About the Scars

“Don’t you need some?” said Tara, bending to adjust one of her pumps. 

I was okay. Just some old pockmarks. “Nah.”

“Wait in the alley then,” she joked.

A beat-up door confronted us in the weak light. Tara looked confident. Her pumps, dress and nails blended with the weathered bricks, a warm red mural.

“I’ll come in.”

Tara smiled. Sometimes I really did wait outside. 

The booze in the club was terribly tempting.

“That dim bulb,” I said, nodding at the fixture above the door. Never replaced.

“You’re a dim bulb,” said Tara.

“Ha. Are you going to dance?” I asked.

“A little.”

A thumping pulse seeped through the door. Inside, the bouncer was stamping hands. His black shirt blended into the dark, his head bobbing, disembodied. On the dance floor, laser red lights lapped over flesh. 

Like the accident scene, I thought.

Tara limped toward the bar. She had stayed with me after the crash. We’d both been drinking, but I was driving. Took a left turn too fast and slammed into a parked car. I walked away. Tara didn’t.

The first time we came to the club, I thought she was doing a kind of tarantula dance, burning out the poison. But it was about the scars.

“How many times is this?” I asked.

Tara held out my Roy Rogers. “I dunno. Four? Do you think it’s helping?”

I glanced down. “Maybe. Tell me again?”

“Your cells soak up the light. The mitochondria are, like, re-energized.”

“Well,” I urged, “Go for it.”

Tara’s Red Light Therapy. Lights were strobing off the dancers. She moved onto the floor, all scarlet stripes and silver flashes. A web of lights enveloped the dancers, and touched the edge of the surrounding darkness, yet barely reached my perch.

I sipped my cola, guilt burning inside. I could almost make out the scars when Tara flexed her mottled calf. I willed the marks to fade, but my optimism drifted. I spied the bouncer in the open doorway. He was rubbing his thumb over the stark badge of an old fight etched on his jaw. Maybe he was just too far from the lights.

Tara kept on dancing.