Dark Side Of The Moon

• This is part 2 so to speak. The first part is way too racey. Don't ask!

~Becky~

7/21/01

The July night settled to her skin like plastic wrap, clutching iself to her arms, the nape of her neck, breathing hotly into her frizzing hair. The night streets stretched out before her like a dream, the pale stars of streetlights glowing wanly, moths and other night bugs orbiting them like moons.

It was 2:38 AM by the luminous hands of the clock on top of the library on the corner. Most of the nightly revellors had returned to the haven of their beds by now, but the night still had life in it. She heard a soft, almost inaudible wail, a saxophone crying softly from a hidden blues joint somewhere, tucked into the sleeping bricks of the city, crying alone in the thick night.

She walked slowly away from the apartment building, gliding almost, except for the click of her heels on the sidewalk. Her green silk dress was only a whisper along her skin, and she felt as a moth must feel: fluttering, gossimer, a brush of sliding, shimmering wings. She felt as a cat must feel: sleek, eyes dancing to absorb the darkness, whiskering shape, a little piece of gliding, shining night.

Oh to be out of the apartment felt so good; the very air felt free. She shivered a little, but not from cold nor fear. The night opened its jeweled eyes and laughed from its languid mouth, music making its brick and dew and magnolia body swirl and glow.

She drew a breath and sucked in the air, but somehow it wasn't the dusty, hot-fried exhaust air or the city that she was used to: the baked brick and metal world of drudgery and work and life as she knew it. The air smelled fresh and sweet and wild. It smelled damp and slick with a soft perfume. It clung to her body with the smell of gardenias.

She kept walking.

What was this city? She wondered, passing the little shops, asleep with their owners snoring softly upstairs, behind red and blue checked curtains. What was this place? For somehow she had never seen it, never seen the tiny clubs glowing like sequins, with their all-night patrons inside, talking and drinking and never growing tired. Somehow she had never noticed the one man, black as good velvet, lounged in the door of the Lady Blue, his eyes hidden under a coal black fedora, his silhouette smoking alone and satuesque enough to make her cry.

And somehow, she had never noticed the music.

The music seemed to be the very blood of the night, rushing down the empty streets and purring softly around the corners. Soft and sad with the knowledge of only living in the night, in this dreamspace inhabited only by the wanderers who had chanced to slip from their apartments and townhouses, to find it.

Desperation, fear, unhappiness, they all ended here with the music. Hush said the music, drums tsk-tsking gently. Don't cry baby wailed the saxophone, I'm here now to cry for you. Don't worry, sung the piano, cringing and singing adn laughing and moaning its chords, I'll be your soul. And I your heart the guitar whispered, twanging and fretting with electric love.

And so it was that she found the Lady Blue tucked in the middle of the night; the murmurring jazz cats with their dew-frosted glasses of whiskey and their sad, glowing, glorious eyes, and the pots of gardenias in the windows, kissing the night with heaven's fragrance, even though they couldn't leave the earth.