It was a Wednesday night at the Blue Rider, same as always. The four of us sat around our usual table, in the corner nearest the door. I was finishing my second glass of Pabst, eyes wandering around the room while Karin and Michelle kept a heated conversation about something, or perhaps nothing in particular. See, Phil is seeing Michelle and Karin sees absolutely nothing in me at all, so at these weekly functions I play a supportive fourth round the table. Usually this has me listening in to the iambic pentameter of the talk, throwing in the appropriate exclamations when needed. We’ve settled so well into the Blue because the conversations seem to run more smoothly when I’ve got something to look at, and the Blue Rider is the most spackle-laden bar of them all. Not your typical Applebees stuff, what with the frames and polish and cornballishness. No, the Blue has a bizarre, borderline-troubling Steadman air to its décor, a truly loathsome collection of local art that covers every orifice save one.
It was the save one that had caught my eye this evening, having more or less milked the last from the zombie John Wayne portrait, or the double-vaginaed phoenix perched over the doorway. Opposite the bar about chest level between the three-part lithograph of the shitting stickman and the hunting picture where even the deer is wearing aviators, a good sized two-by-three foot swath of wall lay bare. At an appropriate lull in the conversation I brought my empty pint to the bar and summoned Kenny, an easy feat as it was fairly dead that night. Unlike the stuff on the walls, there was nothing even slightly interesting about Kenny. Just your run-of-the-mill, middle-aged, middle-set, Scandinavian-looking barman.
“Another Pabst,” I tell him, pulling three dollars from my wallet. As he’s doling it out from the tap I venture to ask him, “So what’s with the blank spot on the wall over there?”
“Actually,” he says with a grin, “it’s an interesting story, there.” He hands me my glass and palms my cash, and I take a stool at the counter. “See, we used to have a velvet Elvis there. It’d been up for ages, decades maybe. Might’ve even been the first picture in the bar, but that’s neither here or there. When I was a young man, still at the college, I started work here.” {Not to break from the narrative, but it was a stretch to imagine Kenny was ever a ‘young man,’ ‘in college’ notwithstanding.} “Well we used to have an old jukebox over by the door, where you guys’ table is now. There’s never been a lot of space for dancing, but from time to time someone’d make do. Well one night it was pretty slow in here, a Tuesday say. There’s this gal Betty – Big Betty we called her, for obvious reasons – and she hits the jukes and starts dancing with her man.”
“What was his name?” I asked with instant, stupefying regret; I don't normally interrupt stories.
“Can’t remember, actually. Prolly another Big-something; all of Betty’s guys were pretty big. But they were dancing that Checkers number, ‘the Twist.’ And God if that isn’t a story in itself! Big Betty doing trunk twists in public… So they’re twisting around in the bar, and suddenly our waitress Sylvia lets loose a scream. It was horrible, nearly dropped the glass I was wiping. She swears up and down that Betty’d gone and changed into Aretha Franklin for a bit, but it’d stopped when she quit twisting. Understandably, we couldn’t quite believe her. Betty hadn’t felt a thing, and you couldn’t blame her man and I for not watching. Eventually Sylvia went off home to get some rest, it being a slow night and all. And Betty gets back to twisting. Truth be told, I’ve never really seen her dance much else. But then, by Christ, sure enough if she doesn’t turn into Aretha Franklin right there before my eyes, skin hair and all!
“‘Betty!’ I said, ‘You’ve turned black!’ And no sooner does she stop dancing but she turns back. Course, this time her guy saw it too. We had an awful time trying to make sense of it. Seems it only happened when she would dance in front of the Elvis, and then only if she twisted. And you know, then I gave it a try and – hell! – I turned into a twisting Aretha Franklin too! It was the craziest thing, but kind of wonderful all the same.” And Kenny got this soft look in his eye as he gazed silently over at the blank spot on the wall. “Of course, it was fun was all. Betty’s guy tried it, then Big Betty again. Twist and turn into Aretha and stop and turn back again. Like magic. Within the week, the place was wall-to-wall and lined out the door with people wanting to give it a try. Mr. Rasmussen, the owner, decided to start charging a dancing fee. People still tried, but they were none too happy about it any. And for a while, the boss was thinking about changing the name of the place to something like Aretha’s or the Dancing Elvis. But then old Horst Keeler got stuck, and we had to take the picture down.”
“What do you mean, ‘stuck’?” I asked, completely amazed at the story. I’d always wanted to be Aretha Franklin for a day, but had never known such things were possible.
“Well, I mean he didn’t change back. He stopped a-twisting, but Ms. Franklin stayed in the room, only with Horst Keeler’s voice. Might’ve lost the place over litigation if he hadn’t caught ill and died over the shock of it. Yep, it was a bit of a buzz kill. Nobody’d go near it, and even if they would, Mr. Rasmussen wouldn’t let them, for fear of it happening again. So he took the painting down, and that was the end of it.”
“Jesus,” I exclaimed, “but what happened to the painting? And how come nobody’s ever mentioned this story before?”
Kenny just laughed, “Nobody knows what’s become of it, and most everybody’s gotten sick of hearing it. You were just the first person to ask about the spot on the wall. Was kind of nice, telling it again. I’d almost forgotten.”
“Well good story, Kenny. Best one I’d heard all day.” And slipping an extra dollar onto the counter, I brought my untouched beer back to the corner table and settled back into group iambics.
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