Steve and Samantha were the first to arrive, both still in dressed in their game day apparel, regaling each other with the stories of the day, telling each with passion and pride. Each following the others tale with great anticipation, waiting for the next words, like a favorite bedtime story that everyone hearing it knows the ending, but the characters and stories stand the test of time. Next to arrive was Christy she was not about to be late a second time today. So while Steve and Samantha were at one end of the bar Christy positioned herself alone at the other end in her navy slacks, ecru white blouse and demure weekday office appropriate make up. Two drinking beer in jeans, another seemingly total stranger at the other end dressed like she was on her way to work drinking a $12.00 glass of Chardonnay. As Christy sat alone her friend Beth came along to join in the evening. “C.Y.” Beth shouted ecstatically as she crossed the room with the grace and dignity of a Kappa Kappa Prude sorority girl and fake insincere hugs were exchanged.
“I had dinner with Satan” Christy quietly exclaimed.
“Really was he cute?” Beth inquired.
Christy said in hushed tone fearing the minions of hell might hear her speak. “No, I literally had dinner with the Devil of DC” she said refusing to speak his name as if it were something so sinfully unholy she would be damned for merely uttering it.
Beth’s body stiffened, her face grew rigid and pale. “Really?” pausing but Christy just waited for Beth to continue. “And why?” She couldn’t conceive of a reason in the entire universe to be in his presence. Smiling back at her Christy replied in her best catty but nonchalant tone “To find out Robert’s fucking some slut.” Christy continued to explain still mystified by the fact that a man could have such banal and primitive disgusting needs.
“Whores have a place too.” Beth sympathized but in the same breath couldn’t resist asking “What was he really like?”
“Odd and measured. He spoke in riddles and painted a picture in the air with his words that wouldn’t make any sense until later” she paused to catch her breath and then began explaining the entire twenty three interlude.
Beth laughed “So he quotes the King James Bible as a direct set up. As a way of telling you Robert has a new hole.” Beth imagining a whore like girl in her early to mid twenty’s dressed in a mixture of Hollister and Abercrombie & Fitch. Christy returns the laugh with a giggle but then something struck her a man maybe seen in public with a tawdry little play thing but most would have enough sense to not bring a passing interlude of questionable reputation to lunch with his peers, his friends and their partners.
“Is she either one of them?” Beth asked only half joking, directing Christy’s glance in the direction of a small table with two twenty something’s at it who were looking seemingly mindlessly out at the street. One was in a painted on pair of low cut pair of jeans a faded Abercrombie top unbuttoned as much as provincial law would allow and a pair of Do Me Sandals if such a thing exists, her hair hiding her face like a young Veronica Lake. The other in a Pink Baby Doll T and pants that looked like she had stolen them from Robert Plant in the early seventies and a tattered pair of flip flops that revealed that were light pink matching the T shirt perfectly, but she had added little dark pink polka dots.
In a room full of strangers these two were again unique, the two at the far end of the bar were still lost in the day’s events still dressed as the fans of the local sports team nursing their beers. Two formal professional types one sipping her wine the other waiting for Fume Blanc to arrive. The younger pair of women at the table were simply enjoying a life that had not yet caught up with them, guzzling Margarita’s with out a care in the world.
Yes the term “Bar Scene” conjures up so many different images of pick up artists and flesh factories, the image of a smoky back room deals, of scheming and power plays. It may provoke images of hopeless people drowning their sorrows, commiserating with “friends” who have little more in common with each other than the libations before them. In addition to the six described here and a room fool of other people who were little more to each other than the window dressing at that particular moment in life. The bar scene was not at all unlike so many others, the difference between Steve and Sam, Christy and Beth and of course Tiffany and Steph were all as varied and troubled, as the characters in the bar scene in the first star wars movie when in walks Han Solo.
Next Chapter Worlds Collide
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