Summertime Sadness

Chapter 1

I take the martini glass in my hand and have a sip. It had been my third drink that night; my vision was starting to blur and the pain and longing in my heart was starting to numb. I put the glass down and put my head into my hands. Jimmy, I think. I miss him. I miss him so much. Was it not only last week that he told me he loved me? Was it all just a lie? I take another sip.

I sit in a small closed off bar in Lower Manhattan. There are about fifty other people in the place with me. Some sit at the counter where I was, but most sit near the small stage on the opposite end of the bar. The lights were dimming, they were preparing for a performance.  A blackboard that sits on the counter displays the name of the person performing but with the dim lights and with my blurred vision I can barely read. The only thing that I feel I am capable of doing is thinking. And the only thing I think about now is Jimmy.

Oh Jimmy. What I would do to hear his voice again. To hear him reassure me that he loved me. I close my eyes and think about him. It’s painful. Another sip.

A man comes on the stage to introduce the next act and I spin around on my bar stool. My vision is blurred and I can hardly see him. He is short and stocky and his voice is very low in pitch as he welcomes the singer onto the stage. The man waddles off and is replaced by a woman. Cat calls and whistles are immediately thrown about. The woman greets the audience with a few words and begins singing. I watch her although she is hard to see through the alcohol. I can see her long dark hair and her wide smile that she wears as she sings but not much else. She sings quite well, her voice is deep and very luring. The song is about heartbreak and after listening to it for a while it starts to remind me of Jimmy. There’s a searing pain in my heart at the thought of him and I spin around on the stool to face the bartender.

“One more,” I say and he hurries to make my drink.

About ten minutes later I'm nearly passed out. I have my head rested on the bar counter and my eyes start to feel heavy. The woman who was just performing sits next to me. She orders a drink for herself and looks over at me.

“Are you alright?” She asks me. I hear a British accent when she speaks.

“No,” I say as I sit up and cover my face with my hands. “I’m not.”

The bartender hands the woman her drink and she takes a sip. “So you’re drinking your problems away,” she says. “I guess it makes you feel better but it doesn’t necessarily help the problem.”

I take my face away from my hands and rest my head on the woman’s shoulder. A loud body-racking sob comes out of me. I felt fine a few moments ago; I have no idea where this sob has come from. Tears stream down my face and I suddenly long to be in Jimmy’s arms. I just cry and let out all the pain. The woman doesn’t even seem to mind.

“I’m so alone,” I wail.

She puts an arm around me, “You’re not. Do you want to tell me what happened?”

 So I spend the next hour telling this random woman about my heartbreak. I tell her everything; how Jimmy cheated, how he lied. At times I would burst to tears as I spoke about Jim and she just hugged me and kept saying: it’s alright. It felt good to hear that it was alright from her as I had learned that she too had her heart broken.

After venting to the woman about my split, she reaches into her purse and grabs a pen and a napkin that sits on the counter. “If you ever need to talk, I’m here,” she says. She starts writing on the napkin and I take this moment to examine her face. I only notice her beauty now; her long eyelashes and her dark brown eyes. She wears a shade of bright red lipstick that makes her teeth look extremely white when she smiles. The woman looks up at me and smiles while sliding the napkin over to me. On it is her number.

I slip the napkin into my pocket. “Thank you.”

She rests her head in her hand and leans over the bar counter. “I never asked you. What’s your name?”

“Lana,” I reply.

“Lana,” she repeats. I was too drunk to realize that I never got her name and I was too drunk to realize that this was the most appropriate time to ask her what it was. I think the woman had realized this as well so she just smiles and says, “I’m Marina.”