Seen

He hadn't felt enlightened the first time he had noticed it for it was not the first time.

He'd been a bartender, cook, waiter, soldier, not necessarily in that order. He'd served people and bended his back long enough to know what pleases them, his coworkers say. What pleases them – that is power. Power comes from control or money, if they are not already the same. In his life they surely mirrored eachother. For the power-hungry and rich ones, lacking control, desired to be danced to. The dance, he says, puts them out of their misery. Drugged and out of their minds, they dream of owning. Desired him to bow, also — but that, that he would not do. For some of them dared to look him in the eye while he mixed and poured their drinks, wiped their tables clean, and they feared what they had glimpsed once and never again.

While doing his third afterwork gig that week, he'd caught a cold. It ravaged through him, and his tall body shook in the dressing room. It scared the other ones. But tomorrow comes the fourth gig and he is there, carrying trays and tables, drunk on whiskey and his thoughts like a maniac. Fever always burns through him parallel to thoughts: daughter – this bill – sick – already late — cough – how to cure this cough – ugh. Some screaming that tears the skull and his blood searing the menningeal folds, already inflamed and scorched.

And then:

she is going to die.

This night, blind with fever, he realises: he can smell death here and now on this girl carrying the other tray from the bar here and now, and he is helpless.

He does not know how it came. The stench is familiar and repulsive. The night is quieting. Guests have settled into their seats.

He stands at the bar, looking at the girl. Her wine-dark eyes look up, up at his scorched brain, making him even sadder.

"You want something?"

She nods while shrugging and pours herself a whiskey too, and him another one and what is sadness if not this

The music continues its untamed beat. His heart pulses. She downs the whiskey, takes the tray and gets lost in the crowd, and his is already full, the guys shouting to him and might as well no one.

How can he say wait now

Three, four, five hours, her tips are already in the hundreds of dollars and so are his, for

Seven hozrs now are they

He'd noticed already, he truly had. This girl is going to come to him. The reader of this story better know too. Heartbreak can only hurt to a point. From the point the man is powerless. It is his cowardice. It is the weakness of his hands. It is the wailing which he once begins and will never stop, it is his own beloved he cannot help.

It is almost five in the morning. The girl hasn't died yet. This is a nightmare and he is not to wake up.

He downs another whiskey and goes to the toilet. Closes the door. The girl, cannot be even seven years older than his daughter, stands back-to-back with him.

"He's harassing me", she says. And precise is his vision. The guy that owns the nightclub-moat. His meaty hands hurting her as they should never do but they do.

He swallows his Adam's apple, looking somewhere.

''If you come to the front hall, his acquaintances are gambling. They are gambling on me. I've already danced in my clothes. They wish so. I wanna bring money to mom. Mom says I'm good for nothing. My sister's gotten sick too. Look at your lungs – you can cough. Only I hear. Boss doesn't know that you know, even less than he knows I do. Do something"

This does not get lost. This night is real. What is real to a real, blood-skin-meat man never about to see his daughter and hear her singing again. This man's name is George. Like the saint George, the one who is said to have stabbed the evil dragon back in his home country, where George is not his name. The one who is said to have died. The reader of this story's never had to have known this. So haven't I, but I heard it from a third hand. This. This. He is not in the toilet, he is between two older men and one's wife, and they won't stop touching him. "Come wih us wontya" "I cannot", he says "But this thousand buck bill in your vest I put there – is it for nothing" He can feel the cough welling up at the worst possible moment. "Come with us wontya my wife is tired my dick cant rise last ten years your younger meat" But he is clawing away and coughing, and searching for the girl. There is no other waiters tonight. They are but the bartender has disappeared somewhere and the others might as well have caught a stone disease. They turn into stone and don't help him. He's already turned into stone and will never cry again.

Nika comes. Nika is his wife whose ring he feels cold on his hand now. When she comes like this, while he is drunk and sad at work, she is in her usual clothes – black leather jacket, work blouse, boots, but tonight she shines like a bloody angel who leaves the witnesses terrified.

Make a choice.

So he steps into the hall where the gamblers are. The husband clutches to his vest, wife has already torn the shirt collar, and his exposed neck is cold and feels even sicker and he asks: "Do yall see"

"What, beautiful?", one of the gamblers turns to him, probably catching only his eyes and white shirt im the dark. Blue and white.

Silence.

"What?", the boss is stepping away from the table now.

"Nevermind"

He rubs the guy's shoulder. Death's smell, which he'd caught from the girl's glass and tray, stains him.