Shudder by Harry F. Kane

ferrets were dancing a complicated dance with three fallen angels and one horned devil.
    As she sat there, with her back to the bar, leaning on her elbows, the first potential night partner wobbled over to her with a grin.
    He was a thin man dressed in a tight fitting black latex jacket and equally tight green pants, with red latex gloves on his hands. He smiled at Natalie and made a ‘cheers’ gesture with his cocktail glass.
    Natalie returned the gesture and scrutinized his face with a polite smile. He had the popular thin mustache and pointy sideburns.
    â€œAlec,” he shouted into her face.
    â€œMiriam,” lied back Natalie on an impulse.
    There was something wrong with this man, something that set off tiny alarms, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
    Then she realized that his cheeks seemed rather immobile and his forehead looked frozen in a perpetual amiable half-frown.
    This cat had given his face a temp-frieze, this distasteful means of being without a mask, but still subtly hiding one’s identity, one’s everyday face.
    Unnerved, Natalie showed him a thumbs down, shrugged her shoulders with a thin sympathetic smile, and turned to the bar.
    In the mirror behind the rows of bottles, she saw his reflection look at her with a frozen smile for another ten seconds, before abruptly turning and gyrating away to look for another potential playmate.

    * * * *

    Dave went to the bar and ordered a beer. He still insisted on interpreting his knotted stomach as a sign of overwhelming amorphous arousal and now looked around trying to see a fitting target on which to focus it.
    He saw a tipsy Georgette sitting alone and a chap in a black jacket and green pants walking over to her. She felt Dave’s gaze and gave him a brief smile, before returning to the pretense of conversation with her latex suitor.
    Dave’s gaze wandered about the club for a minute, lingered on the ferrets for a second, and when he looked again into Georgette’s direction, she was gone. So was Mister Greenpants. Oh well, more power to them.
    Dave turned to look at the other people on the bar. Just seven feet away there was a petite black girl, energy drink can in hand, scanning the club. She was in a red latex jacket and in fishnets. Her heels glowed blue.
    Dave decided to try his luck and approached the girl. She noticed his movement, and lifted her eyes to meet his gaze. A second of mutual paralysis passed very slowly.
    â€œNatalie?”
    â€œDave?”
    â€œNatalie.”
    â€œDave.”
    They hugged each other for a long time. Then Dave signaled with a stronger squeeze that he was letting go, let go, stepped back, and looked her over.
    She had grown thinner and a little older, but she was still a fantastic young woman. He only hoped that he still didn’t look too old at his forty-one years.
    After some courteous but impossible attempts at conversation, Dave realized that they had to change location. Obviously there was nothing for both of them to do in the bar anymore.
    â€œLet’s go for an evening coffee in the
Byway
,” he shouted to her. She nodded in happy agreement. The wind ruffled their hair as they walked to his car, and didn’t make conversation much easier than back in the club, but once inside the BMW, they finally talked.
    â€œSuch a surprise to see you, Dave, I didn’t know you were back,” Natalie said as she was buckling herself up.
    The headlights dispersed once again the night in front; with a lurch like a lowly amateur, a wound up Dave propelled the car forward. He tried to keep his mind on the road. The night traffic was meager but not nonexistent.
    He answered the implied question. “Oh yes. I’ve been back for quite some time now.”
    â€œAnd you didn’t call?”
    â€œWell...” Dave changed lanes while struggling to concentrate, “a lot of time had passed, and I thought you probably have a new phone number and