Empty glass, empty night

The whiskey looked indistinguishable from urine, and its rancid yellowness overwhelmed the water I poured into it. There it was, repulsive, like the contents of an unflushed toilet-bowl. Not a drop of it was yet in my body, bound and separated it was from me in its glass. And then I drank.

Rain fell outside. A heavy mood descended on me, and seemed to drag my cheeks down in jowls with its weight. I craved company, I craved eyes to see my own self reflected in.

Nearby sat three women. The middle one was the attractive one. Like a corpse animated by visions, like a stone lost in deep space seeking gravity, I watched her. She had wrists and ankles like a bird's. I interpreted her seated shaped, half hidden behind table and chair, and I discerned an object of desire... soft, large breasts mocked me from a beneath a spare white dress.

She disappeared from my view as the waiter served me my chicken giblets. As I savoured the fowl's entrails, I studied the woman's features, and how she inhabited them. I searched for the light of intelligence, and couldn't find it. But such considerations became irrelevant when I caught her looking straight at me, her eyes resting on me for a split millisecond to size me up.

As I swallowed my last morsel, she got up and went to the restroom. I saw her there in my mind's eye, more obsessed with herself than she could ever be with a man, in love, in hate with herself.

My meal progressed to its early end, and I paid and left. I paused on the spot where not long before, the body of a hobo had been found early one cold morning. I searched the flagstones for traces of him, but found none. A hidden pulse of fear shot through me, but then a breeze from the sea cooled me cheeks, and for and moment I remembered that somewhere there was cleanliness and purity.

Abandoning the thought, I lit a cigarette and went home.