We think you're great

Fred, that was the name of the man on the stool. The bar, its somewhat cold surface holding his arms, stood beneath his chin which was lowered only a bit, but quite enough for his purposes. Covering his slick, jet hair was a navy fedora that matched his common fabric suit, only his shoes and their scuffed black standing out.
The man's eyes were hollow as well as their stair, pouring themselves into the dry martini which he held between his fingers and swirled gingerly upon the table top. This was all of the man which moved, save for his chest, shifting only slightly in front of his slow yet shallow breaths.
In the stale air, the subtle jingle of the piano player's craft drifted like the silk ash strands of cigarette smoke which sometimes shone silver beneath the room's few low lit lights. Fred put down his soupy tonic and took out a smoke from his shirt pocket, lit it with a match, and puffed its burning sweetness, the cloud of his exhale seeming to carry his heavy brooding. That's when she appeared.
Her feet had always been light, at least her step that is. None could really hear her when she walked, even with the moderately tall heels which she wore nearly always. Fred could always hear her though.
"I haven't seen you in a while," the man said, not sparing even a glance towards the dark woman
She was of a slender sort, carrying on her frame a black, sleeveless dress. Her head carried a wide brimmed hat from which red hair fell straight until it met the bottom of her neck where it curled upwards like a falling night wind which had just reached the ground. In her hand was a long, tiffany cigarette holder, its tip sending thin strands of smoke scented like incense.
"I'm like a bad habit Fred," she replied in a voice as deep and smooth as the vapors from her cigarette. "And you'll never drop me I'm afraid." She turned her green eyes towards him and asked, "Do you still have your…condition?"
"It's ironic that you should ask that Oliva," he answered, dropping a long stick of ash into the glass tray between them.
"Our acquaintance has always been a great irony," said the woman with a brief smile. "Is she here?"
"She's sitting on your shoulder."
There, sitting with her legs crossed atop that shoulder was a little pixie with brown curls, dressed nearly the exact same way as Oliva. Her name was Hailey Trinket.
"Gee Freddy, you just can't put her down, can you?" she said in a high, nearly childish voice which passed between her smiling lips.
"I thought you didn't like this place Hailey," the man replied.
"It's growing on me," she answered with a giggle. "Besides, you'll need me once this is over darling."
Fred brushed her remarks aside which he was quite used to doing at moments like these.
"Danny," he said, beckoning the bartender.
"What do you need Fred," answered the man, slightly gruff yet kindly in a thuggish sort of way.
"A drink for the lady."
The barkeep glanced at the place where Oliva sat and then asked, "What is she having."
"Scotch," he replied.
Fred always ordered for the girl. It was sort of the nature of their relationship.
"Well, at least my condition has kept me out of the war," continued the man with a rare and quick grin. "Seems like Franklin D. doesn't care for my type much."
"I've heard you've been a regular Rosy the Riveter lately?" commented Oliva.
"Ah, it's a living," Fred responded. "Heaven knows you're not cut out for that kind of work."
"By nature," she said.
"Boy you can sure be a dumb-dumb sometimes Freddy," declared Hailey, her mouth laughing behind her soft hand.
"Can it imp," commanded Fred with a dispassionate tone.
Oliva knew that he wasn't talking to her. He never called her imp.
"Why don't I buy the drinks this time Fred," Oliva offered. "You always get the tab, it's really not fair."
The man smiled a bit and then said, "Nah, the last time you bought the drinks, I ended up spending the night in the pin."
Fred dropped his smile then and hunkered down over the bar, his drink, now empty, sitting directly beneath his neck.
"Why did you have to come back?" he asked with a tormented anger.
Oliva took a hard swig of her scotch and replied, "I don't know. Revisiting old times I guess."
"Revisiting old times huh?" said Fred with a dry breath of resentment. "Revisiting means going back Oliva, and there ain't no way to do that. All you're doing is digging my heart out with a cold knife."
"Why can't we go back Fred?" asked the girl, now with an aching in her cry. "Look at us. Look at who I am. How could you say that it's impossible?"
Fred drew in a deep draught, held it, and then released.
"It's not that Oliva," he answered. "The truth is that you don't really want to go back. You got lonely and you want your quick fix. You still think I'm easy, well you're wrong."
"Ooh, sock it to her big man!" shouted Hailey, waving her fist.
"You're a fool Fred! You can have me, all of me!" she yelled. "I left for your own good. Everything about us was a tragedy. It can't be anything else. But I don't care anymore and I know that you don't either! Lose yourself in me Fred. We don't have to come back! We can stay lost forever!"
The man, his face giving little heed, if even that, to the fervent agony of the pleading woman, stood to his feet, threw a few dollars on the bar and said, "You're lying to yourself Oliva."
With the girl sweating in anguish and watching every stride, Fred put his hands in his pockets and walked out the door. Oliva sat there for several breaths, her mouth agape and her exhale filled with hot steam. The woman's eyes finally became unbarale in their burning and, giving little thought to her poise, Oliva rushed away towards the heavy oak door, frantic, yet not failing to tip the piano player on her way out.
It was snowing out. Fred hated it. It was snowing the night when Oliva first found him laying half dead in the very alleyway which he walked down. Her love never helped him. He got to where he was on his own. In fact, it wasn't until she left when he got himself back on his feet.
"Fred, wait, please!" cried the very girl, her black, leather handbag jerking side to side as she clumsily tried to run in her heels.
The man only trudged forward, warming his hands as much as he could in his pockets. After fighting through the drifts a good bit, Oliva finally met her hand upon Fred's shoulder and spun him around. Their eyes fell together as was beyond their means of control. Fred, his stare, still hollow, yet filled to the very rim with a nothing which burned him like a hellish night in heaven. Such a blaze was primed and set by her gaze, letting sail liquid flame into his tensed, tortured visage. Her lips, aching beneath the weight of her yet unrequited longing, she licked as her arms slipped over his shoulders and met below the back of his neck. She then lifted her face, matching the snow's pale glare, and let it drift agonizingly towards his. No will of Fred could free him from the hook of her red mouth, pulling him in until, amidst the thick clouds of heavy breath which they had formed, it met his.
Rapturous woe and jeweled strings of tarnished gold, the weight of the sea's depths yet its dark, rich, blue embrace, these were the things which passed between the lovers to whom the very laws of the world denied love. Then, the passing ended.
"Nothing's changed Oliva, at least not the way I've always felt," said Fred after a cold, heated while of grabbing frantically every last sip of her eye's painful glow.
"Is this what you really want?" the woman asked, still drawing deep breaths from the frigid air.
The man stared at her a bit longer and then answered, "It's just like you said Oliva. Everything about us is a tragedy. It can't be anything else."
Oliva looked at him, smiled carelessly, and replied, "I'm like a bad habit Fred, and you'll never drop me I'm afraid."
With such a remark, she and the deep, dense eyes which she carried softly vanished and gave way only to the slushy, brown street a ways across from him.
"Such is the nature of my condition," he said.
Placing his hands back into his pockets, Fred once again trudged through the snow. If he had looked down, he would have seen only the footprints which he had left behind earlier. Of a woman, there were none. He knew there were none. As he stepped back into the bar and kicked the sludge from his feet, he tossed a quarter onto the piano.
"Hey thanks mac," the piano player said. "That's the first tip I've gotten all night."
Fred didn't respond but made his way again to his bar stool.
"I knew you'd be back Fred so I left the glasses for you," said the barkeep, grinning while wiping a wine glass.
Oliva's shot glasses still sat where she had left them yet they were all still full. The scorched and tattered man settled back onto his stool and stared into the tabletop's emptiness. That's when an all too familiar voice chimed in.
"I told you that you would need me when this was done," proclaimed Hailey who was leaning against one of the glasses.
"Why can't you ever be wrong Hailey?" asked the man with no motion save for the slow rise and fall of his breath. He then turned his head, smiled, and said, "You want a drink?"
"Sure!" cried the little pixie with her fist in the air. "I just love getting sloshed with you Freddy!"
Like a watering trough, she leaned against the glass while Fred took another in his hand.
Lifting it, he said, "Here's to us."
"To us!"
They drank then to each other and between each other held a timeless bond. However, his love could never be hers, for it swam, lost within his cracked, broken, and ever confused mind, searching always for that dark, yet empty ghost of an angel whom he had named Oliva.