“Glorious kind, always on time, pearls on a string.”

Seated at the bar in Django, I was drinking a local brew and waiting on a woman who was running late.  I had no complaints.  There’s hardly a better reason to be seated at a bar alone.  Though it was a first date, I thought I could get use to the idea of having someone to wait on.

At the far end of the oval bar, oysters were getting prepped for the evening.  Open shelving split its length, displaying the bottles in duplicate that waited to be served.  Back to back they sat, each proudly boasting its label to those seated across from them.  Two bartenders joined the bottles, back to back.  Similar in stature, they tended to move down the bar in unison as they checked on their patrons.

Each had only one.  He and I sat directly across from each other, facing in.  A ballgame caught my attention from a small television.  I would watch it as the bartenders worked, and the corner of my eye would be begin to be drawn into the illusion of a mirror.  Instead of duplicates, there was only a reflection.

My eyes would leave the television.  My thoughts would run where they wanted to go.  I would stare blankly at those on the far side of the bar, confusing what was ahead of me with what was behind, caught between the future and the past.  Expecting a look of familiarity, they would make their way to the face of the man across from me.  Instead they found a gray face that wasn’t mine.  They’d revolt back to the television, and after a few minutes the process would repeat again.

Perhaps we spend most our lives wondering if we are looking forward or back, between the past behind us and our hope of how the future might be.  Perhaps we can’t help turning what exists into a reflection.

Suddenly, she walked in, tall and with her curly, blonde hair straightened.  Beautiful.  We exchanged a greeting, grabbed a table, and began the work of figuring out if the two of us would have anything to talk about.

We were nervous and hesitant.  The couple beside us sat uncomfortably close.  I let loose with what a dumb ass I had been at the bar, and she let loose a kind and genuine smile.  We managed to go on from there.

Her eyes gleamed, and beneath the round bottom of her nose, her lips moved in the way that began to let me in.  When they weren’t moving, the same smiled returned, and I managed to keep them doing one or the other for the length of the evening.  It was long enough to wonder how I might get to see her again.

Django means, “I awake.”  I did.  I had forgotten how good the present could be.  Maybe she had too.

“Tomorrow is on it’s way, and there’s always new songs to sing.”