Midnight Cocktail

Midnight Cocktail - Chapter 11

Stockholm is my fifth favourite city, but only in the winter. That might not exactly sound like a glowing endorsement, but I have been to a hell of a lot of cities and I have to mark down any place where there are barely six hours between sunset and sunrise in the middle of summer. Seriously, that doesn't even give you time to safely pop out for a burger. Not that I would anyway, but that isn't the point.

It's the Swedish capital, spread across fourteen islands, and it is packed full of impressive architecture, museums, art galleries, theatres, and it comes with a whole boatload of colourful history.

"Stockholm is really cool."

Cherry liked it too.

We had left my jet at someone else's private airfield this time, to be refuelled and flight-checked for our trip home on Saturday. I trust the people who work there because the airfield belongs to Kelly Stakehart, and we go way back.

I met her in a bar that no longer exists, on a street that has since been flattened to make way for yet another freeway development. The year was 1896. She wasn't called Kelly Stakehart back then, but she was already playing the guitar and singing.

I was leaning against the bar, doing the same thing that everyone else in the place was doing: staring at her in awe and listening to the most incredible singing voice I have ever heard. The guitar playing wasn't too shabby either, and back then it was just an old acoustic with no amplification at all. She was playing an eclectic bunch of tunes, a mixture of classical pieces and her own interpretations of popular music of the time, songs like "Down in Poverty Row" and "My Best Girl's a New Yorker".

I didn't speak to her that first night, but I went back the following weekend and caught up with her while she was packing her guitar away in a scratched and dented felt-lined case. I remember one of the little metal hinges squeaked whenever she opened or closed that case. It's a sound I can still hear, perfectly preserved down through the years, if I close my eyes and let my mind go back.

"Good evening," I said. "I enjoyed your performance."

She looked at me while she closed the lid of the case, flicking the three catches closed, one at a time.

"Over," she said.

Even back then she wasn't much for talking.

Her hair was black, straight, and very long.

Her eyes would fix on an object or a person and stay there, but you knew her mind was working on other things all the while. And back then she was drinking heavily.

A week later I tried talking to her again.

"I can help," I said. "But you need to tell me what you want."

"Can't," she said.

I put my hand on the guitar in the open case.

"You play beautifully and you have the most wonderful voice. I don't understand why you are unhappy."

She put her hand on top of mine, on her guitar. Her face was so close to me that I could taste the gin on her breath.

"Sandcastle," she said. "Tide's coming in."

"I know," I said. "The inevitability of death and the pointlessness of human endeavour."

"Over," she said.

I stroked her hair, noticing that her expression never changed, not even when I kissed her.

"It doesn't have to be."

I told Cherry most of that tale while we were flying over the North Sea from England. I think I missed out the minor detail of the kiss. It wasn't essential to the story.