The Ideal

There's never any peace to be found in the city. If you manage to shut out the ambiance of a million people and the million more machines that keep them running in a semi-
conscious cycle of perpetual motion you still sense...something. Something speaks to you like a sixth sense for all the paranoid, irrational buzz of humanity that dominates
every city.

I'd been there a couple of months when I wound up in a jazz bar off Edward and Queen. Sometime around 2am I guess. Couldn't sleep, couldn't get a straight line of
thought through my head much past the primal - eat, drink, fuck, sleep and repeat. Funny how you think that when you're surrounded by everything that edifies the sophistication of our species. I went for a walk to consciously ease my mind and unconsciously slake the primal thirst within. That's when I heard the kind of perfect chaos you can only hear from a jazz band in full jam, eyes closed, sweating and heaving for breath through the stale smoke of an underground bar. I was broke but for what I made week too week and it was the end of a lean one. I had enough for a few beers and I was in no mood to care what kind as long as I could slide a bottle or 6 down my parchced throat to the sound of that channeled, barely controlled chaos of sax, trumpet, 'bone, snares, bass and clarinet.

There was nothing restrained about her though. She was all sex and chaos, all jazz, all city and all fire. She was an ideal with a jaded, hungry look in her eyes and kinks in her cheap black stockings. I'd known her kind before though I couldn't recall any names. Like I said she was an ideal and ideals don't have names you can touch with any human tongue. You can only whisper their name under dirty sheets under neon light with an animal snarl.

I walked to the bar and stood next to her, I didn't say a word or look at her as I waved the bartender over, 'Two malts, single neat and double rocks short tumblers'. She looked at me like I knew she would and I held her gaze for a few seconds then smiled a thin smile as my eyes flicked down to the tumblers and back to hers. She smiled my smile and drank the single neat, waving the barman back over as she placed the tumbler back on the bar. I turned back to the band as the sax kicked and the snares flared. The felt the double burn a cold fire down my throat and I felt her hand slide into mine as she pulled me toward a table closer to the band. Those hungry green eyes burned into my dull browns.

The martinis she'd ordered arrived at our table and she drained hers with dismissive ease. She lent her head on my shoulder and I breathed in her scent - gin, vodka and Chanel No. 5. Like I said she was an ideal. I was about to drain my martini with similar disdain before the fire burned in my throat. I hadn't noticed the colour in the dim light of the club. Fire. Boudier Saffron gin 3 parts, Ciroc vodka 1 part, rim lining of Vermouth, dash of bitters. Like i said she was an ideal. I knew then that she'd never say hello and I'd never have to say goodbye.

We made the kind of love only emotional vacancy can inspire. I watched as the hunger burned in those eyes, roared like a forest fire, like London, like Rome and Carthage. I knew she'd consume me, I knew. I watched that fire burn, felt those cold nails draw hot blood down my back and felt the sting as our sweat poored like rain. I felt my life being sucked out of me with each clench of those perfect ivory thighs. She looked to an unreachable sky in frenzied, engorged rapture and with the last ounce of my strength my right hand slid into my jacket on the floor and wrapped my clammy fingers around it. I plunged it into her heart and heard her scream that same sound I'd heard so many times, the only sound that made me feel alive. Just between engorged rapture and the death knell of the beast incarnate. My eyes filled with the green fire of hers and the cold blood that exploded from those breasts. I climaxed to the sound of those perfect perfect, hell born screams.

Like I said she was an ideal. She never said hello and I'll never have to so goodbye.