Friday night is just not the same at my usual place. At twenty after ten, it's a stag party there, with the ladies in charge having locked up and gone. Eventually we all leave the deck and go our separate ways, but I find myself reluctant to call the evening quits.

After disposing of a half-full open container, and driving a route less than completely direct, I throw the car in park in the lot of a padlocked bank. The local high-school football crowd is there but preparing to disperse, circled punching buttons on cell phones, and I find myself glad that they're leaving. I'll have the quiet that I crave, I think, and I'm happy as I cross the street and enter the bar.

It's still busier than I'd guessed: this must be their big night. I count the room as I survey it for a seat. Six to one against me, far more boys than girls, I note as my forearms come to rest on the bar. Nice to see the situation's covered; I don't need no interaction. I check the baseball on the television while I get my beer - seventh inning, home team up by five. I decide it'll do for a backdrop, and go settle in to my selected seat. I need to ruminate, clear of everything, and have no better place.

The junk relievers pitch the ballgame, and I watch the outs go by. Reviewing in my mind the week, the year. Think of friends with whom I've drank there, and how they're doing now. How I wish I could see my way clear...

I want to call them, summon them all, and demand they tell me they're OK. I hold back that impulse, as I know my current frame of mind would simply turn them into tragic verse of some kind, and help them not at all. It's hard to walk away from them, though... Midweek, three friends had sought me, one by email, two eye-to-eye in ways that would break your heart. All told me they were hurting, quite directly or quite obscurely. (I hadn't heard at all from the one who might have bled to death.)

Not every new thing is marvelous right from the start, and some are feeling that. Not even the old things can always manage to comfort, and that's being felt as well. I'd spent days wanting to lift all the crushing parts of their worlds, unpin them, let them scamper free... but of course it's not given to me to do that.

It's an insubstantial feeling, knowing you have friends with troubles you can't touch. I expect to be too ghostly to lift my bottle, but am pleased to find imbibing works just fine.

I consider all these friends, each one separately, as I get outside my beer. I breathe a breath for each one, hoping their own were coming easier, and wishing, each one separately, they were there. I'd tell them each a thing they should recall, that might help them to be where they are. Well, hell, I think I would anyway. I've not knocked home a whole lot of runs in that situation just lately, though it's been coming up rather a lot.

I watch a replay of the fattest pitch I've seen in a while, the kind only thrown in games already won. I admire the dispatch with which it's sent over the fence - good to see somebody driving in runs. I have to lean a bit to see around the swarm greeting new arrivals. At least the ratio of the room assured me I'd not have to take much notice.

The new ladies rather quickly moved to the bar, taking their admirers with them, to greet the unsteady lady who'd obviously been there longest. All of them, like me, are of an age to be thoroughly adult, but they seem, like me, to be taking a night away from the worst of that. It's all I can do to not toast in their direction, and I'm glad that I took some notice.

I resume watching the tube, my view again unimpeded. I twirl my beer bottle along the tabletop, hoping to condense a ring of an interesting shape. No such luck, but contentment grows as the game proceeds. Home runs start rallies, a serious one this time, and the home team responds, bearing down to try to keep the lead. Suddenly we had ourselves a ballgame.

No matter what's going on, you can't sit behind an empty bottle for long. I shoulder up to the bar again, and count my change with one eye on the screen. The change-counting eye shifts to that little group of ladies as I head back to my seat, and my heart warms a little more to see them. They've found friends, or made them, in this roomful of favorable numbers, and they're getting gentlemanly attention in a way they no doubt deserve. The general roar keeps their conversation from reasching me, but the body language is clear. No person moves alone in that group, every shift of a shoulder gets an adjustment to match. I'm charmed to observe it, even sitting separate and semitransparent. It gives me faith that good things are always happening, and occupies my wandering eyes as I wait out a pitching change.

The new pitcher gives up the hit that puts the visitors in the lead, though he'd fought the batter bravely and nearly won. The game's reversal was unlikely, but that's how I like them best, and I settle back to see if it would hold.

I have a sudden love for this mostly dingy place, with all its evidence that things go well. I'm content to sip in silence, and to float as a wisp of drunkenness through the rest of this, my night. Happy birthday to me.

My view's again obscured, as the game moves towards the ninth. This results from some gentleman bastard putting money in the jukebox. It's just a shotgun bar, twelve feet wide at the door and however many feet back to the john, so when a lady wants to dance, there's not much space. I've always been impressed with the music selection available, and someone's decided to start some movement up.

The girl I lean around is the lady who's been there longest. She's clearly a few drinks past thoughts of dancing form. It tickles me to see her having such a splendid time, and I think I must be grinning as I shift to see around. At least, she notices something, and her head turns toward me, and her footwork shifts to let her shoulders follow. If I drop my eyes, I miss pitches, but it's suddenly tricky to keep track anyway. I find the condensation on my table has yet to signal any message of substance.

My eyes go next to her dancing partner; he's owed the disclaiming look. I am not hunting in this place, and seek no license - he should know. A glance confirms he needs no reassurance. He's just dancing with himself, not particularly noticing his partner - he's only standing out there so his friend doesn't have to be alone. It's a reassurance for me - good to know that someone's out there being Safe Friend Man, even with me taking this Friday off. I raise my beer toward him as I settle farther into my seat. To that, he seems oblivious as well.

I return to watching baseball, and a bit of dancing woman, and the combination makes the beer taste sweet. For two songs, and half an inning, she really tears it up, to the extent remaining motor skills allow. The finest thing about it is the way I'm uninvolved: insubstantial is no drawback on this street. I can drift along the rhythms with no debt to drag me back, and that's something I can cherish just for now...

It stops, not sudden, just falling apart. Jukebox returns to withholding, inning yields to commercial. The game is still in doubt, and I still have beer to drink. I am loathe to relinquish the rhythm. Somewhat pre-regretting, I act.

I seek the older songs once my cash is in the slot, songs that she would like if she liked the ones before. I choose two songs in that way, not telling anyone just what they are and why, and burn the third on the memory that leapt out at me as I scan the titles. As I walk back to my seat, she's gripping Safe Friend Man by the forearm, with her back to me. I grin to him and shrug, to give him something to report.

It's halfway through the first song before she gets him up and dancing. I find I'm pleased to have my scenery back again, though I'm mostly lost in the moves and countermoves of the baseball teams. I let her fade into the background, although I smile to hear her shout the lyrics to the second song that's played. I can feel the smile tightening a bit on the third song, but that's not entirely unexpected. She comes to a stop and collects herself - my old memories are not often danceable.

I spend so much time selling sheepdog, sometimes I forget I'm still a wolf. It comes as a surprise that she steps over - it pops me out of the maudlin memory I'd played. She leans heavily on my table, almost disturbing my cherished patterns of condensation, and extends the manicured hand of introduction. My right hand shakes hers with enthusiasm, as I realize my left is out of her sight. She gives me a name matching that of two other ladies I'd often smiled at in that neighborhood, though both have been out-of-state for months or years. Her name harmonizes distractingly well with the memory I'd been indulging in, so much so that I neglect to take note of the name I give in return. (I'm not being anyone in particular at that moment, and that makes introductions more complex than you'd guess.)

She thanks me for that second song, and slurs straight into telling me the story of why she finds it so memorable. She leans in like the Ancient Mariner on a bender, unsteady arm on my unsteady table, one hand free to make gestures. It seems that before her many-years-ago divorce, her pro football player husband drove his convertible home shortly after dawn. He stopped it right out front, with the top down and stereo blasting that song on a loop, and promptly passed out drunk in the driver's seat. She said it was left to her to come out of the house amid the neighborhood's early morning routine to remedy the situation.

My favorite part of it is how she howls "why can't ya be true" at appropriate points in the retelling, to emphasize the awfulness of walking out to that street to that song under the eyes of women more domestic.

Instantly, she's in the top three best introductory bar stories ever. Info about marital status, her familiarity with big bad men, and the ways she won't be treated anymore. Short but excellent plotline, tied neatly to the song I myself had chosen. I accept it all as completely true, because even if it's a lie... well, it's wonderful. I briefly feel regret to be unable on that day to provide her with rewards of any substance.

I tell her I'm glad to have played a song that meant something to her, though I'm sad about exactly what it meant. I leave a congenial silence at the point where I'm supposed to ask her to sit down, and it stretches an extra moment or two before she realizes it's time to unlean. We finish polite and appreciative and do our returns, she to her man at the bar, I to my beer and the bottom of the ninth.

My eyes stay on the tube as the visitors get the outs, timing my beer to finish during the team congratulation ritual at the end. The rally did hold up and actually got them something, and I thought again of how reassuring it was to see that still going on in the world. As I rise from my seat, departing, I make a decision.

She's rapt in conversation with Safe Friend Man as I walk past her toward the door. Calling her by name over the general bar noise as I pass, I wish her a good evening and toss her a final smile. Her eyes go to me, surprised, and midsentence she stands and walks to me, smiling. I'm still a bit amazed that she can see me, but the night is renewing my belief in my tangibility, and my faith that some things can go well.

She says just a simple "Goodbye" and then raises her arms to be hugged. The surprise of it charms me to action. I widen my smile, shifting my right foot between hers as they go tiptoe. Fingertips seek the muscles of her back, left hand visible only to her friend behind her, who may need to make one final report. (Sorry, guy - usually it's me left sitting in the middle of a sentence - I just happen to be taking the night off.)

I squeeze her just a moment, wrapping her around, turning my right thigh into the pillar that holds us both. Solid at last. We let go and pull back in tight rhythm, smiles even wider than before. I assure her again that she's good to meet, then two steps to the door and I'm gone. I'm fairly sure she hasn't yet moved when my feet hit the sidewalk and I inhale a night quite improved.

In the morning, she'll think that she dreamed me - and for all that I know, she did.