The red lights above the bar seem to glow just a little bit brighter as a cheer lifts into the air and the people gathered there hold up their glasses, bottles, or just a hand. Following the excited cry is a pause in time. The Chinese man behind the counter has stopped, a grin on his face and his eyes crinkled in merriment, one cloth-covered hand deep into a clear glass. The men and few women are also frozen, grins and small smiles stuck on their faces, their eyes trained on the glasses or bottles they have up in the air. Near the end of the deep cherry wood counter, three people sit side by side. The first is a simple man with shaggy brown hair and a bit of scruff dusting his jaw and upper lip. His stilled blue eyes gaze through the green Guinness bottle he has aloft in the air, and he sees things.

A woman leaning out the door and shouting his name, then coming out in a well-loved red bathrobe as he puts his car in reverse and leaves the driveway, as well as his home, for good. As he glances back in the review mirror with those clouded blue eyes, he sees another man come outside, wrap his arms around the one that dared call herself his wife, and then they retreat inside. He sees the dark highway, clear to him that night, as he drove without purpose or thought, until he found himself at a familiar place. There’s also a child, a small blonde with his blue eyes and a cheery white smile that holds up her arms and happily yells “daddy, daddy!” like she hasn’t seen him in a lifetime. Then there’s two old people, and a car decimated by a speeding semi. There is also the remains of one that had blonde hair and little blue eyes, sprawled across the backseat, lifeless. There are nights of alcohol and broken bottles, of crying and of screaming, of women and of being alone. Utterly, terrifyingly alone.

The man beside him sees differently though, despite his similar bottle of Guinness. With his long black hair tied back in a ponytail and a full mustache gracing both sides of his mouth, he looks through his own glass with deep brown eyes and sees three children. All of them have his black hair, her green eyes, and are the most beautiful children in the world. He sees snapshots of them in front of a Christmas tree, chasing each other around the house with enough noise for ten, scrambling for brightly-dyed Easter eggs, fighting and yelling at each other, coming home from school bursting with stories good and bad, smiling up at him as he tucks them in bed snugly and kisses each of them on the forehead. He can see the smooth back of his wife as she stretches contentedly in their bed, her swaying form as she moves around the kitchen and prepares dinner, her hair tied up in a curling waterfall of black. There are fights of course, but each are so menial it all fades away compared to the happiness he experiences being with his family, after a childhood of being alone.

The woman beside him has a coy smile twisting one side of her cherry-red lips. Her elbow is resting on the bar as her thin and immaculate hand holds up a clear glass with a shot of whiskey swirling in the bottom. As she looks through her glass, she sees a thousand men even in a world of loneliness. She craves for love, for devotion to one person, but she loves people too much. Fond of children, happy with other women, seductive with men, understanding with the elderly. She likes the variety, getting to know each person, the freedom. She’s terrified of being tied down, even as some part deep inside of her craves it endlessly. Tortured by indecisions, even as she loves what they bring her, she gazes through her glass with cheerful green eyes rimmed by an unfathomable sorrow.

A black man sits across from her, on the other side of the bar. With a clean face and a shaven head, he has a mouth full of smiling white teeth. He’s happy to be here, celebrating with these people he doesn’t even know. It’s so different than the south, where prejudice and hatred nipped at his heels like starving, vicious dogs, even though all he was trying to do was grow up and live to tell the tale. Big cities down there are merciless, and his dark eyes see the ghosts of his past as he looks through a clear Corona bottle. They’re distorted, yet perfectly perceptible to him. His father that kicked him out for running with a gang, his mother that turned her back on him to care for his younger brothers and sisters, the people he once called friends that turned against him for talking to a beautiful girl from the opposing gang, that same girl who eventually left him for somebody else, the man that tried to kill him, the eyes of his siblings as they looked up one day and didn’t even recognize him. He sees them all, but they’re being overwhelmed by the face of the one he loves now, the one sitting beside him raising her own glass in a cheer, and the ghosts of the past don’t even seem to matter.

She’s happily married to him, to her loving husband and their big apartment and her job and the kids they’re planning on having. But as she looks through her own glass of a foreign Chinese beer, all she sees is a feminine face bordered by curly brown hair. She sees the religious grandparents that disowned her, the close-minded father that kicked her out, the uncomfortable friends that wouldn’t talk to her, all because she had come out as a lesbian. She sees countless people turning their backs on her, and the few that hadn’t and only mattered for a short time. She realized a long time ago that if she wanted to be happy, she couldn’t live in this world freely loving who she pleased. Even though the one girl from so long ago still haunts her soul, she gives herself to her husband in an attempt to dispel one of the minorities that holds her back in the world.

At the corner a man with his fourth glass of some amber liquid sits. Depression has weighed his face down into wrinkles and lines carved from worry and pain. Misery is a veil over his eyes, so thick he can’t see past it at all. Wiry grey hairs sprout from his jaw and head, though the latter is ,ostlycovered by a dirty green cap. His tan coat is heavy on his thin shoulders, the pockets stuffed with odds and ends that get him through cold winter nights and lonely sunsets under a long bridge. As he looks through his own glass, all he can see is the fire that wrapped itself around his home, around his family, around his soul, until it burned everything away and left his spirit as nothing more than a smoldering pile of charred ash. Nothing more.

A few spaces away from him, appalled by his smell, is a lady with a tight bun and a thin face, carved from professionalism and business. Her black leather handbag is safely tucked next to her hip in the seat at the bar, her hand raised in an obligated gesture of cheer. Her lips are tight and her eyes are too busy trying to get ahead to see the life around her. All she sees are her failed parents and dead-beat siblings and the desire to rise above them and her status as a woman, all with power. If she can make it far enough in the world, maybe she can finally rid herself of the past that clings to her like a second skin, dry and flaking and itchy down to her core.

Two seats from her is a portly man, looking uncomfortable in his white collar and red tie, even though he wears these things every day to work and even around the house. He swipes a hand across the balding spot at the top of his head, sighing some of the sweat away as he casts his watery brown eyes up towards his own glass. He has a wife, 2.5 kids, dog, even a house with a white picket fence around the front. Yet he’s miserable. His wife is repulsed by his receding hairline and growing girth, her own body seemingly immune to the passage of time and the age that comes with it. She’s still beautiful with big lips and bigger blonde hair. There are a few more lines around her mouth and at the corners of her eyes, but she had aged much more gracefully than him. His 2.5 kids all think he’s a loser with nothing to offer them except a roof over their heads, food, and a college education once they get old enough. He’s not sure what brought him to the bar on this night, especially because the only things that reflect back at him from the bottom of a bottle are loneliness and dissatisfaction.

The last woman is sitting at the other corner, nursing seltzer water out of a tall glass. She feels hollow and empty inside; more like an echo of a person than anything else. Like the shadow of white on white. While it was cancer that stole all the things that made her a woman, it was her husband that stole her heart and then disappeared with it. Why be with a woman that can’t bear your children? he’d scathingly asked, then was gone. Gone with all of her insides, leaving her empty and alone.

One of the red lights above the bar winks at time, then the air is unfrozen. Most of the men polish off their drinks while the women politely sip theirs, then replace them on the bar. The two men sitting together on the far side glance at each other, and the brunette smiles a little.

“Some party, eh?”

“Some party,” the other grins, then tips his Guinness bottle back to drain it. He sets the empty glass on the bar with a hollow thunk, then sighs and looks back at the other. “You say you were in English with me?”

“Swear to God; you sat right next to me.”

“Sorry man, I have no idea who you are.”

The brunette shrugged, but inwardly felt just that much more alone. “I remember that black ponytail of yours. Whenever the teacher would call on you, she’d finger her short hair. It was funny.”

“Really?” He scrunched his face up, like it would help him remember, but nothing came to him. “I don’t remember that.”

“Swear to God.”

The woman beside them smiles cherry lips at their conversation, feeding off the loneliness the brunette’s emitting. She knows she can get him to love her by the end of the night; even by the end of the hour. He’s so desperate and she’s lapping it up like she’ll starve if she doesn’t. He’s so desperate and so perfect.

Across the bar, the lesbian with the husband eyes the other female, watching her leer at the scruffy brown-haired man. She’s so beautiful it makes her ache in places she tries to forget. She can tell that Cherry Lips is sneaky and deceitful, and that she’s never known Love’s touch- only Lust’s. She so wants to change that for her, show her that there’s a satisfaction with women that men can’t touch. She closes her eyes and grabs her husband’s hand, trying to push the thoughts out of her mind.

“Okay, sweetie?” he asks, concern laced through his voice. He kisses her temple and she nods.

“I’m fine. Just drank that too fast.”

He smiles lovingly, convinced he’s the luckiest man in the world. No other man would ever find such a beautiful and devoted woman like his wife. He loves her so much it hurts; hurts just enough to send dizzying endorphins to his brain to wipe out all the pain already there. He kisses her temple again, loving her unconditionally.

The homeless man at the corner of the bar tries his hardest not to watch the couple. He can remember the black man from one of his classes; probably Anthropology or Sociology- some random class. He looks the type.

He sighs as he glances around at the other faces at the bar, wondering if coming to the small class reunion was a good idea. The people who had hosted it, a beautiful Asian woman and her husband, had planned for a much bigger turnout. Disappointed in the handful of stragglers, they moved the party to a small Chinese bar, then disappeared somewhere. The grey-haired man studies each person, only recognizing about half. He remembers the uptight lady a few seats from him, though it took him awhile to place her face. She used to be a party-girl, and they had slept together a dozen or so times. In the end she had suddenly left without finishing her degree, and he had forgotten about her. He looks into the amber liquid at the bottom of his glass, marveling at how thirty years can completely change people.

Stop staring at me, the lady in the bun mentally wills the smelly homeless man a few feet from her. She doesn’t know who he is, but he had been gazing at her with those distant eyes of his since she walked through the door. She wouldn’t have even come to the reunion if it weren’t for the Asian lady’s husband, who she’s secretly sleeping with. He convinced her to attend, then just left. It infuriated her.

“Do you remember that guy?” Ponytail is asking the brunette, gesturing to the lonely white-collared man sitting with his own misery.

“Yeah. He was in my Business class. Smartest guy there, swear to God. Teacher thought he was going to be some kind of marketing genius.”

“Is he?”

“Hell, I don’t know. He doesn’t look it.”

“Doesn’t he?”

“Well if he were a marketing genius, he’d be rich right? He just looks gloomy.”

“Rich people can’t be depressed?”

The brunette blinks and glances over at him. “They don’t have any reason to be, do they? They have everything.”

“Maybe not everything that counts,” he muses, rubbing the mustache over his lip.

The other just looks skeptical.

The cancer lady stares solemnly at the bar, silently wondering which is worse; having nothing or having everything that counts for nothing. Which is lonelier?

Which is lonelier? Having flight and losing it or never having it to begin with?

Shadows or the absence of?

Sleeping soundly alone all your life or having insomnia while sharing a bed with the one you love?

Being alone in the middle of a crowd or being alone by yourself?

Drinking to forget or forgetting to forget?

A cracked mirror in the garbage or a beautiful mirror covered in layers of dust?

A short drive through the city or a long one through the country?

A million people in a small city or one person in a huge city? With all the buildings echoing back lonely cries and desperate tugs of hair.

Hearing the song of the world constantly or never hearing it at all?

Being with or being without? Which is lonelier?

Her androgynous frame bent over the bar, like there’s too much weight on her shoulders, she questions and dismays that she doesn’t know any of the answers. She feels like there’s nothing left for her anymore, not since everything was stolen from her. There’s nothing, making her feel like she’s nothing. As she stares at her seltzer water, she starts to wish that her cancer wasn’t in remission. That she hadn’t survived. That she would have died happy instead of lived miserably.

The portly man looks up, seeing a long Japanese sword hanging over the counter as decoration. It’s red like the lights, but all he can think about is blood. What would it feel like to drive that blade through his chest, into his heart? Or through his neck, stopping his breathing? He thinks about the gun he bought four months ago, thinks about how he’s been too cowardly to put it to use, thinks about unearthing it from the closet and getting in his car and driving to a remote place and dying alone. He thinks about driving home and leaving the car on as he shuts the garage, and can almost imagine the smog filling his lungs and turning them to ash. He thinks about stealing his diabetic kid’s insulin and shooting a bunch of it into his arm; a painless overdose that would turn him into a vegetable. He thinks about his death and how scared of it he is, to the point where he can’t do anything but live.

The man with the black ponytail watches the sad and lonely people gathered around the bar. The married man and Chinese barkeeper seem to be the only ones that know how to smile. He sits there and wonders why these unhappy people came to a reunion, since surely they knew they wouldn’t find happiness here.

But maybe they didn’t want to find happiness, he thinks suddenly, blinking his eyes at the red lights above the bar. Maybe they came to start over, to try differently this time.

The clock strikes eleven, or midnight, or one, but everyone suddenly decides that it’s time they go. They pay for their drinks and stand. Ponytail and the brunette man shake hands, but don’t exchange numbers or say they’ll keep in touch. Cherry Lips eyes the latter and follows him out the door as the homeless man trails after the lady in the tight, tight bun. The husband and wife hold hands and leave together. The portly man and cancer woman leave alone. The Chinese man is telling them thank you, have a good night, thank you very much.

And as they step out into the cool clear night, having neither gained nor lost anything, Chinese man calls after them, “Thank you! Goodbye! Have a nice night! Don’t let it rain on your heads!”