Hess Phyllis Page Four Once More By Jerry Carlile A nickel tumbled into the juke box. A tall dark haired youth was running a forefinger along the amber levers. He pressed a number and sank into a corner chair at the far table, sheltered in the half-light prevailing there. While music broke from the gaudily decorated machine, drowning the clink of glass and bottle, he quickly drank what he had poured, then carefully replaced the glass on the wet ring where it had stood before. Through the blue haze of cigaret smoke he saw her face again, her brown eyes studying him as they had that first night. He had wandered to the amusement pier, searching for something to pass the empty hours, but the bright lights and the noise held no attraction. Strolling south along the deserted sea wall, he met the girl he now saw framed in the bluish veil. She was listening to the moaning surf and watching the dome of starry sky. He expected her to run when he spoke. When she did not, he decided she had known he was there all along. "Nice night," he offered in a matter-of-fact way. She replied in agreement and gave him a sidelong glance and turned back to the night scene, which was really something to look at. "Mind if I talk to you awhile?" he persisted. She turned, singling him out from the passerby who had begun to trickle along the walk. "I guess not," she answered. "The sea and sky make me lonesome too." "Lonely people can often find comfort in them," he said carefully, making use of the common ground the reply offered. "It would be fine if men were like nature and could sober over-gay people and at the same time give companionship to lonesome ones." The girl warmed up a little at this, it seemed to him, and he decided that she was what the psychologists called an introvert, a term which he felt in his own mind they use indiscriminately for any person who does any thinking on his own. He wondered a little how she could be so good looking and yet have time for any thoughts whatever, save maybe in dreams while asleep. "The fellows spoil 'em," he heard a voice say, then recognized it was his own. She tilted her head at him in a queer look. The motion threw her nearly black hair free to the breeze, and in the increasing moonlight he knew her eyes were brown and her features were chiselled although not small by any means. He liked the fact that she was tall for a woman. He found that she knew poetry. "A nature poem I like especially is Thanatopsis," she said, and he knew they really had something in common now. " 'To him who in the love of nature holds communion with her visible forms, she speaks a varied language,' " and he was away. She recited some other favorites then, with him coming back with a number of his personal preferences, through Whitman down to Sandburg. The more they talked, the more they found that was mutual, and he discovered it was not difficult at all to feel as they chatted gaily along that here at last was a person the like of whom he had never been able to imagine before. No, he decided, she was not an introvert. He went even further and concluded that he himself was not so incumbered with inhibitions as most of his former associates had implied in one way and another. He wanted to touch the sleeve of her dress, maybe press his finger casually against her arm and touch her dark flowing hair, but he refrained except in imagination. The rattle of a chair on the other side of the table brought the youth back to the cheap tavern. A dark skinned, heavy girl, whom he had noticed earlier in the evening at the bar with another man, was seated, chin in hand, staring directly at him. "Where you been?" She smiled professionally and spoke mellowly. He made no answer as he poured himself another stiff drink. "Don't you offer ladies a night cap?" He gulped the shot he had poured, not bothering even to see the girl though for her part she was looking directly into his eyes. "Have it your way, Mac." She shrugged and returned to the bar. He did not trouble to notice whether or not she was making up to some other prospect. He sat for a while longer, watching the couple dancing in front of the juke box. The record ended but they danced on, and when the next one began to play they changed their step to suit the slower rhythm. He wondered where he had heard that melody before. Then he remembered he had been with her. They had gone to a small club near the city, a pleasant place with neat curtains on the front windows and a small but satisfactory orchestra. Dancing with her had proved to be one of his supreme moments. How wonderfully smooth her hair had been and her check against his. And how thrilled he had been as she hummed with the music. How rich her voice was. How faultlessly she danced. He realized that he had come to love her. The record ended. The spell faded with the last notes of the melody. Without the loud tones of music, the place lost all its life. He picked two tunes. He stood there listening while the first one, the one that had just finished, played through again, and once again his thoughts went back. . . . It was a lovely night some seven months after their first meeting, and they were again on the shore, at the sea wall where he had found her. That night they planned to marry when she returned from a short air trip with her parents. They spoke of the evening when they first met, the days they had spent together, of the great joy of the future. Four days ago now, he had gone to the airport to meet her, but the plane never arrived. He had spent hours wondering, worrying, waiting. Then word came. Wreckage had been located in the Nevada mountains. No one survived. The youth filled his glass with brown liquor and quickly drank it. Then he laid his forehead on his crossed arms. His whole body trembled, wracked by great sobs. Later, the last bartender touched him on the shoulder, motioning to the door. He went out, his bottle in his hand. He walked on, hardly aware. The coolness of the night air seeped into his mind finally, clearing it. The familiar voice of the surf caressed his eardrums. Looking up, he saw above the same sky and the same glow of stars in the milky way. From down within him, where the defeat and misery were bitterest, he felt a subtle glow come into him, more potent than any liquor he had drunk to assuage his sorrow. It seemed to him that though dead, she was near him again, and he could hear her rich, warm voice once more. . . . Page Five