Knox, the artist, sitting at the far end of the bar at The Last Mile Lounge (it’s his usual perch), drinking coffee for a change — bad coffee, he’d say — feels a breeze at his back. The side door has flung open. A breeze alright, a spring chill. More like a wind has blown the door open on the screen door. Deano, the bartender, goes to close it.
“No,” says Knox. ” Leave it.” He’s turned on his stool, hands on his knees. “The sun is out. It’s spring. “
The wind won’t last, I’m thinking. Meanwhile, the open door has shed some light in the dark lounge.
There’s no such thing as May wind, one would think –not usually. You think of April as windy. But here’s a May wind. And I’m thinking: let’s just enjoy it, just as Knox is thinking…it probably the only wind out there. Knox seems to read my thoughts. He says, “it’s probably already blowing out to sea. Farewell, May wind.”
Everybody thought about that. Goodbye to a fortuitous wind, shedding light, stirring spring sensibilities. Not an ill-wind, far from it.
“It’s coming in the middle of things, too” Knox says. He meant the middle of the month. Indeed! It was May fifteenth.
“This isn’t just any month,” says Knox. “It’s the month of May.”
Somehow, we all knew what he meant — about May. He turns on his stool to look at us all.
“I’m thinking and seeing visions, my friends, and I’m seeing Spring….Spring flowers — girls. Why, I knew a girl who was born on this date. May Fifteen. The exact beautiful middle of the month. Beautiful girl, too.”
He sang then.. (Yes, Knox sings occasionally, a nice tenor):
Beautiful girls….
Walk a little slower ….when you walk by me
Lingering sunsets…
Stay a little longer with the lon–ely sea…
Knox, absent any further lyrics he could recall from that number, settled into a little barroom oration….
“Frank Sinatra died on this date,too,” Knox said. “He sang that song from time to time — a song for somebody approaching the prime of their lives, or just past it. A time when you want to savor life….In fact, I heard Sinatra do it in Vegas, and it begins, the prologue of the song, anyway…”as I approach the prime of my life…” He wasn’t in great voice that night. He was well past his prime. “
I didn’t know Knox was such a Sinatra fan. I thought he went for opera. But our Sinatra moment was dying out, along with the wind. Then, ole blue eyes got a reprieve. Not many people at the Mile, middle of a Friday on a May afternoon (a few weekenders would come in after five) — but some guy got up, a guy nobody knew, dug down deep for a quarter and played ole Sinatra on the juke box. Frank was soon singing something that made it feel like spring was giving way to summer. I’ve heard so much Sinatra in my life, all those love songs run together. But it was good, just flowing out at us, that melody, those lyrics and melody that, believe it or not, I can’t recall.
“Too bad he never cut a song called “Spring Wind,” somebody said. For when the spring wind, comes blowin’ in from across Revere Beach…”
“Blowing candy wrappers, cigarette butts,pigeon feathers” somebody said, “right off the beach, right into my backyard. Beautiful!”
That was another guy, sitting by the door over his burger and beer. He was done eating, just sitting, thinking, obviously, thinking in real terms about real life. Who needs to think about real life in spring if you can avoid it? I didn’t know the guy. That’s when I realized we were all guys that afternoon –and, except for Deano and Knox and me — all strangers.
“Whatever,” came a voice. ” Wind like that, this time of the year, blows in memories,too, along with all the city junk.” This came from some guy by the other side door. That door was open. You could see out onto the sidestreet. From the way the new leaves on the few old trees out there were fluttering in the muted sunlight, I’d say that guy was feeling a wind at his back, too. Feeling that Spring Wind.
“That’s my thought,” he said, sitting over a glass of red wine. (I’ve got to like a guy who stops into a corner joint in the middle of the day just for a glass of wine. He must have been having memories.
“Don’t we always wish it would stay May?” I said. I was glad at that moment I’d stopped into The Mile. It was a good time and a good place to be having thoughts like that, which must have been what the guy with the wine was thinking.
And it was just about at that moment, that the whole mood and the memories shifted from wind to women — or girls. It started when Deano put a question to Knox.
“How old is that girl now?” Deano asked him, referring to the girl he’d known whose birthday it was. “Are they still — alive?”
“Don’t know,” Knox said. “She was nineteen when I knew her. She’d be seventy-seven now. Can’t picture that. She was lovely. Hope she’s still beautiful.”
“Depends on how you define beauty,” Deano said.
“She wasn’t your Maltese hairdresser, was she?” I asked. (Knox, as you may know, had told us this story of a Maltese hairdresser who broke his heart. He’d painted her portrait and it hung now on the corridor wall leading to the toilets. It’s still there, all marked up in antic ways.
“No,” Knox said. “No, this was another girl. Fresher. My girlfriend for a while.”
I guess Knox always had lots of girls on his mind, and, on this May day, lots of memories, but just one girl. He looked like he was seeing this one girl, this one old girlfriend, and he was going to paint her as soon as he got back upstairs in his studio — from his May memory.
“This one girl in particular, I dated for most of a year, Knox said, breaking the silence. “We met…. at The Festival.”
And that was the moment visions seemed to begin circulating like a floral aroma mingling with the odor of stale beer.
Everybody — there were maybe seven of us in the Mile — wondered, what festival Knox had in mind. Knox was well-traveled. It could have been anywhere in Europe, even eastern Europe, North Africa, Asia, anywher in the U.S.. But nobody asked. Yes, it was strange, but nobody asked — yet I’ll bet we all could see a festival somewhere in the world at that hour, ferris wheels turning, lights strung across the darkness, happily milling crowds wandering in an out of booths full of figurines or fruit in May sunlight — a festival going on somewhere in the world where it was night and moonlight — some festival in all our lives.
Just imagine seven guys with memories of a festival — with memories of a girl, one girl at that festival. Like Mangan’s daughter at the festival in Araby.
“We had a beautiful time at The Festival,” Knox said.
It was 2:01 p.m.. May 15, 2026 The middle of a spring month in the middle of our lives. There wasn’t a guy in the room under forty.
A roomful of silent middle-aged drinkers and dreamers after Sinatra has stopped singing — dreaming of a girl.
A girl like a vision, inside a vision of a Festival.
And music, we heard music, too. Not Sinatra, just music. Because another wind swept up the sidestreet and into both doors and like some Towar of Babel of music, each guy was hearing his own tune in this time in his life….
Or maybe no one heard it but me, though everybody seemed to be listening.
19 Cent Notebook 