I signed up to sponsor yet another polar bear jumper. That was getting old. We had all done it. They'd cut a hole in the ice, tie a rope around your waist. Raising money for charity. This guy I vaguely knew was there with his girlfriend. I committed myself to another $10. And Zoe would talk to him, and his girlfriend. She talked to the bartender who was also on hand. I was certainly in that conversation but she never directly addressed me, or seemed to reply in any way to something I said. That fellow William was there - the one who had told me society failed Zoe. He stood next to me. I was seated next to Zoe. The place was crowded with Closure.

As time wore on we attracted a crowd. Not everybody floated near us in the hope of hearing what was said - yes, eventually Zoe began to speak to me directly. The ordinary citizens went on doing whatever they were doing with door prizes drawing and proclamations, and what-not. It was the denizens who were drawing nearer, the usual suspects, many of them people who had witnessed the big blow-up about a year before.

The first thing she said to me was in a low voice, and she said it at a point when nobody seemed to be listening. The last time I saw you you were pulling me across Homer Street by my ankles.

I said that I was sorry. No - that doesn't come near to describing just what I said. I said I was sorry in such a way that you would know I was indeed sorry. I'm very good at apologizing. Whatever talent with words God has given me was at its apex when I apologized. I had much practice over the years. My apologies could save marriages, keep me out of jails, prevent physical violence, and in short ensure that I might maintain the ability to do what I was apologizing for all over again the very next day.

But I know William was listening. He was too close not to be. By the time I had finished my pretty speech a few others had turned ears in our direction.

She came in formidably. She wasn't too far gone. Zoe was a talented artist. She had a beautiful mind. She was intelligent. And, when the day began - or, when her night began - she could be a formidable person. But while we were sitting there together she had five drinks to my three. She had her oversized handbag with her - the one for the extra bottle, the secret bottle. I knew what was going to happen. Not a question of if but a question of when.

We both seemed aware we were drawing a crowd.

There was snow on the street that night, she whispered, It wasn't so bad - because there was snow.

So, what did happen that night? said a voice from behind us.

Now, it seemed to me - although I know this cannot be true - that all background noise ceased. It seemed to me that the music ceased playing, the punters ceased rhubarbing, the rafflers ceased raffling, the proclaimers ceased proclaiming. It seemed to me that some anonymous person, (whose crumbling throat I would have liked to crush in my hands), had given voice to the question that was thought by many who were there. I know the murmurs were not imaginary. I know my sitting there with Zoe created a sensation among them - some of them.

How easy it is, now that I think of it as a sane person. There is really nothing more pathetic than people going out to "have a good time." People who are regulars at bars are the definition of pathetic. Boredom is their general state; it flows through them like beer, it fills them like ether. In reality, all of life - every moment of it - is "a good time." But, people who pursue having  "a good time," who think of it, and treat it, as some kind of separate activity - well, there's something wrong there.

I used to to think that wherever I was, the party was somewhere else. I used to think that people were having all kinds of sex, and they were conspiring to have sex with everybody - except me. I used to be unable to stay contentedly in one place, because wherever I was, whatever I wanted had to be someplace else. And this was true to some extent for anybody who was so depraved, so starved for stimulation, that they would care to listen to what was going on between Zoe and me.

So, Zoe's face began to drop into her hands. When she had whispered to me it was as a person speaking under water. Her eyes were black flames. And it seemed like forever in complete silence the people around us were waiting for her to reply. But she was changing. She chose that moment to make the change. I saw her fingertips dislodge her glasses slightly as her chin sank deeper into the palms of her hands.

Sister Midnight.

She turned around to address the little circle of them. And - it was a little circle of them - that's all it really was.

I sat looking down at the wood grain of the bar, my back to them.

What happened that night? You all saw it, she said, I was on Homer Street. We both were.

I felt her hand fall on my arm, and her long fingers dug in.

This gentleman wanted to get me off the street. He just wanted to get me off the street. He couldn't take it anymore. We couldn't take it anymore. It was - I was - he saved my life. He might have. All he wanted to do was get me off the street and back home where I was safe.

 

Anyhoooo, I saw her again - a few times, not many. That night we went back to her place. It was like old times. She made us something to eat at 2 AM. The television was still on when my eyes opened. There were a few more paintings than there had been. She had aged about 20 years. Only about a year had elapsed since I lived with her night after night, but much had changed. She was - in her 40's anyway; I never did learn her precise age. I was many years older myself.

Shortly after that I discovered computers. I had been a technological hold-out. But the nature of my job changed. I started dealing more with the customers. I had to learn how to open E-mail attachments and such. Someone showed me how to set up an account, how to use the web. I figured out on my own how to search for images of people on the web. So, I typed in her name.

There she was. At 14. Looking 20. Beautiful. I noticed there were many queries from people wanting to know whatever happened to her. I noticed that those posters were quite rare and fetched top dollar from collectors. I was even tempted to communicate with someone - to tell someone, anyone, yes I know Zoe Lilja. But I thought better of it. She deserves to be left alone.

So, her name and many of the circumstances are fabrications. It happened. But it happened very differently than I describe in the superficial - say... details. But it happened exactly as I describe in the real reality of the heart, the part that matters, the part the details would reveal - if it was a well told story - anyway.

Do you want freaky-deaky? I'll give you freaky-deaky.

When I was 14 years old I went into New York with two school buddies. We stayed with the older sister of one of them, overnight, up on 207th Street. I got drunk that night. I got sick. In the morning I felt like I had been bathed in a giant vat of puss and I had a terrific migraine, hangover into the bargain. And I couldn't wait to do it all again. (That's an abnormal reaction, by the way.)

You know what? I tried to recapture the feeling I discovered on that night for the next 24 years. Couldn't.

Well, my friends talked me into buying a poster of a half naked girl at the event we attended that day. Of course my Mom confiscated it the moment I got home. She was in a bikini - nothing terrible, (or really good, depending on your p.o.v.) It just wasn't appropriate for a 14 year-old...

Anyhoooo, the model was a girl I saw in person. She was there promoting something, or promoting herself. She appeared to be about 20 to my inexperienced perception. Turns out she was 14 or 15. Her name was Zoe Lilja. I don't believe our eyes even met. We would meet, of course - 24 years later in The Thirsty Dog on Homer Street.

The first two weeks of our acquaintance went by in a kind of daze. I remember studying her face as she slept one morning, and I remember when it struck me that she was the girl whose picture would have been hanging on my bedroom wall had my mother not confiscated it.

See, I assumed for all that time that Sister Midnight was a young lady of about 25 because she looked like a young lady of 25. She was 40.

She was radiant. She had perfect skin.

One thing I need to clear up - I got one kiss on the cheek from Sister Midnight during that six month period of our acquaintance. Although we collapsed together in a death-like stupor many nights, neither of us had much inclination to become lovers. In a sense, we were. Sex is money. Sex is work. Getting drunk is entertainment.

So, that's freaky-deaky.

I went to judge a chili contest in my town about a year after I had first met Sister Midnight. I had put it out there that I wasn't drinking anymore, but all it really meant was that I had retreated into my home because I was too terrified of people to go out. Gradually, I began to realize that there's nothing more boring than last year's scandal. There was a scandal - of sorts. She threatened to call the police. It was very public. But it was getting to the point of old news.

Little by little I began to venture back into a bar now and again. No one mentioned my disgrace. I never saw Zoe, except sometimes on the street walking.

I would drink a non-alcoholic beer when I went out. Or soda. Or water. But I was just as lit as ever on secret liquor - as much as two liters of vodka a day. Couldn't get properly drunk to save me.

But I met a fellow, nice fellow, gay as can be. He was so outgoing compared to my reserved simmering rage that we made a good drinking pair. I used to crash at his place. In a sense, he became the new Sister Midnight, just nowhere near as good-looking. He tried moving in on me one night so I blackened his eye for him. The next day he was proudly displaying the shiner. I had an actual friend. I would have missed him if he wasn't there.

Maybe things were turning around for me.

So, I went back into the high class joint at last - the one where the judge goes to drink, and the village people - all the solid citizens. I was writing for the local G.O.P. Press releases - you know. I was on a few committees. I was climbing back up, see? These guys didn't know what went on up in The Thirsty Dog. They went home to their wives like regular joes at seven o'clock.

It was all about control then. Secrecy and control.

Well, the chili contest was just one of those stupid things. Community things. Family fun. Can you dig it? They have this festival every year - different events at different businesses. People you never see past 8 PM suddenly appear in the bars, slumming it. Even The Dog would do something. Used to do a lot - back in the day, when it was a family restaurant.

The last event of the weekend was called Carnival Closure, and it took place right after the chili contest. Oh, there would be door prizes and such. Silly thing. I attended.

Zoe attended too.

   

I remember speaking with a fellow named William in the Homer Street Grille. He was telling me things like, Society has failed Zoe. He reminded me of my co-worker who worshiped "The System." He also told me that he would prefer to see her with me than with Paul. He explained that Paul was quite controlling. You, on the other hand, seem to let Zoe be - Zoe.

It's impossible to completely illustrate how in the midst of all I have previously described there might be moments of clarity. Outside of the context of her and me together life went on. We watched the Andy Garcia/ Meg Ryan movie When a Man Loves a Woman about 17 times. (I exaggerate, maybe). At one point I went to see a priest down in the grubby little city to the south. At another point I drove to a local privately-funded agency of do-gooders to pick up information on alcoholism - pamphlets and stuff, intending to give them to her. She had sort of requested them.

When her father was still dying old friends of his came up from the City to visit him. They stayed with us - with her. One such old friend of Zoe's father - a woman I shall call Vivienne - said to me: Do you have a full-time job? I mean, do you do something for a living?

I told her yes I did.

Quit that job. You won't have time. Zoe's your full-time job now. Do you realize she's a chronic alcoholic?

Yes, I lied.

I didn't believe in alcoholism. Still don't - in a way. Still don't in the new way. I believe now that it is a soul sickness, not a researchable, curable "disease." But that's a subject for another time.

I realize now that Paul believed that on the strength of her love for him alone she should have been able to overcome her difficulties. There is an illness far worse than alcoholism. (Well, there are several). But there is one in particular which is far more baffling and just as deadly. And that is whatever sickness it is that makes certain people want to be in relationships with alcoholics. We're just plain sick, but such people as are attracted to us are truly insane.

For the first week I imagined we would be married, and living in a sweet little saltbox house that I knew was for sale next to the Anglican church. Zoe would paint the walls, of course. The veins in every ivy leaf would be meticulously drawn. I also knew, in the black back of my mind, that this would never happen, and that nothing like it would ever happen. 

I thought it would be nice to take a break. I like a lot of what this guy has to say.

Get your ass over here - her voice whispered over the phone. The man I shall call Paul must have only just left her side. He was her once and future boyfriend, the man who paid for her apartment six months in advance. I was not to know that, nor that the term was soon to expire. It was a day after Thanksgiving break. I had plunged myself into working overtime each day of it, and I had been at the shop alone, concentrating on work, knowing Paul had returned. Perhaps - and she had held out some hope in this regard - he returned only to say he would not return again. Perhaps Zoe had said to him something to this effect: I'm in love with John now. You have to go. Perhaps an alien spaceship would land in the lake and establish a new world order to insure we would all have the same hairstyle.

I had two cars. I probably drove the van. It doesn't matter which one. When I arrived, after climbing up all those stairs, I knocked on her door, and it seemed that I had not been there for many years though it was three days ago I had woken up next to her knowing it was the day Paul would arrive.

She greeted me wearing nothing but a sleeveless ribbed tee shirt and her eyeglasses. I'll bet she was dying to take the contacts out. In her right hand - as though about to slip through her fingers which seemed to hold its neck unaware of it - was a liter of vodka, mostly empty. This sight took me aback momentarily. She grabbed me by my collar, either of my shirt or jacket, or both, and pulled me inside. Zoe was a strong girl, with long arms and legs - deadly legs. I had only recently been kicked by them.

I'm not finished with you, she said.

Sho-now, Sister... said I.

What happened over the weekend I cannot imagine in its entirety, but she showed me a video Paul had taken while he was there - that they both had taken - with the camcorder he had given her months before - before they split up. It was video of the two of them together. He had painted a picture of himself on her abdomen, her belly.

I guess I broke your heart, said she.

I replied with complete honesty - something I was loath to do.

What heart?

And so, we continued. Paul could only break away from his very time-consuming government job two hundred miles away every two weeks or so. He would do this by working double shifts, or whatever was necessary. I never knew him, except as a voice on her answering machine begging, pleading, making all kinds of threats. By then, she would be sleeping, or whatever it is we do that looks like sleeping.

Paul would not allow Zoe to drink while he was there. Sometimes I would see them out and about together, on the street. She would be smiling, no eyeglasses on, and wearing make-up. Her eyes would be different. Well, she would be different. She was not the same person, and I would only see her when she changed.

Changed.

I didn't know I was looking in a mirror when I looked at Sister Midnight. I didn't yet know that I was a changing person too. But I had called her "sister" because I called all women "sister." My quaint affectations defined me. Now I understood that there were times when she was Zoe, and other times when she stopped being Zoe. Over the next several weeks I began to notice the exact moment of change. Her head would drop towards the bar. She would put her face into her hands to support it so that her fingertips dislodged her eyeglasses slightly. It was sleep - after a fashion. It was the death of Zoe Lilja, and it was followed by the birth of Sister Midnight.

The name came from an Iggy Pop song playing in my van. It suited her.

Calling Sister Midnight, You put a beggar in my heart.

Calling Sister Midnight, I'm a breakage inside.

Sometimes I would get a call from the Thirsty Dog. Spud. Get down here, man. Your girlfriend locked herself in the bathroom again. And I would go. I would have the kids in my care and I would go anyway, bundling them into the car after midnight, them wondering why.

I'm not finished with you.

The room was quite dark. The Best of Leonard Cohen was over. Paul had bought her a large stereo - one of those compact numbers with the bass cannon that looked as though it might lift off and return to its home planet any time. From my position on her futon I could barely discern her silouhette against the dim light coming in through the windows from the street. The county courthouse was right across the way. Its stained-glass windows looked like a face. I heard her talking to her legs - or maybe talking to the cats who twined around them. One of her birds was on her shoulder, the other on her head. At night her paintings came to life. The room was covered with them - brightly colored primitives of animals, trees, whales flying in outer space, oceans filled with impossible fish with too many eyes.

I would feel rather than see her body collapse next to mine, perhaps the back of her head barely visible. But the odor of Sister Midnight I will never forget. I can close my eyes and allow it to come back to me now. It was the smell of love, sickening, the same smell of old liquor that came out of me. Old liquor and sweat. I craved it. I would put my nose into her back and breathe it in. Luxurious.

While I drifted in and out of consciousness Sister Midnight spoke in a low flat voice. She spoke as if automatically, as if possessed of something, a need to speak which was so compelling it would continue in her sleep. It was her story. It was all of her story, from birth to death. I can say that because she was already dead, and so was I. We were in Hell, but we were together in Hell. Our togetherness - the comfort it gave us - was the worst of the suffering.

I'm not finished with you.

My part to play was explicitly clear. My job was to listen. My role was to hear. Over the course of the next several months it seemed that life began after midnight. The rest of time was like a dream, but she was real. We were real. I began to imagine that when her story ended we would both cease to exist.

And that story - oh, how I wish I could tell you. I wish I could tell anybody, just to get it out of my head. But the reason she told me...

Well, the truth is I have no idea why she told me what it was clear she told no one else. I had no heart, perhaps. When she was low on cash I arranged it so that the boys who wanted her had to pay. And, if there weren't any boys around I would pay for her myself out of my meager earnings, most of which we spent on drink anyway.

Then, there was that fat kid, the one who was in love with her. He came to the door one morning. I spied through the high window in her attic room that it was him. Took the little baseball bat downstairs with me. Now, this kid swore he loved her, swore and ranted and raved. I told him, You know not love over and over again to his protestations.

You know not love.

Through the winter now. It was a long winter. The story continued. Every night I was with her my entire world was being remade. The things I thought I knew were one by one turning into lies. The story she told was about a world I had never imagined. Today I look at young girls dressed all in black, pretending to embrace darkness and misery. I laugh at them.

It's me - John. Relax. I'm here.

What's she doing?

Sleeping, sort of.

Did she take her contacts out?

Yes, Paul. She never had them in. She only wears them when you're here.

Thank God. I may never return.

Promises, promises...

You have no idea.

You're wrong about that, Paul. Come as you plan. She'll be ready. No harm will come to her tonight. I'll be here.

I had to do that. I had to pick up the phone. I couldn't stand to hear his voice on the machine begging and crying. It was pathetic.

You'll stay all night?

Yeah. She's not finished with me.

Promise?

Yeah.

If she wakes up and smokes she could set her hair on fire.

I know, I know. Got it covered. Stop worrying.

I can't stop.

I know that too.