The characters in 'Paper Targets' are based on people I have known and stories I have heard. In late October 1979, The Turf Bar (which also housed Zimmorino's Pizza) on Main Street in Missoula, Montana, burnt down. I was homeless then and sleeping outside by the river when the sound of the fire sirens woke me before dawn. So I walked over and joined the sidewalk crowd and watched the fire grow and destroy most of a city block (now occupied by a parking garage). The fire was blamed on an oven that may have been left on. But I remember an odd, nervous man standing next to me, who kept mumbling, "This will show her. This will show her." And I kept seeing that man over the next few months, usually sitting by himself in Luke's or the Top Hat -- the rough bars that I also frequented. By then, I had spent enough time drifting and being on the street to recognize and avoid the dangerous and the haunted ones. But some of them found their way into my notebooks and my early stories. Here is one of those stories, which readers might recognize became part of 'Paper Targets.' - steve

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Boston Girl by Steve S. Saroff

© 2023 Steve S. Saroff

Lenn has callused hands, sun-faded laborers' clothes, and a face that is not handsome. Lenn is a quiet drunk. He shows up each day after work for the Happy Hour at the Top Hat, looking harmless and quiet. But he burns places down. He pours gasoline through broken windows of places where she danced.

Four years earlier, near his thirtieth birthday - a Springtime in Montana when the river's ice jams had let loose with their floods - he wasn't a drunk, and he wasn't dangerous. Fifteen years since any kind of permanence, Montana was just a place he was working at while on his way through things. The West, he had discovered, left him alone. Whether oil fields, ranches, or highway work, there were always places to stay for a month or a season where the rents were absurdly cheap and the rooms quiet. The fringes of boom towns were the best. Empty oil barrels and scrap lumber in fields next to the weekly-rent motels, and employers who paid with cash. This still goes on. All of this is very real. This story. These people. This sort of painful haunting.

She was a dancer. A ballerina from the Boston Ballet. Twenty-three years old, unmarked skin, a bachelor's degree in French literature, and a family with money. One morning that Spring, she missed the chartered flight that was taking the ballet to Seattle and ended up, instead, on a flight that went through Salt Lake City and Missoula. During the flight, she got drunk again. She had been drinking heavily for a few days, and in Missoula, believing that the plane had landed in Seattle, set got off. When she discovered her mistake, she took a cab to town, got a hotel room and called the dance director. He fired her, and she decided to stay where she was until her money ran out.

The next night, she walked into the Top Hat. It was a Friday, and the place was crowded. Lenn was sitting at the bar, drinking a beer, and she pushed next to him to order. After she got her drink, she leaned backward against the bar and watched the people who were dancing in front of the band. She arched her back and shook her head. Long, blond hair brushed against Lenn's face and poured over his arms. He watched her in the Bar's mirror. There was nothing he was going to say or do, but when she put down her empty glass, she saw him looking at her in the mirror. She met his stare in reflection, and she smiled. "Dance?" she asked, still looking at only his reflection. "Sure," he said.

Smokey, dim, the band was loud and fast. He kept up with her, and she liked that. She also liked how he didn't try to talk to her between songs, and she liked how his breathing was calm and even. They danced all night. Other men watched her - the men who were in the crowd near the end of the bar - well-groomed college boys with smooth faces and quick eyes. She saw them watching her. Their shirts and the way they stood reminded her of what the dance director looked like. The dance director and all the others she had let touch her - all the boys and men with their plans and schemes: sailboats on the Boston Harbor, write-ups in magazines, inheritance, and well-planned control. She stomped and spun wildly, nearly fell, threw her arms around Lenn's neck, kissed him suddenly, and, before he could respond, whispered in his ear, "Take me out of this place. Take me anywhere."

His room was in the Montagin apartments, and she was standing now, looking out the window over the river. The ice flows in the river crushed against each other as they moved, making, low, grinding noise. The ice in her glass of scotch made gentler sounds. The only light came from the window. She was naked and silhouetted, with her long hair down to her waist. Lenn was naked, too, lying on his back, watching her. Nothing had ever felt so good for him. Now, he just watched her and listened to the sounds of the ice.

"I like this," she said, "I like this place. I like the view." Then she put her drink down and lay next to Lenn, and fell asleep.

In the morning, he woke before her. He took the covers off her and looked at her in the light. There wasn't a flaw or a scar, and her legs were too exciting for him to look at without touching. She woke up then and laughed. "Your hands are rough," she said. Then she kissed him and wrapped herself about him, and Lenn didn't even try to understand why.

Sailboats in the harbor against a backdrop of crystal towers. One, two, three, four... nine boats. The water ferry slicing past every half hour, and the seagulls skimmed the wakes. She was telling him about Boston, pointing and counting what she was remembering. A week had gone by. Lenn had stopped going to his job. He spent all his time with her. He cooked her breakfasts - eggs and sausage and coffee- using the hot plate in his room. He'd wake her and get her to eat a bit. Always hung over, she would want a drink, too, and he would let her pour scotch into the coffee. He liked it too - the not caring because he had everything possible - he had more than what he had dreamed possible - and being drunk with her was something better than his dreams. She would rub his shoulders, touch his arms, and move her hands along his face. "You've been through a lot," she told him, "your hands and your face. Tell me stories, please, tell me anything." And he did. Stories about old cars and stories about highways. Thunderheads over the prairie at night and driving towards the flashing lightning. Stories about oil rigs in winter and how the ice had to be melted with steam from metal hoses. Stories about watching fights between men who would not hold back. And stories about being alone and waiting for something to change.

"Tell me about when you were a kid," she said.

But he just shrugged and said, "There's nothing there I want to talk about."

She hugged him then and said, "It's okay. Forget it. Forget it."

Dancing, dancing. Each night, they went to where there was music. Luke's, the Turf, the Top Hat - the Missoula bars that had bands then. She loved the crush of sound mixed with smoke in those places, and she liked the way Lenn never told her to stop. Each night, after the bars would close, they would stumble back to his room, and, no matter how drunk, have sex like they were still dancing, crushed and sweaty and desperate and perfect.

Then his money was gone, and her's ran out, too. He sold his car to pay rent, and when that money was spent, he got a job. "Don't leave me alone," she said. It was no longer Spring. The river was low and muddy. The rented room was hot and small. "I've no choice," he said.

Now, each night, he was tired. She needed to dance. He wanted to sleep. "In a few weeks, I'll quit," he told her. But now his hands were starting to bother her. "Your rough hands," she yelled, "put your rough hands someplace else."

And then she was gone. No explanation. No letter. Just him returning to his nearly empty room one evening and her things all missing. The earrings by the sink, the clothes in the closet. All gone.

That night, he found her in the Turf. She was dancing with another man, someone dressed in clean clothes. Lenn waited until the song was over and went up to her. She smiled at him when he told her he wanted to talk. "Sorry," she said, "there's nothing to discuss."

Lenn put his hand on her face and tried to talk, but the boy she was dancing with knocked Lenn's arm away and shouted at him, "She told you to leave her alone."

"This isn't a Western," Lenn said to the boy. "Stay out of this. This is between me and her." Then the band started to play again, and it was too loud to hear anything. She grabbed the boy, and they were dancing and spinning and moving into the densest part of the crowd. Lenn watched them for a while and then walked out of the bar, not knowing what to do, not knowing where to go, but knowing that this was terribly wrong.

For a while, he saw her in the bars, saw her dancing, but he didn't try to talk to her anymore. He didn't try to do anything, but he wanted her back. Every night, after work, he would go from place to place until he found where she would be dancing, and he would sit at that bar and drink and watch her until she saw him. Then she would leave, followed by whomever she was dancing with, which on most nights would be someone new, someone he had never noticed before.

For a few weeks, he thought that she would come back to him. He knew that some night soon, there would be a knock on his door, and it would be her. He kept an unopened bottle on his dresser. He kept two clean cups ready. But he was wrong.

And then she was gone from the bars, and Lenn did not know where she was. He didn't know if she had left town or not. It was winter then, and Missoula's air was thick and dirty. The sun was only a gray, dull ball low in the sky, and the river was frozen. Lenn went on the road, hitchhiking south, to be in places where he knew that she could not be: desert boom-towns so stark that he knew not to expect her, places he knew that she could never chance through. Places where he would not be hoping for an unexpected touch, an unexpected dream.

Now, these years later, Lenn is sitting in the Top Hat on a Wednesday evening. He's come back to be in the places where they were together, and none of it makes sense. A month ago, he burnt down Luke's on a Monday morning, before dawn, and was in bed sleeping - calmly sleeping - when the fire hoses were spraying the embers. A month before, he had done it to the Turf.

Tonight, in the Top Hat, he's staring at the dance floor. It's early, and the place is almost empty. Lenn is crying but crying so softly that no one sees or notices. He is seeing her again. She is spinning and smiling, her hair tangling in her arms, in his arms, in his hands. He sees her holding him as the song ends. She is pushing her face into his chest, breathing deeply, smelling him, and then saying, "Here's another one, another fast one." He is watching her reaching up with her whole body to kiss him. He sees her staggering just a bit, and he sees himself catching her, steadying her, and he sees her start to dance with him again. Then, the song is over, and he is just a drifter, someone coming to a strange town for work and a place to be, someone who has lost all his chances and is alone. He sees himself now - stoop-shouldered and suddenly old - watching her ghost dancing without him. Worse, she dances with another man while more wait in line for their chance. Lenn sees all this, and he stops crying, and he just wants to burn the place and leave it.

Lenn turns away from the empty dance floor, wipes his eyes, and asks the bartender for another drink. The bartender serves him and then says, "Bad news about the Luke's, huh? Who do you think is burning the bars?"

Lenn looks at the bartender and just shrugs. Lenn doesn't care, and he's not worried. He doesn't feel guilty. All he is thinking is how long it will be before this place, this last haunt of hers, is also too much for him to stand.

From the notebooks.

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Dear Reader, I truly hope some of the moods in my writing reach you. But, if you prefer to listen rather than read, many of these stories and writings are available on Spotify, iTunes, etc., as well as directly on the Montana Voice Podcast

And to readers who want more: the best way to encourage the publication of my next book is for my current books to receive more reviews. If you have read Paper Targets please consider leaving a review of it on Amazon. - Thank you!!!

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Most of the stories and essays beneath have been puplished elsewhere, but sometimes I post new work and move out old work.