13-Cedar
By David Castlewitz
The corner bar looked as he remembered it, its wide marble steps greeting patrons approaching from 13th Street and those from Cedar. But it lacked a snaking line to the curb and a hulking bouncer – Al with the Groucho moustache was George Sebastian’s favorite – at the narrow green door.
From inside came the soft resonance of brushes touching a drum, a strummed guitar, and a sweet female voice, sounds George found comforting, and as he stood in the dark outside the 13-Cedar Bar he recalled nights of bottled beer, cheerful friends, strong music, and alluring women. A neighborhood bar, the 13-Cedar drew customers from the college campus, local professionals, and the blue collar types holding fast to their part of the city.
George stepped close to the green door’s opaque panels of glass across its upper half; a warm voice bathed the cold window. A push on the curved wrought iron handle opened the door. No reason not to, he told himself. No reason not to visit a place where he’d been happy fifty-some years ago. No reason not to enter, even if the space on the other side of the door loomed dark and frosty, colder than the wintry chill at his back, darker than the unlit city street.
A light flashed to life at the end of the horseshoe-shaped bar; it shone on a willowy woman -- shimmering black and silver gown that sheathed her long legs and dipped forward at her thin neck – who sang softly. A song George knew well. He’d written it. Had earned royalties from it when someone contributed a jazzy, frothy beat to his ballad and someone else gave his words a husky female voice. Prominently featured on a vinyl album, the song offered George high hopes when he was young enough to envision a bright and happy future.
At another part of the bar, hands waved and faces emerged from the dark. Soft light spread across the dank, nicotine-stained ceiling. Paper and cigarette butts and other debris littered the uneven floor boards, along with sawdust that coated the tops of his shoes when he walked to where old friends waited.
The singer looked at him, raised her hand. She reminded him of a long-ago love. Who’d be in her late sixties now. She liked to sing his songs, put music to his words to improve whatever beat he’d devised when the ballads tripped from his mind like aimless children pouring out of school.
He hefted a beer. He drank. The crowd pulsed around him, into him, and he ingested a welcomed feeling of freedom.
“Your song,” someone said, pointing at the tightly sheathed singer. Soft music. Slow beat. As his ballad was meant to be sung. But a quicker tempo and an uplifting rhythm had been what sold the records and brought him fleeting fame.
He quaffed his beer. Years of writing songs while working one odd job after another, and then more years of teaching music to middle-school children, clerking at a music store – renting instruments, selling keyboards -- flowed past him in a blur.
His first love had died in a fire that destroyed their apartment, destroyed him as well for a time. These men and women drinking beer with him had died along the way as well. Some were fellow teachers. One owned the music store where he’d worked. He’d encountered all of them at the way-points of a life left unmarked by true progress. The fabulous and wealthy career as an artist had never come. Mediocrity dogged him.
He’d married, fathered two children, strove like anyone else, and worried about the future. A laughable situation, considering the aspirations that drove him early on when he came to this corner bar – 13-Cedar – to regale his friends with tales of near-accomplishment.
He often returned to 13-Cedar. In memory. But now he’d come again. To a street corner made dark by the night and the absence of a lamppost.
When he felt the blood drain from his face, and when the fear in his stomach sent waves of heat into his chest and he began to tremble, a nearby stranger said, “It’s okay, Mr. Sebastian. You chose to come here.”
George bulled his way through the crowd, eliciting groans from people he pushed aside, and curses and a hand that pushed back, and then fingers that grasped hold of his long coat and held him fast.
He stood by the door.
The stranger repeated what he’d said and George watched one of the dirty green panels of glass in the door become clear. A light shone on a body lying on the sidewalk.
He spun around, glared at the bar scene. He felt the stranger beside him, but didn’t actually see him.
“What’s this, my version of Hell?” George asked.
The stranger replied. “On the contrary, Mr. Sebastian. This is your Heaven. Your place of comfort.”
George caught the singer’s eye. Beckoning him. Friends at one end of the bar waved and called to him. The stranger was right. This had been a place of comfort. In the past.
“You chose to come here, Mr. Sebastian.”
The sound of his last name with “Mister” attached reminded him of past students greeting him, customers at the music store eliciting his attention, people he didn’t know addressing him for one thing or another.
His wife called him George and his children called him Dad.
He remembered: his son had come to visit. His daughter, too. His wife had cleaned their tiny apartment. They’d enjoyed red wine before walking to a favorite restaurant. Along the way he’d been drawn by the sight of a familiar street. He lagged behind them. Then he wandered off.
“No,” he mumbled. “Not yet.”
He pushed at the green door.
Red and blue and white light danced around him. Loud voices pulled him back to a life he didn’t wish to leave, no matter how unfulfilled, no matter his regrets.
- - -
While I've enjoyed an exciting career as a software developer, with some leading-edge endeavors that kept things interesting if not always profitable, my true love is SF and Fantasy, which I love to write, love to read. I've had several stories published over the past few years. Lately, I've been working on longer work, but keeping a hand in short stories when the idea and the urge can't be put off any longer. I live in a suburb north of Chicago, listen to Country music as well as Classical, ride a bicycle, and can sometimes be a TV junkie.
My web site is www.davidsjournal.com. My Kindle-published books can be accessed by visiting my author’s page:
https://www.amazon.com/author/davidcastlewitz
By David Castlewitz
The corner bar looked as he remembered it, its wide marble steps greeting patrons approaching from 13th Street and those from Cedar. But it lacked a snaking line to the curb and a hulking bouncer – Al with the Groucho moustache was George Sebastian’s favorite – at the narrow green door.
From inside came the soft resonance of brushes touching a drum, a strummed guitar, and a sweet female voice, sounds George found comforting, and as he stood in the dark outside the 13-Cedar Bar he recalled nights of bottled beer, cheerful friends, strong music, and alluring women. A neighborhood bar, the 13-Cedar drew customers from the college campus, local professionals, and the blue collar types holding fast to their part of the city.
George stepped close to the green door’s opaque panels of glass across its upper half; a warm voice bathed the cold window. A push on the curved wrought iron handle opened the door. No reason not to, he told himself. No reason not to visit a place where he’d been happy fifty-some years ago. No reason not to enter, even if the space on the other side of the door loomed dark and frosty, colder than the wintry chill at his back, darker than the unlit city street.
A light flashed to life at the end of the horseshoe-shaped bar; it shone on a willowy woman -- shimmering black and silver gown that sheathed her long legs and dipped forward at her thin neck – who sang softly. A song George knew well. He’d written it. Had earned royalties from it when someone contributed a jazzy, frothy beat to his ballad and someone else gave his words a husky female voice. Prominently featured on a vinyl album, the song offered George high hopes when he was young enough to envision a bright and happy future.
At another part of the bar, hands waved and faces emerged from the dark. Soft light spread across the dank, nicotine-stained ceiling. Paper and cigarette butts and other debris littered the uneven floor boards, along with sawdust that coated the tops of his shoes when he walked to where old friends waited.
The singer looked at him, raised her hand. She reminded him of a long-ago love. Who’d be in her late sixties now. She liked to sing his songs, put music to his words to improve whatever beat he’d devised when the ballads tripped from his mind like aimless children pouring out of school.
He hefted a beer. He drank. The crowd pulsed around him, into him, and he ingested a welcomed feeling of freedom.
“Your song,” someone said, pointing at the tightly sheathed singer. Soft music. Slow beat. As his ballad was meant to be sung. But a quicker tempo and an uplifting rhythm had been what sold the records and brought him fleeting fame.
He quaffed his beer. Years of writing songs while working one odd job after another, and then more years of teaching music to middle-school children, clerking at a music store – renting instruments, selling keyboards -- flowed past him in a blur.
His first love had died in a fire that destroyed their apartment, destroyed him as well for a time. These men and women drinking beer with him had died along the way as well. Some were fellow teachers. One owned the music store where he’d worked. He’d encountered all of them at the way-points of a life left unmarked by true progress. The fabulous and wealthy career as an artist had never come. Mediocrity dogged him.
He’d married, fathered two children, strove like anyone else, and worried about the future. A laughable situation, considering the aspirations that drove him early on when he came to this corner bar – 13-Cedar – to regale his friends with tales of near-accomplishment.
He often returned to 13-Cedar. In memory. But now he’d come again. To a street corner made dark by the night and the absence of a lamppost.
When he felt the blood drain from his face, and when the fear in his stomach sent waves of heat into his chest and he began to tremble, a nearby stranger said, “It’s okay, Mr. Sebastian. You chose to come here.”
George bulled his way through the crowd, eliciting groans from people he pushed aside, and curses and a hand that pushed back, and then fingers that grasped hold of his long coat and held him fast.
He stood by the door.
The stranger repeated what he’d said and George watched one of the dirty green panels of glass in the door become clear. A light shone on a body lying on the sidewalk.
He spun around, glared at the bar scene. He felt the stranger beside him, but didn’t actually see him.
“What’s this, my version of Hell?” George asked.
The stranger replied. “On the contrary, Mr. Sebastian. This is your Heaven. Your place of comfort.”
George caught the singer’s eye. Beckoning him. Friends at one end of the bar waved and called to him. The stranger was right. This had been a place of comfort. In the past.
“You chose to come here, Mr. Sebastian.”
The sound of his last name with “Mister” attached reminded him of past students greeting him, customers at the music store eliciting his attention, people he didn’t know addressing him for one thing or another.
His wife called him George and his children called him Dad.
He remembered: his son had come to visit. His daughter, too. His wife had cleaned their tiny apartment. They’d enjoyed red wine before walking to a favorite restaurant. Along the way he’d been drawn by the sight of a familiar street. He lagged behind them. Then he wandered off.
“No,” he mumbled. “Not yet.”
He pushed at the green door.
Red and blue and white light danced around him. Loud voices pulled him back to a life he didn’t wish to leave, no matter how unfulfilled, no matter his regrets.
- - -
While I've enjoyed an exciting career as a software developer, with some leading-edge endeavors that kept things interesting if not always profitable, my true love is SF and Fantasy, which I love to write, love to read. I've had several stories published over the past few years. Lately, I've been working on longer work, but keeping a hand in short stories when the idea and the urge can't be put off any longer. I live in a suburb north of Chicago, listen to Country music as well as Classical, ride a bicycle, and can sometimes be a TV junkie.
My web site is www.davidsjournal.com. My Kindle-published books can be accessed by visiting my author’s page:
https://www.amazon.com/author/davidcastlewitz
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