THE LONELY COIN

The waitress walked toward his table with her top button undone. Her hips rocked back and forth as she moved across the bar in her heels, inviting the whole room to dance with her.

He missed dancing, almost as much as he missed drinking. The burn in your throat, the burn in your stomach, the cramps in your ankles and knees. Now he hated dancing, almost as much as he hated drinking.

He stared into his glass. He listened to the ice melt. He hated that sound. That subtle hiss from those little pockets of stale pub breath, once trapped in the cubes, now escaping into his whiskey, making it shittier with each passing second.

He thought it was funny how top shelf whiskey became over the counter hooch less than two ice cubes later.

He would rather drink piss.

He handed the money to the waitress, no tip. He wasn't going to pay for the two seconds it took to undo that top button. He had no interest in her fake smile. He painted fake smiles all day long.

Life as a portrait artist was getting harder. The camera meant the death of steady work for him. Not too long ago, only the wealthy could afford portraits.

Everyone wanted photographs. So everyone became photographers.

And suddenly the price of owning one's eternal image had dropped to near nothing.

As portrait artists fought for their patrons, the price of owning a portrait was nearly getting low enough to be an option for the poor. But without the pompous self indulgence of the rich, the poor had no need for oil paintings of themselves. No one wanted to immortalize a face covered in pig shit and bruises.

He tried to remember the last portrait he had done that wasn't of his beloved Lyra.

He couldn't.

He got up and walked out of the bar. He left his full glass of cold top shelf hooch right where the waitress had set it down.

He wouldn't be dancing this night, not when all the ice had already melted.

The street was still busy, the evening was still young and waiting to be enjoyed by those without a mind of worry.

He passed by Mr Black's drug store, and considered stopping in for a chat. Mr Black had always indulged his pessimistic ramblings, and he always left feeling stupid for being so miserable, in the best possible way. Mr Black was a massive man with a massive heart, and an equally massive laugh. But peering through the window it looked as though Mrs Black was heading the shop for the time being, and he hated Mrs Black. She was horrible to her lovely husband, who could snap her between two of his massive fingers if he so pleased. Of course Mr Black would never do such a thing, because he was so gentle, even through her unbearable moaning and whining.

Perhaps he and Mr Black got along so well because he was more similar to Mrs Black than he'd care to admit, and perhaps that's why he hated her so much.

He stopped at the stairs to his building and stared at a small coin on the ground. He noticed that the date of the coin made it three years older than he was. He thought about the coin's life and what it must have seen. He wondered what string of the fates had been cut to have this coin end up here, at his feet, at his address; into his life. Who did this coin think it was, running through his thoughts without permission? It was his elder, but he had never had much respect for the aged. Someone had left this coin here, someone had decided it wasn't worth their time. This coin was forgotten.

He felt attached to the coin then. He had been left behind too. He and this coin shared the same lonely fate.

He was a romantic, and decided he and the coin should be lonely together. So he grabbed the poor coin and placed it into his pocket. A wealthy couple chuckled at him when they saw him take the coin, they thought he wanted the money, but what he really wanted was the company.

He climbed the stairs to his building and made his way to his door. He opened it, and he and his coin were greeted by hundreds of Lyra's beautiful eyes.