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Sandra goes to the Chester one evening because, half-asleep, she can’t stop reaching out across the bed for someone who’s never there. Because she can’t stop finding excuses to walk past a certain house across the half-built neighborhood and watch the dark windows for a sign of life. Because every time she picks up her vihuela to play, she remembers earnest brown eyes and a shy smile and her hands fall numb.
They’re playing a slow song on the jukebox when she steps inside, the kind that’s got couples swaying in place like they’re in a world of two. Sandra remembers the last time she danced with someone and the space behind her ribcage twinges, so she slides onto a stool by the bar and orders a whiskey in hopes she can burn the feeling away.
A man sidles up next to her at the bar. Anywhere else and she’d tense up in anticipation, angle her shoulders away and hope he gets the message, but this is the Chester, so she just knocks back half her whiskey and waits to see what he’ll say.
“Two martinis,” he says to the bartender, holding up a pair of fingers.
“I don’t like gin,” she says.
“Good thing it’s not for you,” he replies, and she finally turns to take him in. He’s brown like her, dark eyes glinting with humor and a single gold earring catching the bar’s dim lighting. She doesn’t recognize him, which is unusual for a place like Chester’s.
“Sorry,” she says. “Guess I’m no fun this evening.”
“I’m sure we could change that,” he says—not flirtatiously, because this isn’t that kind of place, but more friendly than most people would be to a nameless woman who’d come to a bar primarily to change the scenery of her sulking.
“Sandra,” she says.
“Henry,” he returns.
“I haven’t seen you here before, new in town?” she asks.
“Fairly new, but I know this place. I haven’t seen you here before, so I could ask the same of you,” he says.
“Local born and bred,” Sandra says, finishing off her whiskey. “I’ve just been…too busy to come here lately.”
“And now you’re not?”
She sighs. “No. Not anymore.”
“Ah, I see.”
The bartender slides two martinis in front of Henry and he picks one up. “Olive?” he asks, offering the toothpick and its fruit to her. “”Too salty for me.”
Her chest twinges again. “No, thank you.”
“Ah, well.” Henry drops the toothpick into the second glass and takes a sip from his own.
In the corner by the bar, two women are dancing cheek to cheek. One of them is in a blue dress, hair dark spilling over her shoulders—almost, almost, if she squinted…
Henry must catch a certain pained wistfulness floating across her face, because he clears his throat. “So, Sandra, what’s fun for you if it’s not nursing a whiskey alone at the Chester?” he asks, tapping a fingernail against his glass. “Let me guess…horse wrangling?”
“That’s a job, city boy, not fun.” Sandra informs him. “I host a book club, if you must know.”
“Ah! A literary enthusiast. Let me guess your tastes.” He narrows his eyes at her. “Highsmith?”
She doesn’t bother biting back a laugh. “That’s hardly a risky guess, given our surroundings.”
“But I’m right, yes?”
“Of course.”
She looks him up and down. “And you, Villaurrutia?”
He looks pleasantly surprised. “You know your poets.”
“Well, you seemed like that kind of man.”
“There are a lot of words for a man like me. Most of them unkind.”
“Not in here, I’d hope.”
“I’ll drink to that, friend,” he says, and takes another sip. Then he checks his watch, frowns at the time. “I must confess, though, that I’m feeling rather more Novo at the moment—I look at life with mortal rue; all this, my lord, is due to you.”
“I’d tell you to wait and have faith, but I’m feeling a little too cynical for that right now.” Sandra sighs.
“Understandable, if not comforting.”
“So what brings you to San Diego?” Sandra asks.
“I’m afraid to admit that the answer is quite honestly love,” Henry says drily.
Sandra sighs again, but there’s a hint of laughter in it. “Of course it is. It always is.”
“Sorry to pour salt in the wound,” Henry says, a little too cheerfully.
Sandra makes an exaggerated face of bitterness.
“In truth,” Henry says, “I was hiding here for a while. Not from the law, but from this.” He thumps a fist over his heart. “I was running for so long that I didn’t know how to stop until I started wondering what would happen if I let everything catch up to me.” A smile, soft and sweet and involuntary, takes over his face.
“It’s hard to stop hiding when it’s all you’ve ever known,” Sandra says. “Or…when you’re still looking for yourself.”
“May we all be lucky enough to be found,” Henry says, clinking his glass against Sandra’s.
“Don’t you know it’s bad luck to toast an empty glass?” Sandra says.
“Oh, I’d never want to curse a lady,” he says with mock seriousness, then waves the bar tender back over. “Whatever she’d like,” he says, gesturing to Sandra.
“A Manhattan,” Sandra says.
As the bartender sets the drink down in front of Sandra, the door to the Chester swings open, letting in a crowd of new arrivals and a gust of cold air from the entryway. A tall white man with raindrops beading in his hair makes his way across the room and Henry’s eyes light up at the sight.
Ah, Sandra thinks. No more mortal rue for Henry this evening, it seems.
The tall man swings himself onto a stool next to Henry and greets him with the kind of kiss only possible in a place like the Chester.
“Julius,” Henry says after he’s come up for air. “This is Sandra. She’s been keeping me company so I didn’t wither away waiting for you.”
“I’d have been on time if that damn horse wasn’t such an escape artist,” Julius says, his voice a warm midwestern drawl. “Pleases to meet you, Sandra.” There’s something familiar about him—the height, the voice, the deep brown eyes she can sense taking her in with a practiced keenness disguised by a friendly smile.
She taps a finger on her cheek, thinking, and then it comes to her. “I think I’ve met that horse,” she says. “Hardly a mustang, but real clever. You all chased it all around the neighborhood and through my yard, asked me once what direction it’d gone in.”
Recognition sparks in Julius’s eyes. “Why, you’re the neighbor down the street from Lee’s.”
“And you’re the brother-in-law I’ve heard so much about.”
“Only good things, I hope,” Julius says.
“I’ll spare your ego by not answering honestly,” Sandra says tartly, and Julius clutches his chest in mock-injury.
“How are Lee and Muriel, anyway?” Sandra asks, as casual as she can manage. Which probably isn’t very casual given the thrum of her heartbeat in her chest all of a sudden.
Julius bites his lip. “Muriel is back out west at her ma’s old place. Lee is…not.”
“Ah.” There’s a story there, Sandra knows, but maybe now’s not the moment for it. She knows some of it, probably.
Muriel, out there among the cornfields and night skies unbroken by city lights. Maybe smoking on the porch or listening to a record of dancing in her underwear. Muriel, alone.
“I should call,” Julius says, a little guiltily. “Or write.”
“I think she’d like a letter,” Henry says, but he’s not looking at Julius. He’s looking at Sandra in a way that makes her wonder if she’s not the only lonely woman he’s met at Chester’s.
Henry pushes the other drink towards Julius. “I took the liberty of ordering for you.”
Julius takes the glass.” Aw, two olives just for me? You shouldn’t have, honey.”
“I’ll never understand the appeal,” Henry says, making a face.
“I’ll take one, actually,” Sandra says, plucking the second olive from Julius’s glass.
“I don’t need a drink right now, anyway,” Julius says. “Chasing that horse has got my blood running. I need a dance.” He takes Henry’s hand, pulls him towards the dance floor where a fast song has started up.
“Go on,” Sandra says, shooing them away. “I’ll keep your drinks here.”
As the two of them melt into the crowd, arms around each other, she pops an olive into her mouth. It’s salty, but not bitter, the flavor alive in her mouth. The sun outside has fled far below the horizon but in the Chester, the night is just beginning.