and vocalizations of soundcheck. Mariel knew the first band was getting ready to take the stage. Her musician friend’s band would come later, but she expected her other friends to arrive any minute. She realized she had finished her wine. ‘Certainly there’s a server on the floor by now. I don’t want to lose this table by going to the bar,’ she thought. Just as she turned to look, a young woman in a miniskirt, blouse, and sneakers appeared at her elbow carrying a tray upon which was perched a glass of dark red wine.

Mariel looked at her quizzically. The young woman smiled and pointed with her chin toward the other woman’s table. The most beautiful woman Mariel had ever seen was looking directly at her with a smile, holding a full drink aloft. Mariel’s heart did a flip as she took the glass of the server’s tray and lifted it toward the woman. Nodding at one another, they each drank, gazing across the room at one another.

For a moment everything stood still. Mariel felt she was in a small room alone with the beautiful woman. There was no sound but that of the intake of breath. The faint scent of a perfume like roses permeated the dark velvet space. It could not be real, this liminality between the bar and another world.

The breath released, bringing Mariel back to the din of the growing crowd. She felt someone slip into the chair beside her and realized her friends had arrived. Turning to them in welcome, she found herself laughing at something banal as the evening’s entertainment began in earnest.

When the server arrived to take drink orders from the new arrivals, Mariel placed her now empty wine glass on the tray and ordered something stronger than wine. One tall drink to nurse, and perhaps one more. She knew her limit and had learned to pace herself. As the server walked away, Mariel could see that someone had joined the other woman as well. The woman had stood up with her back to Mariel to give one of her party a hug. From this vantage point Mariel could see both of those legs, muscles accentuated by the high-heeled shoes. Wrapped in lace and flowers, with a perfectly straight seam from heel to somewhere under that skirt, those legs begged attention. As the woman leaned in to hug her friend, one leg popped up at the knee, a subconscious yet endearing move.

As the evening wore on, Mariel was caught up in the music and the atmosphere. Headbangers moved close to the stage while couples and individuals filled the dance floor. Mariel and her friends took alternate turns on the dance floor, a practice cultivated for protection. Always keep someone at the table to ward off thieves and rapists. Now it was Mariel’s turn to dance with another of her friends; it was fast, individual heavy-metal dancing. As she moved across the floor with a flexibility enhanced by the lubrication of alcohol, she suddenly felt a hand on the small of her back. Turning, she realized that the woman had come up behind her and was asking for a dance. She slipped easily into this new coupling as her friend moved closer to another person on the floor. Mariel could not see who it was. She couldn’t see much of anything beyond the wren-brown eyes that gazed into hers.

The dance ended with the two women parting with a smile to join their respective parties. Not a word was spoken. Mariel hailed the server and ordered a shot of bourbon and a tall diet cola chaser. It was the last drink of the evening and perhaps a little bit of extra “liquid courage.” When the server turned toward the bar to place the order, Mariel pulled a piece of paper and a pen from her purse, wrote down her name and phone number, and folded it in half.

She asked the server to wait a second while she shot back the bourbon and put the glass back on the tray. Then, she whispered into the server’s ear and handed her the folded paper. The server nodded, understanding.

Mariel watched as the server conveyed the order to the bartender and had it placed on Mariel’s tab. She watched as the server took the drink and set it in front of the most beautiful woman in the world and pointed discreetly toward Mariel. She watched as the woman opened the folded paper and read the words, a new smile blossoming on her already lovely face. The woman reached over and plucked the toothpick-skewered olive out of the drink, and turned toward Mariel.

Mariel watched as the woman held the toothpick in one hand, and cocking her head sideways just a bit, gazed at Mariel. She gently squeezed the plump, juicy olive and twisted it slowly before placing the end of the toothpick into her mouth and sucking the olive off the end. She still had the paper in the other hand. With Mariel watching, she chewed the olive slowly and licked her lips as she folded the paper in half and tucked it into her bra. Then, she picked up the drink Mariel had sent over and drained every drop in one long drink.

When Mariel had paid her bar tab and stepped into the taxi for home, she knew the road before her was filled with hope. Crawling into bed in the wee small hours and closing her eyes, she was greeted by visions of long, lace-covered legs and a velvety-rose scented future.