...supposed to be

I just want to be a country-bar guitarist who drinks too much whiskey and sleeps in the back of his truck. The simple life. I want the smoke to be so thick that I can't see them from the stage. Ghosts that rise from glowing ends of cigarettes, the place smells like chocolate, tobacco, and spilled drinks.

(The neighbor has turned her cat into a dragon. I don't ask questions, and I am not surprised at the midnight crashes and roars. It can't be much bigger than a dog, but I have no idea how quickly it might grow. I don't think she has any idea, either, because she keeps asking me if the landlord has been around lately, and if he's asked about her cat. He hasn't, and I don't think he will. You don't fuck around with an old lady who has a dragon.)

I just want a heavy white mug filled with diner coffee and a waitress who got up too early and stayed up too late. Her story is written in her eyes with green ink. She has callouses on her fingers. "You played good last night," she says. "I couldn't see you through the smoke," I say. "That's the way I like it," she says. I leave her all of the cash in my wallet and the lyrics to an Acuff-Rose song. I can still taste the cold edge of the mug, and the bitter coffee. I smile.

When he woke up, he found it hanging on the wall of his small apartment. He didn't gasp, and didn't whisper to god, and didn't stare. He made a pot of coffee, and sat down on the floor, across from the painting. It wasn't there they night before, of that much he was certain. He was also sure that no one could have put it there while he was asleep. He had only been in the city for a few days, he didn't speak the language, and the one key to his apartment was in the pocket of the jeans he had slept in. It was some sort of masterpiece, he was fairly certain of that. The paint was old, but thick, and it moved when he looked closely, like waves, and never stayed in the same place for more than a few seconds. It should have looked out of place there, on his wall, surrounded by piles of paperbacks and 78s, but it didn't. In fact, he decided quickly that he rather liked it, and that he was not going to tell anyone about it. That night, he fell asleep on the floor across from the painting. He dreamed that someone was knocking on the door. He awoke to find a young lady sitting, cross-legged, beneath the painting. She had been watching him sleep. The color in her eyes moved like the color in the painting. "Hello," she said. "I like this place."