Once in a Blue Moon

Today I received another bid for the Blue Moon, or what's left of it.

That makes it sound like someone comes in here

every day asking to buy the site and knock the shell of that old bar

to the ground, but it's not the case. Hell, I can count on my thumbs

the number of inquiries I've had about that place over the last ten

years from businessmen looking to build something in its place that

nobody wants or needs: another roadside restaurant that won't last

because it'll just do the same old food as the places nearby, except

it won't do it as well; an office development that will never be more

than half-occupied because all the other office developments are half-

empty already, and are likely to be three-quarters empty before the

economy bottoms out; or a strip mall with a charity store as the

anchor tenant, like that's going to make the lights of the Maine Mall

look dim.

Nobody ever suggests building another bar in its place

even though its hard not to make money on a bar. The history of the

Blue Moon is still too recent for that, and anybody who decided to

knock down those walls and start afresh would find that certain

memories can't be erased simply by getting rid of any physical traces

of them that might remain. It's not just people that become ghosts:

old places, dead places, they haunt the new as well. It might be

that you'd knock down the Moon and put up a nice new bar in its

place, with clean floors, and shiny taps, and one of those fancy

modern jukeboxes that don't even have records inside.

It might even be that it would seem like you'd put the memory of the

Moon to rest for a time, and you'd be wrong: people would come by, but not as many

as you'd hoped; that new smell would start to fade, and instead you'd

catch the stink of stale beer, and rancid grease, and the sweat of

old rummies. The beer would start to taste bad, and the jukebox,

well, the jukebox would start to play music that wasn't even on its

fancy database, music from a decade before, music from the night that

Sally Cleaver died. And you'd wonder how that could be, even as

those who didn't know what had happened here in the past would drift

away, until eventually there'd just be you and a bartender that you

didn't need.

And maybe you'd step out into the parking lot at the back to have a

cigarette and wonder at how you could have come to make such a

mistake, and there'd be a big bright moon high in the sky, and it

would shine on a puddle beside you even though it hadn't rained in a

month, and you'd look down and the puddle would be red, red like

blood, and you'd see yourself reflected, yourself and someone else: a

girl, a girl with a ruined face. The ghost of Sally Cleaver would

reach out and touch your face, and you'd feel all of her pain, and

all of her rage.

And then you'd know just how big a mistake you'd made.

It's late, and these are just an old man's ramblings. I

should have said yes to the offer. I should have let the place go.

But I can't.

I can't, because Sally Cleaver won't let me.