STARSHINE. THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter Five                                                                                                      Part Five


                     It was early evening in the Drake's head. Regulars were beginning to gather for the start of a night's drinking.  Annie was behind the bar, she wore a slinky black dress with three quarter length sleeves and a diamante broach.  Her red hair was pinned up and held in place by two black haircombs.   She smiled and laughed as she served her earliest customers, the faithful and the thirsty, and they absorbed her warmth and returned her laughter.  Joe stood by the door and watched her.  He had come in from the dark and the rain.  The cold rain still ran through his clothes and his hair and the sound of the waterfall still thundered inside him and parted himself from his body.  His actions were not his own.  Movement and words came upon him, not from him, they came from somewhere and   "nowhere and he performed them.  He walked up to the bar.
                    " Hello Annie ! "
                     Annie looked at him and the light in her green eyes died.  He was not Joe anymore.  Cold rain still fell from the sharp bones of his pale face.  He was crippled inside.  He was deaf, dumb, mad and his blue eyes were faded and blind.  She feared him.  She struggled to control her fear, she pushed down on it as it leapt inside her heart.  Her customers felt her tense, they felt her warmth falter and become unsteady.  Joe felt nothing but the cold rain on his body and the waterfall inside his head.
                " What are you doing here ? " asked Annie, there was a tremor in her voice, she was nervous.  The rushing water in Joe's head muted her words, he did not understand her surprise at seeing him, he thought he was meant to be here, so he did not answer her question.
                " I saw Roy." he said instead.
                " Didn't you see a doctor ? " said Annie
                " No. " he said flatly, making no effort to understand her troubled and frowning face. " I just saw Roy.  He seemed O.K. "
                 Annie turned away from him.  She pushed a glass against an optic until it was half full of whisky.  She gave it to Joe.
               "Go and sit by the radiator, you're soaked. " 
                Joe took his drink and crossed to the far side of the room where he sat alone at a small round table with his back to a cast iron radiator that reminded him of old schools and hospitals where the same clumsy radiators still existed.  The heat crept inwards through his wet clothes and the warmth of the whisky inside him crept outwards to meet it. 
                 All evening Joe sat alone behind his waterfall, detached from the rumbling of far away talk and laughter.  His eyes saw the colours and movement of smoke in the air, of people on bar stools, or talking across tables, their hands wrapped around glasses that were lifted to their lips and then put down again.  He saw men leaning over the pool table taking careful aim and he saw men leaning back a little to throw darts.  He saw the flashing lights of a fruit machine wink its laughter at its forlorn opponent.  But the scene was no longer familiar to him, all the colours were jumbled and disconnected into a pattern he did not understand and could not reach.  And likewise Joe was no longer familiar to the people around him.  They saw his wasted, drawn face, dark shadows round his faded eyes, wet clothes hanging on skin and bone, they skirted around his table and made no sign of recognition.
                       Joe went up to the bar for whisky after whisky and each time Annie served him without raising her eyes to his.  And when she came out to collect empty glasses Joe would watch her move around the room in velvet stilettoes and seamed stockings.  And each time Joe waited for her to come and clear his glasses and empty his ashtray, but each time she stayed away.  The evening wore on, his table was crowded with glasses and his ashtray was piled high and still Annie did not come to him and he did not know why.
                  The final bell rang dully in Joe's ears.  The pub gradually emptied and as the colours and patterns slowly drifted away Joe remembered the car keys.  He had left them in the car, in his mind's eye he could see them still in the ignition.