The Altonevers (46 page)

Until the Moonlight diner,
an Americana diner in the middle of nowhere appears on yonder. It's
walls are covered with vintage posters and the jingles of yellowed
advertisements. Way out by itself, thirty miles from the last town
and twenty miles to the next. Most of the place is covered by
grease, reaching from the kitchen grill to the bay windows. The
type of place where the waitress is endearingly called by her first
name by familiar patrons fellow travelers so often they’re like
family to her. The aroma of hash browns and browning sausage mixes
with the waitress' stale perfume to overpower even the meals on
their plates.
The whole gang's sitting in
a blue cushioned corner booth by the front of the place, with a
view of the sparsely filled parking lot. On the opposite side of
the room is the long counter that's lost its patina awhile back.
Filling the middle of the room are rows of four foot high rickety
tables set with clean but still calcified glasses of tap water. A
few tired truckers are bantering on about the hours and which roads
to keep to keep good time. A stressed out single mother who hasn't
slept since she had her first child, is trying to corral the two
rambunctious kids over a cup of Joe and a read of the
paper.

Anna nibbles on a Linzer tart, staring
at the little girl with her mother, who's blowing bubbles in her
Milky Way looking milkshake and laughing, Anna admires the child's
amusement in simplest of things. Cider swipes a fork and Harley and
Popper sit back in their chairs finishing their desserts. Harley
burps first.

“
What time is it?” she
asks.

“
I don't know, I lost track
of the track list a while back. Excuse me, excuse me yes,” Popper
says waving for the waitress’ attention.

“
Can you tune the radio to
1.61 please,” Harley asks.

“
That's dead air hun, for
as long as I been here,” the waitress says.

“
A hundred dollars says it
ain’t,” Cider says.

“
A hundred dollars says a
lot of things mister.”

“
Cider!” Anna
says.

“
Yeah?”

“
Pay the lady,” Anna
demands.

“
What's it for if not for
your happiness,” he says, lighting a smoke then reaching into his
coat pocket. The server happy to be called a lady by anyone, smiles
ear to ear, and wider when she catches the wad of loose bills. All
hundreds of very colorful money.

“
Sure thing,” the two a.m
waitress, says and moves like she's been on her feet for as long as
she’s been alive, and living only for her short lived smoke breaks.
Harley drops her fork to her plate, losing her appetite immediately
at the smell of Cider's smoke.

“
Cider what are you doing?”
Harley asks.

“
What? I just ate. Oh
that's right, sorry Harley, forgot it was a thing of yours. Sorry,
he says putting it out in a cup of water.”

The Static whiz crackles and pops to a
rock n’ roll love song of mood lifting melody.

“
Oh, in all my years,
that’s never been there before this minute,” the waitress says and
walks back to wiping tables, going on with the cook of how strange
that station is.

“
That song, we don’t have
much longer left.”

“
I don’t think we'll make
it to both my sparrow,” Popper says, looking to Harley like a sad
puppy, who shrugs and says, “we'll have to do it here
then.”

Anna realizing they're resigning their
last dance to bring her closer to home, shakes her head vigorously
no.

“
No, no not for me. We have
plenty of time,” she says.

“
We don't. We have about
twenty more tracks,” Harley says.

“
I know,” Popper answers
“Shhhhh,” putting a finger gently to Anna's lips.

“
NO,” Anna barks, biting
for his nail, to his horror. “Not because of me, I wouldn't, don't
want to be a bother,” she says.

“
Don't be silly, Anna
you’re pleasantly never a bother.”

“
Oh brother,” says
Cider.

“
Says the other,” Harley
says taking Carrots hand in hers.

“
Anna we'll see you again
sometime, or place. In another Alto I'm sure. We've done this
thousands of times at least. No worries okay, we'll have it
here.”

“
Die here?” She
asks.

“
No hahahaha, hop here,”
Popper says.

“
We'll drop you two off
after we hop, how's that?” Harley says.

“
Where's a station from
here?” she asks.

“
No station. An airport.
The best we could do,” Popper says.

“
But what about the
tables?” Cider asks picking pieces of pork from his
teeth.

“
We gotta move em,” Harley
says.

“
Gimme a minute I just ate
alright,” Cider says.

“
Cider!” Anna chops the air
sharply, silencing the dozen other patrons.

“
Can we move them please?”
he asks the waitress.

“
Sure thing,” the weathered
waitress answers already handsomely paid, “but don't mess up the
tables. I don't wanna have to set them again,”
the waitress says of tables she’s made a million times or
more. And the staff help them empty the middle of the room, placing
the tables into a twenty four foot ring around an empty
floor.

“
Make it louder will ya,
lovely,” Harley says. The cook obliges by turning the songs for the
sparrows up, way up. Now playing an orchestral swell of mismatching
sounds as the duo limber up next to each other, shrugging their
shoulders and shaking out their limbs like synchronized
swimmers.

“
Louder please,” Popper
shouts.

“
And louder still,” Harley
yells. The dial is cranked up as far as it can go, raising a random
mishmash of horns blowing like they’re battling, drummers running
against one another, with the many strings singing out of tune into
disorienting clatter of two full big bands playing to their own
melodies entirely. The double double bass rumbles through the walls
and rattles the windows, shaking the hundreds of little blue lights
decorating the ceiling to look like a starry sky. Anna’s gulping
lung fulls of rarefying air, sitting still though inside astir in
anticipation of the loose legged lover's last dance. Cider is
sitting next to her equally enamored of his best friends ritual
hop.

“
This is nice,” Anna
says.

“
I've seen them dance a
thousand times at least. Always the same dance though never done
the same way,” Cider says.

Harley takes his hand in hers, and
they give each other a last glance then step chest to breast, close
enough to feel each others familiar breath. She, a foot smaller, is
looking up to him looking down, filling each other’s eyes with
nothing but the others face, each gleefully failing at fighting
back smirks and smiles. Putting their hands up as though to
surrender and locking palms, then pushing the other out without
moving their feet from their touching toes, and resetting breast to
chest, Each breathing the others breath.

They do this twice more
before she slides to the side and spins under his right arm to his
back, then shuffling her feet as he turns to meet her. He matching
her tempo with a few fast footsteps of his own, then pulls her back
to his embrace then swings her out. She glides like she’s on ice,
backwards, on a heel of one foot and the toe of another, then
breaking into faster footwork then his. They begin their dance
floor duel fueled by their improvising off the others instinctual
movements.
Each thriving to upstage the
other, trying to outfox and trick the other, trading between
leading and following, fluttering around on their feet like birds
and bees fly and float. Acting out scenes of as though in a
musical, of running away and courting, pursuer and pursued.
Fiercely flapping their arms, touching, holding the other’s hand,
and spinning in and out of each other’s faces gracefully. Their
toes tapping and heels sliding, hopping, skipping and stomping on
the floor almost faster than the eye can see. Repelling then
attracting like poles of a magnet, spinning, cycling from ignoring
their lover, to being absolutely irresistible to their other. The
duo relishes every enraptured second. in reverie as children under
summer time sprinklers, with jubilance exudes of their every fluid
move or step of the other, each with crescent moon shaped smiles.
Trading between leading and following, swinging in and out,
spiraling unevenly around each other as though they're drawing rose
patterns on the floor with their hops and steps.

They're stirring around the room,
until the room begins stirring in a circle around them. The small
stars above are sliding and stretching into hundreds of circular
bands of blue light. The glasses on the ring of tables around the
ad hoc dance floor start to glow neon orange, when melting as wisps
of vapor, and whipping, sweeping circularly to their right to crash
into the glasses of the tables upstream. Creating a single sense
blistering band of glistening vermilion glass in axis around the
core of the dance floor, forming a full circle following a
counterclockwise current swirling around the dancing duo. Who’re
sweaty, stepping their hearts and souls through the soles of their
shoes as a time slowing strobe effect emerges in concurrent shock
waves to the irregular rhythm of their hands coming together and
separating. Whenever one hops off their feet the audiences heart's
skip a beat leaping to their throats and back down to their chests
when their toes again touch the ground. The linoleum tiles under
them are wearing away, retreating like frost from the heat from
their flurrying feet, fading to be clear as glass with endless
pitch black beneath. The black beneath is reflecting in perfect
symmetry, the spherical bands of colliding light blue neon light
blurring around the ceiling to create the illusion of a half sphere
above and below. Making a whole sphere of the sliding stars and
band of sun's orange wraps around the savory Savoy swing of Harley
and Popper.

The fast pace random rattling clatter
of the battling big band's rhythms, draws closer, tightening into
uneven patterns as they sluggishly synchronize into a single
melody. The dueling double bass becomes a duet of smoothly
strumming low tones under gusts of bellowing and blustering brass.
The stray twangs and strokes of the strings become a chorus to the
percussive rumblings of deeply reverberating drums. The shivaree of
loud sounds are now drowning any ear that can hear with a single
harmonious heart swelling melody. Matching every tilt, twist, turn
or leap of the hopping sparrows at the sphere’s neon blue and
orange lapping flame center.

The crowd and the two are
sitting shocked on the edge of their seats at the rim of the
sphere. Anna's teetering on the verge of vertigo, swept into a
torrent of infinite inertia that's vacuuming the volumes of their
souls and internal organs toward their right, to follow the neon
cerulean and vermilion flow of vaporized glass passing warmly
around their bodies.
Sweat is staining the
duo's death day suits as they dance faster and faster stepping to
the other’s improvisations. Now with right hands together, Harley
leaps to a handstand in the air above him. Kicking out her toes
then descending feet first through his legs. Twisting in air to
land standing up, sending a shock wave outward as she lands, making
the rest of the furnishings and the feet of the onlookers leap a
foot from the ground. All stay suspended in mid air for a second,
then collectively thumping back to the reflective floor. Facing his
back, she grabs his shoulders and leaps to his front, who's now
facing her back. Their fluently following the feet of the other
without even a glance to the ground. Flawlessly forward and back,
in freely flowing movements, they're spinning and speeding up the
strobing sphere of neon light enshrouding their moment of greatest
living. They reverse their revolutions, causing the spheres
rotation of the room to flash bright as striking lightning,
repetitively releasing greater radiance of them thriving, aglow.
Reacting only to their sparrows movements, flying, dancing in their
own stars as the encircling sphere's neon glow grows greater and
more intense, frenetically thriving to the frequency of the duo's
hastening feet. The energy between them washes over the crowd like
waves of static over their sweat and skin. Anna's heart is
throbbing across her eyes and temples, hypnotized by their side
hops and swivels correlating with the strobes and still frames
pulsating closer and closer to until in simultaneity for tens of
seconds of pure, thoughtless bliss.

The duo slows, swinging out and toward
each other like twisters merging in slow motion. Harley's back
comes to rest against Popper's chest as he drapes his long arms
over her small shoulders to clasp her hands in his. His shoulders
tower over hers, eclipsing her small feminine frame while kissing
her on the right side of her neck and cheek. The synchronous strobe
of neon light of light blue smeared small stars and raw orange
equator stops, and for an instant the sphere is at equilibrium,
standing still as an afterglow of the sparrow's last hop. The
vermilion ring breaks, snapping like a rubber band as the blue
sphere bursts outward like a thousand micro-supernovae. Releasing
all the tiny stars energy in unison as a show of light above,
reflected perfectly below, though not even touching the table
napkins with a touch of air.