Friday's Whims of the Time Traveler 49.1: May 10th, 2011
The Percussionist
by Belinda Roddie
The place was full of rhythm. The hum of the heaters, the drip of the coffee filter and beer on tap, the clattering of knives and cups against plate and table in a rising crescendo, the occasional whistling along to a smooth jazz tune playing in the background.
A young man sitting at the bar watched the repeated movements of the diners as they raised their forks to their mouths in between lines of dialogue. The tinned laughter to the same joke and the sound of spoons in coffee filled the space and the man listened from his stool, head cocked slightly to one side and holding a cigarette.
There were no poets tonight, no musicians, and no children in excess. Just the dim, tarnished chatter of the customers and their rhythm permeating the space like the smell of Budweiser and seasoned meat. Salient.
The bartender was big, bearded, and dark-skinned, and he did his job with a sense of grandeur. He was busy cleaning the same part of the counter for the fifth time, casting a watery eye on the customers once in a while. At the bar there were more sounds like the chatter of ice in tall glasses and the occasional cough from a sunken-eyed patron.
“Sheepshead Stout, if you got it,” the young man said to the bartender.
“Always do, sir.”
“Get me what you always got, then.”
The small restaurant was always busy and always noisy and always rhythmic, especially on Friday nights. The musicians came every Monday for Open Mike Night. The poets held their slams every Tuesday. The elderly enjoyed a senior discount on Wednesdays. Thursdays were for the soccer or softball teams, whichever were in season. Saturdays and Sundays pretty much canceled each other out.
The man preferred Fridays here to any other place in town. He was twenty-nine years old, but he looked twenty-four when he was clean-shaven and seemed healthy despite the nicotine stains on his right hand. Tonight he felt extra comfortable in slacks and sneakers, and he grinned to himself as he let the cigarette smoke issue from his nostrils and hover like dark mist in the light of the lamp above his head.
Tonight he was focused on select tables, searching for newcomers. He observed everyone in small doses, never lingering on any individual for too long. He simply scanned the room for interesting types and switched between each table until the diners finished and left the remnants of their meals and conversations behind. Back and forth, back and forth, the man pictured a pendulum in a grandfather clock as his eyes moved from table to table, as if each person reflected the light like glass.
Then he saw three young men in sports coats flirting with a waitress with red hair and long lashes. He recognized her almost immediately because she was a bit older and much prettier than all the other female employees, and she knew how to hurry an order without her high heels leaving black ugly bruises on the wooden floor. Directly across from that table was an older couple that he never paid too much attention to when they stopped by for a meal. He guessed it was simply because the two weren’t fascinating enough to keep him listening to their dry discussions for long. He noticed, however, that tonight the woman was dressed in a red shirt, with a long blue skirt and white stockings. All she needed now were stars and stripes on her loafers.
The man smoked his cigarette and let the ash settle like dirty snow on the polished wood of the bar. The waitress was taking orders from the three men, adding appetizers with phone numbers and compliments on the side. She giggled and blinked rapidly so her long lashes fluttered in the heavy air.
The man thought she was too good for this trio, all of them brown haired and freckled and too rascally looking for their own good. But the waitress raised her head momentarily and made eye contact with him. Instant recognition. They exchanged smiles.
“Stout,” he heard the bartender call, and he accepted the glass silently.
The older couple was quietly conversing over glasses of water, or rather, one was lecturing the other. The man could only see the older gentleman’s back, his White Sox cap turned backward on his balding scalp as he spoke in a professional tone. The patriotic lady’s face was half-obscured by the large, sporadically colored menu. They waited patiently to get a server’s attention, and the waitress stopped batting her lashes long enough to walk to the older couple’s table, leaving the boys nothing to gaze at but her gliding hips. Her acrylic nails scratched for her pad, her voice sweet but blank.
“Can I start you two off with a beverage?”
White Sox ordered a Samuel Adams. Miss Fourth of July was fine with just water. The waitress wrote it all down and the man watched each movement of her pen, brushing his hair from his eyes with his knuckles. His cheeks felt warm and he slapped a hand down hard on his right knee to keep his leg from shaking, a nervous habit.
The hours were progressing, and the crowds of diners were beginning to thin. The conversations were calmer and more connected. The man could now clearly understand several customers’ words as they drowned their thoughts and opinions in a soup bowl. He smelled espresso and specialty house cheesecake and knew that they were contributing to a new mood. It was a lighter mood, more sober, and although he was secluded in his thoughts and observances, he felt content.
White Sox was talking to Miss Fourth of July about taxes. His voice was full and gentlemanly and the man half-expected him to have a mustache to match. It turned out that he had a full goatee, a noble gray.
“Today’s taxes, too high, far too high,” White Sox declared, drinking his beer. Miss Fourth of July twirled her fork in her fettuccini and didn’t respond. The man could hardly blame her.
“Far too high,” he repeated, and then he started talking about mortgage problems.
Already the man was bored. The three young men had left and the waitress who they had tried so desperately to impress stood aloof, letting the others have their turns of scribbling down orders. She had been someone to focus on ever since he heard about this place, someone to gaze at when everyone else had been looked over too many times.
It said Stacey on her nametag but to him she was always “the waitress,” serving him a sandwich or his obligatory slice of French silk pie and sometimes asking if he would like a refill. He thought that her name was too generic and bland and didn’t fit her at all, that she was better than a “Stacey” or a “Kate” or a “Lizzie.” No, she was an “Adrianna,” a “Caroline,” a “Juliet.”
As the man put out his cigarette, he saw the waitress remove a creased slip of paper from her notepad. She was looking at it quietly and mouthing each of the three men’s phone numbers before she suddenly ripped the paper in half. Then she shredded the halves into quarters and the quarters into eighths and the numbers became nothing but black, smudged ribbons as she muttered to herself. The man could hear each word from yards away and listened to the rhythm she was creating, her movements like punctuated notes in music.
“Six years of this and I haven’t gone crazy yet,” the waitress said. “I’m invincible. I’m fucking invincible.” And she tossed the remains of the paper into the nearest trash bin.
All the man could do after that was stare and process all of it. Many times he had witnessed her being admired, but he’d never seen her actually reject any flattering appraisals or requests. He moved away from listening to the squeaks of the bar stools, the trickling of coffee from the pot, even the jazz as it faded away and an announcer’s mellow voice replaced it.
“And that was our smooth jazz hour this Friday evening, where we do our best to soothe you for the weekend. Join us next time for the same as we play more cool classics from your favorites…”
She looked more beautiful when she was serious. Her hair was pulled away from her eyes and her lashes were dark and lovely when they weren’t flapping like the wings of a monarch butterfly. The man lit another cigarette and let the smoke curl in spirals toward the ceiling. He watched her, his bright green eyes against her blue ones, his golden hair against her ruby tresses. He imagined his white lips against red.
The man couldn’t just observe the waitress now. He wanted to hear her heels click on the wood and grow louder with each step toward him and no other customer. He brought his glass to his lips again and cast a determined glance at her, eyeing every curve and watching every subtle move.
The waitress returned his gaze. The man drank his stout and with one hand beckoned her over because he wanted to order something other than the ordinary. He watched her approach him, a small smile flickering on her lips. She meant to look pleasing. He saw her reach for her notepad.
“Will you be having the usual tonight?” she asked when she was in close enough proximity to him. The man pressed his hand firmly against his right knee again.
“I actually thought I’d try something different,” he replied. “Is the cheesecake any good?”
“Of course. Our house specialty.”
“Have you had it?” He asked the question slowly, contemplatively, so as not to be distracted. White Sox was talking loudly about limited resources.
The waitress was startled, as if no one had asked that question before. “Yeah. Well, once, I think. Then again, maybe not.”
“Then what’s so special about it?”
The man was grinning at her, and she blinked. Those damn lashes. But she giggled as he worked on his cigarette, the smoke mingling in his hair.
“Maybe I’ll get you some cheesecake and we’ll see how special it is,” the waitress said. “Would you like that?”
“I’d like that very much.”
They exchanged smiles again. She headed toward the kitchen, her heels clicking and her hips sashaying again. As she left, she kept turning her head to look at him and he returned the gaze as calmly as he could with his lips parted in his normal half-smile.
The man scattered more ash and expected the bartender to reprimand him for dirtying the bar, but the bartender wasn’t at his post or serving drinks. More diners were dispersing, and the conversations were dissipating. White Sox filled Miss Fourth of July in on business crises, and a younger couple ate burgers and laughed between mouthfuls. Minutes passed. The heaters’ humming had been reduced to a gentle hiss that added to the occasional rattling of ice in a glass like loose teeth in a skull.
Then the atmosphere was laid thick with the shouts of the bartender, a white towel about his broad shoulders, his brown face tinged red from yelling. He was on his cell phone and every remaining customer turned to look as he screamed into it.
“Six hundred dollars? Where the Hell do you think I’m going to find six hundred dollars? Damn it! Fuck!”
There was a pause for whoever was on the line to reply, but the bartender’s voice was growing louder. It was something about gambling, another debt. He gave a lecture about responsibility. He demanded change. He furiously admonished a spouse or a family member. The man listened and smoked, keeping to himself until the waitress returned. She set a platter with a large, dense looking piece of cheesecake down in front of him.
A pubescent waiter cleared the burger lovers’ plates. Another rushed by with White Sox and Miss Fourth of July’s bill. It was clear that the couples wanted to leave and nearly all of the employees’ faces were as white as their uniforms while the bartender barked into the phone like a restless guard dog. They knew it was bad for business.
Pulling the cigarette from his lips, the man took his mind off of the yelling, grabbed his fork and dug in. He chewed and he swallowed and he chewed again, polishing off each bite with more stout. He didn’t ask for a refill when the glass was empty. The bartender’s snarling was now reduced to a low, harsh growl against his silver Motorola.
The man raised his head from his plate and realized that the waitress had taken a seat beside him. He noticed that it was almost eleven from the wall clock and watched as waiters began to stack chairs and push tables against the walls while a popular rock song played on the speakers. She was watching him eat, her blue eyes glazed, her lips full and bright on her face. He almost choked on a few crumbs but managed to keep his eyes from watering as he looked at the waitress.
“It’s good, then,” she said.
“It really is special,” he replied. They exchanged smiles again. Beautiful.
The ash he had left on the bar had formed a semi-circle of white and gray. He held his fork in one hand, his cigarette burning to a stump in his other. The man put it out on the edge of his plate.
“When do you get off work?” he asked.
“Eleven fifteen.” She then added apologetically, “I get the late shifts ‘cause I’m older than most of these kids.”
“And how old are you?”
“Twenty-two.”
“You don’t look a day over twenty,” he said.
The bartender shut off his phone and went back to pouring drinks for the last lingering customers. White Sox was taking his time paying the bill. He was still talking, but he wasn’t using as many words. He sounded as if all the important things he had said during dinner had exhausted him.
The man was distracted by a small, slight pressure on his shoulder. The waitress was looking at him with a small smile, her eyes gleaming, her index finger tracing the seams in his shirtsleeve.
“Why do you ask?”
“What?”
“Why did you ask when I get off work?”
“Just curious.” He swallowed. “We could go for a walk.”
She giggled. “You’re sweet.”
“Unless you’re thinking about those other guys, then maybe I shouldn’t.”
The waitress outright laughed this time, but it was still a sweet and bubbly sound. “Nah, but I like knowing that they’re interested. It’s nice to have some kind of company.”
“You’re one of the lucky ones,” the man said and left it at that.
The waitress moved to clear his plate and perhaps by accident her hand brushed against his. The man unintentionally shivered, but her touch was cool and pleasing and the muscles in his back and shoulders relaxed. As the waitress checked for other glasses and silverware to carry off, she looked at the bartender. His dark shoulders were heaving and he wiped his brow with his towel.
“Everything going to be okay?” she asked.
“I wish,” the bartender muttered in between deep breaths.
The waitress smiled apologetically and disappeared into the kitchen. The bartender looked at the man. “Did you want any more stout?”
“No thanks, I’m fine.”
“Six hundred fucking dollars,” the bartender growled as he rearranged liquor bottles on the shelf. “Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse…”
The man remembered other times when the bartender had said things similar to that. He had caught tidbits of his phone conversations before, though never as intense as tonight. Two weeks ago, it was eighty-five dollars. Last week it was two hundred. The man couldn’t help but wonder if the number would continue to increase with every call.
The waitress had returned and taken her place beside the man again. They sat silently together for a while, listening to the heaters putter out and the remaining customers chatter away. The clock on the wall ticked loudly and the man finally turned his head to look at the woman beside him. Her lips were pursed together and her eyes were averted to the floor.
“Did you want to walk with me?” he asked.
“I’d like that very much.”
The man grinned and his fingertips brushed against the waitress’s hand, and in return she clasped his index finger and thumb momentarily before standing up. His mind was racing now and he began to think up hypothetical situations. He wondered if she wanted to go to his place because she may have been living in a cramped apartment with two calico cats. Or maybe she wanted to go back to her place because she lived in a nice little house where they could have a hot drink on the couch. But the sound of her voice drew him out of one reverie into another.
“Can I get you anything else?”
“Just the bill,” he said.
The waitress brought it to him eagerly. He signed the paper and it was illegible, but she didn’t seem to mind. She didn’t even ask him what his name was. She went to help the others clean up while the second hand ticked.
“Taking her home?” the bartender asked. He was much calmer now, even smiling as the man rearranged himself.
“I dunno yet.”
“Her boyfriend left her ‘bout seven months ago,” said the bartender. “That was a shame. She was head over heels for him. Now she just sort of lingers over it.”
“Common feeling,” the man replied.
“You ever lost someone you loved?”
“I’ve never had the chance.”
Eleven seventeen, and she was ready to go. The man put on his coat and the waitress pulled a blue college sweatshirt over her uniform. All they did was smile at each other as they prepared to leave. The bartender looked at him as if saying, “Good luck,” and all the man could think about was the idea of the waitress’s warm body against his shoulder. Right now he was satisfied with just holding her hand.
As the waitress checked her purse to make sure everything was there, the man watched as White Sox and Miss Fourth of July arranged the tip into neatly folded dollar bills. White Sox’s denouement of the evening was global trade, and the man was just in time to hear his latest announcement.
“As far as I’m concerned, China’s getting far too big,” White Sox said. “I’m worried we may end up selling our souls to their economy.”
“Actually, America’s economy is still twice as big as China’s,” the man interjected, and he immediately caught the two’s attention. “China may have more access to cheap labor, but we’ve got enough of a work force to spur the competition.”
White Sox did not reply, only raising his eyebrows at the idea of anybody actually responding to his rambling. But Miss Fourth of July was beaming as if she’d wanted this to happen all night, and the man heard her speak for the first time since the beginning of the evening.
“Yes, that’s right. Plus China’s about a quarter of the population as is, so its growth can be justified.”
The bartender chuckled and White Sox still said nothing. The waitress only looked at the man more fondly for his spontaneous audacity. They exchanged smiles again. Beautiful.
The man left five dollars on the bar even though he knew that the next day the bartender would find a six hundred dollar check in his mailbox with an illegible signature. He waved at White Sox and Miss Fourth of July even though he knew he’d see them the next day in the downtown café where they’d be eating breakfast and Miss Fourth of July would be dominating the conversation this time. And he took the waitress’s hand in his own even though he knew she’d be there the next morning to pour him coffee.
It was all part of the rhythm. He now knew that there was nothing else he could do in this town but change it up a bit.
The two walked onto the sidewalk and headed toward the nearest bus station. They didn’t talk, only smiled, the air brisk on their cheeks and eyelashes. Hers fluttered again as she giggled at his touch. The man chuckled and reached for another cigarette.
The work you see here was originally written in the fall of 2008. It has not been edited nor modified since May 10th, 2011.
by Belinda Roddie
The place was full of rhythm. The hum of the heaters, the drip of the coffee filter and beer on tap, the clattering of knives and cups against plate and table in a rising crescendo, the occasional whistling along to a smooth jazz tune playing in the background.
A young man sitting at the bar watched the repeated movements of the diners as they raised their forks to their mouths in between lines of dialogue. The tinned laughter to the same joke and the sound of spoons in coffee filled the space and the man listened from his stool, head cocked slightly to one side and holding a cigarette.
There were no poets tonight, no musicians, and no children in excess. Just the dim, tarnished chatter of the customers and their rhythm permeating the space like the smell of Budweiser and seasoned meat. Salient.
The bartender was big, bearded, and dark-skinned, and he did his job with a sense of grandeur. He was busy cleaning the same part of the counter for the fifth time, casting a watery eye on the customers once in a while. At the bar there were more sounds like the chatter of ice in tall glasses and the occasional cough from a sunken-eyed patron.
“Sheepshead Stout, if you got it,” the young man said to the bartender.
“Always do, sir.”
“Get me what you always got, then.”
The small restaurant was always busy and always noisy and always rhythmic, especially on Friday nights. The musicians came every Monday for Open Mike Night. The poets held their slams every Tuesday. The elderly enjoyed a senior discount on Wednesdays. Thursdays were for the soccer or softball teams, whichever were in season. Saturdays and Sundays pretty much canceled each other out.
The man preferred Fridays here to any other place in town. He was twenty-nine years old, but he looked twenty-four when he was clean-shaven and seemed healthy despite the nicotine stains on his right hand. Tonight he felt extra comfortable in slacks and sneakers, and he grinned to himself as he let the cigarette smoke issue from his nostrils and hover like dark mist in the light of the lamp above his head.
Tonight he was focused on select tables, searching for newcomers. He observed everyone in small doses, never lingering on any individual for too long. He simply scanned the room for interesting types and switched between each table until the diners finished and left the remnants of their meals and conversations behind. Back and forth, back and forth, the man pictured a pendulum in a grandfather clock as his eyes moved from table to table, as if each person reflected the light like glass.
Then he saw three young men in sports coats flirting with a waitress with red hair and long lashes. He recognized her almost immediately because she was a bit older and much prettier than all the other female employees, and she knew how to hurry an order without her high heels leaving black ugly bruises on the wooden floor. Directly across from that table was an older couple that he never paid too much attention to when they stopped by for a meal. He guessed it was simply because the two weren’t fascinating enough to keep him listening to their dry discussions for long. He noticed, however, that tonight the woman was dressed in a red shirt, with a long blue skirt and white stockings. All she needed now were stars and stripes on her loafers.
The man smoked his cigarette and let the ash settle like dirty snow on the polished wood of the bar. The waitress was taking orders from the three men, adding appetizers with phone numbers and compliments on the side. She giggled and blinked rapidly so her long lashes fluttered in the heavy air.
The man thought she was too good for this trio, all of them brown haired and freckled and too rascally looking for their own good. But the waitress raised her head momentarily and made eye contact with him. Instant recognition. They exchanged smiles.
“Stout,” he heard the bartender call, and he accepted the glass silently.
The older couple was quietly conversing over glasses of water, or rather, one was lecturing the other. The man could only see the older gentleman’s back, his White Sox cap turned backward on his balding scalp as he spoke in a professional tone. The patriotic lady’s face was half-obscured by the large, sporadically colored menu. They waited patiently to get a server’s attention, and the waitress stopped batting her lashes long enough to walk to the older couple’s table, leaving the boys nothing to gaze at but her gliding hips. Her acrylic nails scratched for her pad, her voice sweet but blank.
“Can I start you two off with a beverage?”
White Sox ordered a Samuel Adams. Miss Fourth of July was fine with just water. The waitress wrote it all down and the man watched each movement of her pen, brushing his hair from his eyes with his knuckles. His cheeks felt warm and he slapped a hand down hard on his right knee to keep his leg from shaking, a nervous habit.
The hours were progressing, and the crowds of diners were beginning to thin. The conversations were calmer and more connected. The man could now clearly understand several customers’ words as they drowned their thoughts and opinions in a soup bowl. He smelled espresso and specialty house cheesecake and knew that they were contributing to a new mood. It was a lighter mood, more sober, and although he was secluded in his thoughts and observances, he felt content.
White Sox was talking to Miss Fourth of July about taxes. His voice was full and gentlemanly and the man half-expected him to have a mustache to match. It turned out that he had a full goatee, a noble gray.
“Today’s taxes, too high, far too high,” White Sox declared, drinking his beer. Miss Fourth of July twirled her fork in her fettuccini and didn’t respond. The man could hardly blame her.
“Far too high,” he repeated, and then he started talking about mortgage problems.
Already the man was bored. The three young men had left and the waitress who they had tried so desperately to impress stood aloof, letting the others have their turns of scribbling down orders. She had been someone to focus on ever since he heard about this place, someone to gaze at when everyone else had been looked over too many times.
It said Stacey on her nametag but to him she was always “the waitress,” serving him a sandwich or his obligatory slice of French silk pie and sometimes asking if he would like a refill. He thought that her name was too generic and bland and didn’t fit her at all, that she was better than a “Stacey” or a “Kate” or a “Lizzie.” No, she was an “Adrianna,” a “Caroline,” a “Juliet.”
As the man put out his cigarette, he saw the waitress remove a creased slip of paper from her notepad. She was looking at it quietly and mouthing each of the three men’s phone numbers before she suddenly ripped the paper in half. Then she shredded the halves into quarters and the quarters into eighths and the numbers became nothing but black, smudged ribbons as she muttered to herself. The man could hear each word from yards away and listened to the rhythm she was creating, her movements like punctuated notes in music.
“Six years of this and I haven’t gone crazy yet,” the waitress said. “I’m invincible. I’m fucking invincible.” And she tossed the remains of the paper into the nearest trash bin.
All the man could do after that was stare and process all of it. Many times he had witnessed her being admired, but he’d never seen her actually reject any flattering appraisals or requests. He moved away from listening to the squeaks of the bar stools, the trickling of coffee from the pot, even the jazz as it faded away and an announcer’s mellow voice replaced it.
“And that was our smooth jazz hour this Friday evening, where we do our best to soothe you for the weekend. Join us next time for the same as we play more cool classics from your favorites…”
She looked more beautiful when she was serious. Her hair was pulled away from her eyes and her lashes were dark and lovely when they weren’t flapping like the wings of a monarch butterfly. The man lit another cigarette and let the smoke curl in spirals toward the ceiling. He watched her, his bright green eyes against her blue ones, his golden hair against her ruby tresses. He imagined his white lips against red.
The man couldn’t just observe the waitress now. He wanted to hear her heels click on the wood and grow louder with each step toward him and no other customer. He brought his glass to his lips again and cast a determined glance at her, eyeing every curve and watching every subtle move.
The waitress returned his gaze. The man drank his stout and with one hand beckoned her over because he wanted to order something other than the ordinary. He watched her approach him, a small smile flickering on her lips. She meant to look pleasing. He saw her reach for her notepad.
“Will you be having the usual tonight?” she asked when she was in close enough proximity to him. The man pressed his hand firmly against his right knee again.
“I actually thought I’d try something different,” he replied. “Is the cheesecake any good?”
“Of course. Our house specialty.”
“Have you had it?” He asked the question slowly, contemplatively, so as not to be distracted. White Sox was talking loudly about limited resources.
The waitress was startled, as if no one had asked that question before. “Yeah. Well, once, I think. Then again, maybe not.”
“Then what’s so special about it?”
The man was grinning at her, and she blinked. Those damn lashes. But she giggled as he worked on his cigarette, the smoke mingling in his hair.
“Maybe I’ll get you some cheesecake and we’ll see how special it is,” the waitress said. “Would you like that?”
“I’d like that very much.”
They exchanged smiles again. She headed toward the kitchen, her heels clicking and her hips sashaying again. As she left, she kept turning her head to look at him and he returned the gaze as calmly as he could with his lips parted in his normal half-smile.
The man scattered more ash and expected the bartender to reprimand him for dirtying the bar, but the bartender wasn’t at his post or serving drinks. More diners were dispersing, and the conversations were dissipating. White Sox filled Miss Fourth of July in on business crises, and a younger couple ate burgers and laughed between mouthfuls. Minutes passed. The heaters’ humming had been reduced to a gentle hiss that added to the occasional rattling of ice in a glass like loose teeth in a skull.
Then the atmosphere was laid thick with the shouts of the bartender, a white towel about his broad shoulders, his brown face tinged red from yelling. He was on his cell phone and every remaining customer turned to look as he screamed into it.
“Six hundred dollars? Where the Hell do you think I’m going to find six hundred dollars? Damn it! Fuck!”
There was a pause for whoever was on the line to reply, but the bartender’s voice was growing louder. It was something about gambling, another debt. He gave a lecture about responsibility. He demanded change. He furiously admonished a spouse or a family member. The man listened and smoked, keeping to himself until the waitress returned. She set a platter with a large, dense looking piece of cheesecake down in front of him.
A pubescent waiter cleared the burger lovers’ plates. Another rushed by with White Sox and Miss Fourth of July’s bill. It was clear that the couples wanted to leave and nearly all of the employees’ faces were as white as their uniforms while the bartender barked into the phone like a restless guard dog. They knew it was bad for business.
Pulling the cigarette from his lips, the man took his mind off of the yelling, grabbed his fork and dug in. He chewed and he swallowed and he chewed again, polishing off each bite with more stout. He didn’t ask for a refill when the glass was empty. The bartender’s snarling was now reduced to a low, harsh growl against his silver Motorola.
The man raised his head from his plate and realized that the waitress had taken a seat beside him. He noticed that it was almost eleven from the wall clock and watched as waiters began to stack chairs and push tables against the walls while a popular rock song played on the speakers. She was watching him eat, her blue eyes glazed, her lips full and bright on her face. He almost choked on a few crumbs but managed to keep his eyes from watering as he looked at the waitress.
“It’s good, then,” she said.
“It really is special,” he replied. They exchanged smiles again. Beautiful.
The ash he had left on the bar had formed a semi-circle of white and gray. He held his fork in one hand, his cigarette burning to a stump in his other. The man put it out on the edge of his plate.
“When do you get off work?” he asked.
“Eleven fifteen.” She then added apologetically, “I get the late shifts ‘cause I’m older than most of these kids.”
“And how old are you?”
“Twenty-two.”
“You don’t look a day over twenty,” he said.
The bartender shut off his phone and went back to pouring drinks for the last lingering customers. White Sox was taking his time paying the bill. He was still talking, but he wasn’t using as many words. He sounded as if all the important things he had said during dinner had exhausted him.
The man was distracted by a small, slight pressure on his shoulder. The waitress was looking at him with a small smile, her eyes gleaming, her index finger tracing the seams in his shirtsleeve.
“Why do you ask?”
“What?”
“Why did you ask when I get off work?”
“Just curious.” He swallowed. “We could go for a walk.”
She giggled. “You’re sweet.”
“Unless you’re thinking about those other guys, then maybe I shouldn’t.”
The waitress outright laughed this time, but it was still a sweet and bubbly sound. “Nah, but I like knowing that they’re interested. It’s nice to have some kind of company.”
“You’re one of the lucky ones,” the man said and left it at that.
The waitress moved to clear his plate and perhaps by accident her hand brushed against his. The man unintentionally shivered, but her touch was cool and pleasing and the muscles in his back and shoulders relaxed. As the waitress checked for other glasses and silverware to carry off, she looked at the bartender. His dark shoulders were heaving and he wiped his brow with his towel.
“Everything going to be okay?” she asked.
“I wish,” the bartender muttered in between deep breaths.
The waitress smiled apologetically and disappeared into the kitchen. The bartender looked at the man. “Did you want any more stout?”
“No thanks, I’m fine.”
“Six hundred fucking dollars,” the bartender growled as he rearranged liquor bottles on the shelf. “Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse…”
The man remembered other times when the bartender had said things similar to that. He had caught tidbits of his phone conversations before, though never as intense as tonight. Two weeks ago, it was eighty-five dollars. Last week it was two hundred. The man couldn’t help but wonder if the number would continue to increase with every call.
The waitress had returned and taken her place beside the man again. They sat silently together for a while, listening to the heaters putter out and the remaining customers chatter away. The clock on the wall ticked loudly and the man finally turned his head to look at the woman beside him. Her lips were pursed together and her eyes were averted to the floor.
“Did you want to walk with me?” he asked.
“I’d like that very much.”
The man grinned and his fingertips brushed against the waitress’s hand, and in return she clasped his index finger and thumb momentarily before standing up. His mind was racing now and he began to think up hypothetical situations. He wondered if she wanted to go to his place because she may have been living in a cramped apartment with two calico cats. Or maybe she wanted to go back to her place because she lived in a nice little house where they could have a hot drink on the couch. But the sound of her voice drew him out of one reverie into another.
“Can I get you anything else?”
“Just the bill,” he said.
The waitress brought it to him eagerly. He signed the paper and it was illegible, but she didn’t seem to mind. She didn’t even ask him what his name was. She went to help the others clean up while the second hand ticked.
“Taking her home?” the bartender asked. He was much calmer now, even smiling as the man rearranged himself.
“I dunno yet.”
“Her boyfriend left her ‘bout seven months ago,” said the bartender. “That was a shame. She was head over heels for him. Now she just sort of lingers over it.”
“Common feeling,” the man replied.
“You ever lost someone you loved?”
“I’ve never had the chance.”
Eleven seventeen, and she was ready to go. The man put on his coat and the waitress pulled a blue college sweatshirt over her uniform. All they did was smile at each other as they prepared to leave. The bartender looked at him as if saying, “Good luck,” and all the man could think about was the idea of the waitress’s warm body against his shoulder. Right now he was satisfied with just holding her hand.
As the waitress checked her purse to make sure everything was there, the man watched as White Sox and Miss Fourth of July arranged the tip into neatly folded dollar bills. White Sox’s denouement of the evening was global trade, and the man was just in time to hear his latest announcement.
“As far as I’m concerned, China’s getting far too big,” White Sox said. “I’m worried we may end up selling our souls to their economy.”
“Actually, America’s economy is still twice as big as China’s,” the man interjected, and he immediately caught the two’s attention. “China may have more access to cheap labor, but we’ve got enough of a work force to spur the competition.”
White Sox did not reply, only raising his eyebrows at the idea of anybody actually responding to his rambling. But Miss Fourth of July was beaming as if she’d wanted this to happen all night, and the man heard her speak for the first time since the beginning of the evening.
“Yes, that’s right. Plus China’s about a quarter of the population as is, so its growth can be justified.”
The bartender chuckled and White Sox still said nothing. The waitress only looked at the man more fondly for his spontaneous audacity. They exchanged smiles again. Beautiful.
The man left five dollars on the bar even though he knew that the next day the bartender would find a six hundred dollar check in his mailbox with an illegible signature. He waved at White Sox and Miss Fourth of July even though he knew he’d see them the next day in the downtown café where they’d be eating breakfast and Miss Fourth of July would be dominating the conversation this time. And he took the waitress’s hand in his own even though he knew she’d be there the next morning to pour him coffee.
It was all part of the rhythm. He now knew that there was nothing else he could do in this town but change it up a bit.
The two walked onto the sidewalk and headed toward the nearest bus station. They didn’t talk, only smiled, the air brisk on their cheeks and eyelashes. Hers fluttered again as she giggled at his touch. The man chuckled and reached for another cigarette.
The work you see here was originally written in the fall of 2008. It has not been edited nor modified since May 10th, 2011.
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