The jazz had a greasiness to it that made it all the smoother. The notes slithered out arrogantly, there was an oiliness in the music that made it swirl with colour. It collected at tables, on ashtrays, around glasses. The place was rank with it. There was no breeze, the only things moving around the room were dejection and desperation, and the dirty haired, smudged barmaid with jejune eyes. She stepped over puddles of music, shuffling from shadow to shadow, she served you bitter coffee. Black and bitter. Just like the eyes of the hunched figure in the corner of the room. Eyes that were closed, so that the only place his soul could escape from was his mouth. It whispered on his lips, mixing with the brandy on his breath and the cancer in his lungs to ooze into his saxophone where he forced out the sadness, darkness and hopelessness that roiled and swirled in the mottled green and tarnished gold of the instrument’s brass belly.
Sluggish worms of grey smoke undulated from the badly rolled cigarettes held between the silent fingers of their vacant owners. Climbing past waiting faces the smoke disappeared into the thick collected darkness that occupied the top half of the room. A room filled with the emptiness of its occupants.