The Bus to Sofia, Part 3

But first, some news. My essay "On My Shelves" has been published! See it here.

This, thinks Adrian, must be true love.

Her name is Natalie and he cannot help but stare at her. She is thin, olive skinned, and shy. Her eyes are dark and deep, her hair is pushed back and held within a scarf (she dresses somewhat like a hippie, with braided hair twinned in string and a peasant’s skirt and that tight tank top, worn without a bra — he can see the gentle poke of a nipple, here, and here), revealing the delicate curve of her neck, the tight purity of her jaw line. Beside Adrian, Simon is no doubt staring at her as well, thinking the same thoughts, ready to jump over the bar and be with her. Every so often they both whisper in unison Natalie under their breaths.

Natalie is the barmaid here, where Simon and Adrian ended up after having left the restaurant. They gawk at her and she sells them 4 leva rum-and-cokes (this much rum, this much coke, Adrian will later say when he recounts this evening, showing with fingers stretched like square brackets just how potent they were) and they drink them down, barely feeling their stomachs lurch and contortion. In French they comment to each other on her beauty and their admiration for her, in English they try to get her attention with questions and woo her with compliments, which must be given sparingly because she is humble and will run away like a shy doe if you overdo it.

There aren’t many people in the bar: two Australian men who are, apparently, retired from some kind of army work, and now live in Bulgaria during the summer; an old, alcoholic looking Bulgarian (“Watch out,” the Australians say. “He likes to dance with boys.”); a young couple, nationality unknown, making out in one of the dark corners.

The Canadians tease and taunt Natalie, gently. She blushes, smiles, embarrassed, and they fall even harder for her. Soon, a hairy, burly man enters the room and walks squarely right up to the bar (as if he owns the place, thinks Adrian), sits down. Natalie frowns seriously and becomes very agitated. She walks over to the burly man, bends over the bar to listen to something he has to say (giving Simon and Adrian a nice view of her lithe butt). As he whispers something in her ear, the man stares straight at the Canadians, who turn away, feeling their hearts sink deep into their chests.

One of the Australian guys comes up to them. He has a tribal tattoo snaking his way up from his elbow into the sleeve of his t-shirt.

“Hey, listen up boys. I’ve seen the way you’ve been looking at the barmaid. How you’ve acted around her. I know what you’re thinking, I know you feel like your something ‘cause your young and you’re not home and you don’t give shit, but you start behaving. That man there, he owns this place. You don’t give the barmaid any kind of suggestive look or say anything inappropriate to her while he is in here or you will end up in some serious Bulgarian shit, and that is something you do not want to be in. You get what I’m saying?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

The guys cool it after this. They are watched carefully by the bar owner. Natalie has become even more polite and distant — she takes orders and makes drinks and smiles icily. They talk to each other, Simon has a plethora of travel stories which get more bawdy as they both get drunker. They talk to the Australian guys, they get somewhat pissed at the ugly Bulgarian man who likes boys — around midnight he leaves the bar. Meanwhile Natalie, when not bartending, is spending time with the owner. One time he calls her over on his side. She slips across the opening in the bar and stands by him and he grabs her by the waist, whispers things in her ear with a dirty smile, sit her on his lap like a strange woman-child. She responds to all this with a polite, emotionless smile. Her eyes are black as coal.

The Sweedish guys from the hostel drop by for a short time. They spend most of it standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, discussing whether to stay or to leave. Finally they each buy a beer and sip it silently. Simon, by this time, is staring dreamily at Natalie again, Adrian attempts small talk with the Swedes. It turns out when football was over they went out for drinks at another bar, where they met American girls who left early, for another the bar. “We are looking for American pussy,” one of the Swedes says, smiling benignly. Then the American girls left, supposedly for another bar. Confused, the Swedes ran out after them, bar-hoped around town, and never found them. “This is the last bar. The American chicks are nowhere.” Adrian speaks a few understanding words on the unreliability of hot American girls. The Swedes finish their beers, nodding gravely, and head back to the hostel.

*

“Do you smoke?”

“No,” Adrian answers automatically. He has been so aware of his status as a non-smoker in this country, where it seems to cheapness of cigarettes makes even non-smokers smoke, just because.

Natalie’s eyes glow intensely, forcing him to reconsider, to weigh her words. She came suddenly to them, intently, straight from the groping hands of the bar owner — as if sent by him — who looks at them, now, with an amused smile.

“Well,” adds Simon. “We don’t smoke cigarettes. But we smoke, you know… Other things.”

Natalie nods seriously.

“Follow me,” she says.

She leads them out of the bar through the back door, where there is a kind of terrace overlooking the valley. The night is balmy and illuminated by the full moon, which filters everything — the terrace, the valley, Natalie’s olive skin — in an otherworldly, silver hue.

Natalie produces a fat little joint, which she sticks into her mouth and lights, sucking delicately. Thick, luminescent smoke sifts out of her mouth and the lit tip of the joint, pulsating red hot with every intoxicating inhalation, swirls around her face, shrouding her features like a ghost lost in mist, memories. The peppery smoke drifts in long tendrils and clears up, dissipating clouds through which the joint is passed carefully, like a holy torch through some stormy chasm. Some bond wrought, some youthful ritual completed, some tentative feelings of communal belonging cemented in the herbal air — like sex, but deeper, harder even to grasp in its intricate potentiality —, some signals to the gods lie in these fumy blooms blown at the clear night sky, and the Gods answer the summons and come to dwell there, among them now.