~*Hello, again. I'm glad that some people already like it! Here's chapter two.*~
I had taken a nap, and by seven thirty the bar was bustling with the sad, lonesome alcholics of all the days before. I started playing a jazz song my grandfather taught me and a few people dropped some money into my case, but I never really bothered to count it. I guessed about fifteen at most, all together. But my job wasn't to worry about if I was under tipped or not; my job was to play my heart out, like I had done for every single night of my miserable solitary life.
I played about three or four more songs, when suddenly, I wanted to play Julia's favorite song, The Space Lion. I didn't know why. I hadn't played it since she left me all alone. I shrugged the feeling away, but my fingers and my lips obeyed my conpulshion, acting on their own. I was oblivious to the world around me. All my sight had left me, and I was only left with the music of my saxaphone. The melody washed over me, cleaning me of my two years of loneliness, but stinging old wounds in my heart. The little bell over the door chinged and I came back to the physical world. In walked the first woman the bar had seen in a long time. She strolled in, depressed, but unaware of the looks she was receiving. She sat in the corner bar stool and ordered a tall mug of beer. All the time my fingers still moved automatically, the tune continuing to issue from my marvolous brass instrument.
There was a terrible sadness about her, and it filled my nostrils in the form of the cigarette smoke she exhaled. She looked like someone who had given up, and who had been given up on. That's what we all were, there at Blue Crow. She would fit in more than perfectly. My playing fluctuated slightly as the "big guy," (who now wore a mile's worth of gauze all around his body,) pointed to her and sneared to his patsies. My attention was drawn away from them. The woman sneezed, and I ended the song before the bridge.
"Take care."
She sniffed and looked up at me. She had beautiful eyes.
"Yeah, that was a close one."
"Huh?" She took a pack of tissues from her pocket and
wiped her nose.
"If someone sneezes and no one says take care that person'll
turn into a faery. That's what they say around here you know."
A smile crossed her face. To the passerby, it was just the seductive
facial expression of a young woman, but I saw something flash
across her arced lips. "Well then, there's no problem. I'm
already a faery."
I smiled back at her, the smile I had saved for the day Julia
returned to Blue Crow. I wasn't even aware of it right then, that
I freely gave this to her. And now that I think of it, drifting
towards certain oblivion, I never expected Julia to come back.
I expected someone else to take her place, even if only for sixteen
hours, forty two minutes, and nine, ten, eleven seconds. Faye
was a special girl. I gave her my jacket, hoping to warm her up
and keep those scumbag's eyes off of her.
She smirked at me. "You know, I'm not as easy as I seem,
Mr. Saxaphone."
I told her what I had come to believe over the last few years
but knew wasn't true. "Women aren't my style, sorry."
"Oh, what a pity."
I decided to tell her about the horny men she had put into a fix.
"However, the others are quite interested. Didn't you know?
Their are no women in this town."
Her eyes told me her seductive tone was false. "I should
be very popular, then."
"You should be very careful." I was caught off gaurd
and she threw the jacket back into my arms.
"Thanks for the tip, Mr. Saxaphone," she teased back,
swaying her hips as she left the bar. She knew that I had lied
to her.
After the door closed, I remembered the day Julia left. I had let her get away from me, and I was not about to do it again. I took off from work early that evening and silently followed her down the dark and dirty allyways, behind the entire crew who had been sneaking just as stealthily.
She turned around, knowing full
well that she had been followed. "Oh, you're all here."
"Madam, your appearance is rather harmful to the eye. Or
are you enticing us?"
"Oops, you found me out." She pulled a pair of leather
gloves from her breast pocket. "If I don't put these on,
I just might chip a nail." She womanly giggled to herself,
and a man lounged for her. To my astonished surpirse, she punched
him in the face and turned to all the others. She was certainly
more than a match for them and could have easily taught them a
lesson, but still, I intervined. Feeling strangely protective,
I smashed my saxaphone case into the next attacker's head.
She looked up at me, shocked and confused. "Hurry!"
I cried, as if there was some sort of danger.
Still immobilized by my sudden appearance, I grabbed her arm and
started running. "Mr. Saxaphone!" she exclaimed. I didn't
want them following me and I pushed anything I passed into their
path. I still didn't know what I was running from and why, but
I felt that if I didn't run, I would lose something again. Something
so precious and unique. So I kept on, Faye barely keeping up behind
me. I never looked back, but I could imagine that her face was
bewildered, but certainly not frightened.
