Hanging out around the old apartment, alone, it’s Monday night and I recognize that this is the last one I’ll ever spend here. Tomorrow is the 31st of January, and come morning, I’m going to load up the last few items remaining here into my car, before locking this door behind me for good. Why I’m even here tonight is a valid question, considering it means another one crashing on the floor, with fewer yet blankets and pillows. But I’ve been cleaning nonstop, in hopes of just maybe getting some of my deposit back, and it’s snowing, the hour already somewhat late, and I don’t feel like driving across town.
Yet I also don’t want to call it a night just yet, either. Stepping outside to fire up my car, I’m relieved to see the flurries have stopped, though the defrosting and scraping process takes a few minutes anyway. It’s probably a good thing that I have already moved my phone over to the new place, otherwise calling Ann might have held more allure than it already does. Dropping by unannounced at Brooke’s pad is another tempting option, but I am not quite sure what the protocol is for proceeding. Given the circumstances, it seems only right that our next move with her and Jolene should involve a group discussion first. Not even two full days have passed, and to blow that huge lead with some kind of idiotic, improvised stumble in the dark, that doesn’t really feel fair to the other two guys.
So why not hit one of these old haunts, for what could be the final time? Though there’s a strong chance we will revisit this part of town again, I don’t know this for certain. So with this in mind I drive past Brooke’s building, exit the complex, and turn left to carve out that familiar path to Triads once more. Except as I sit there in the parking lot, staring at the smattering of souls congregated within, via that side wall of windows, this is suddenly not the least bit appealing.
I reverse out of the slot without even killing my engine, and cruise on up the boulevard, the mile or so it takes to reach Edgecrest Café. If the dive bars are mortuaries on a night like this, it stands to reason that a dance club, only moderately comatose, should at least cling to some small vestige of life. But gliding into their parking lot, I’m counting all of four cars here, which fails to even match the traffic over at Triads.
One could certainly argue this makes for some excellent symbolism, as far as a neat demarcation of eras, and leaving nothing behind over here that I need to get nostalgic about. All of which might be true, I’m not sure, but a dead night is a dead night. It doesn’t necessarily indicate anything beyond the obvious, which is that this was a stupid idea and I should just return home. There are a couple of beers still in the fridge back there, and I can toast these closing curtains in appropriately solitary fashion.
Whipping out of here without even so much as a slowdown, I head back in that direction, fully intending this. But then halfway between the two, my eyes land upon a seldom visited strip mall on the left, and Anchors, a fitting name for one of the few remaining businesses. Located at the far end, even during its greatest moments this place makes Triads look like a Manhattan hotspot. Thus I’m not exactly surprised to see just a few vehicles snuggled up against its sidewalk, too. Yet as I don’t know anybody who hangs out here, really, have only set foot inside the building once or twice myself, this is somehow less depressing — as opposed to somewhere I have extensive history in and should reasonably hope to encounter a familiar face. Acting on this impulse, I yank the wheel and sled on impulse across this frozen lake of a parking lot, gradually warming to this brilliant piece of improv the longer I consider it. If there’s absolutely nothing happening here, then who cares, because it’s still a marked improvement over my lonely ass apartment. Phil hasn’t even migrated to town yet, for example, over at the new place, meaning that I basically have no other ready option right now.
The barmaid is a brunette in her mid-30s, vaguely familiar from either here or elsewhere. The sparse clientele is entirely her age and older, which makes me quite clearly out of place. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine what would drive any early twentysomething male into this place alone, if he has any kind of social life whatsoever, outside of the unrelenting boredom a snowy winter night like this can bring. But I’ve worn the wedding ring, so I clearly must expect something to happen, though telling myself otherwise — and the neat thing about this prop, I’m discovering, is that if you just stay out of the way, it allows these females to project whatever they want onto you. It’s as though this simple shiny object obscures everything else behind it, converting us to blank slates.
I sit quietly at the bar, well away from any others, sip my beer and zone out in front of whatever’s showing on the big screen televisions. Two middle aged guys to my left are arguing sports, and beyond them, an auburn haired woman in her early forties seems to be doodling on a cocktail napkin. I’m paying her about as much attention as the sports fanatics. Then there’s some heavyset gent almost directly across from me, either well into his sixties or having drank enough over the years to appear as such, sipping some cocktail in a short glass and attempting to chat with the barmaid. Most of all, it’s as dark in here as it is dead, yet on an outing like this, where you just want to hide with minimal fanfare, it’s funny how this almost resembles a warm atmosphere.
Ordering another beer, I cast my eyes elsewhere, namely the game broadcasting overhead. Commercial breaks mean watching other patrons, the regular joe in his regular stool directly across from me, the happily married couple swinging through for a couple cocktails on the way home from a late though fancy dinner. Otherwise, it’s increasingly likely that by the time I finish this drink, I will simply call it a night. If not for this peripheral motion I catch, that is, just out of range to the left of me.
It’s the curly haired woman with the cocktail napkin, waving a hand in this direction. At first I’m not sure if it’s really me she’s signaling, and look away, continue sipping my beer. But before too long she’s made herself clear.
“Hey you!” she says, “come over here!”
“Who, me?”
“Yeah!”
Moving around the bend, to the other side of the arguing sports nuts, I flop into the stool immediately right of this much older woman. She looks decent enough from afar, so why not. Proximity does illuminate what the poor lighting could not, which is that this is no knockout, not by any stretch, but what the hell. She’s not exactly ugly, either, and I would be lying if I said I mind the company, that I don’t find this attention gratifying. Although our drink slinger, who has seemed somewhere between sad and disgusted from the outset, shoots a strange, off kilter glance this way. It’s crucial not to read too much into situations, based upon scant to nonexistent knowledge, but she looks unamused by this stunt, as though she has seen this woman pull this before, and is somewhat pissed that it works. Possibly in lieu of some attention which could instead transmit in her direction. Come to think of it, the barmaid is addressing this woman by name, Peggy, which I’ve overheard even before she gives it to me.
“I was drawing your picture,” Peggy explains, sliding the napkin my way. Once again, the lack of lighting might work to her advantage, but I’m not just blown away by this highly flattering gesture. Her penstrokes, if rating the pure skill, also look better than a caricature, if not exactly on the level of high art. And naturally a corresponding thought flashes through my head, more than once, wondering if I might become a decent enough artist on short notice myself, to make the next logical advancements with this great pickup routine.
While she continues to intermittently draw, two brunettes drift in and slip effortlessly into the seats to the left of Peggy. One’s way overweight and the other’s a knockout, but in neither instance does it much matter because I’m too mystified by this whole development to pay them much mind. What has inspired this? Was it all due to the ring, and how do I go about determining this without being too obvious about it, or contaminating the data by leading the witness?
The barmaid drifts by, points at our empties, and I nod in response. I still sense a mild bitterness or maybe even hostility here, not so much at me or Peggy, but at the situation in general, that this woman is garnering this much attention from the likes of me. But someone toiling behind the bar should of all people know how these things work. She’s better looking, has a far more compelling body, is younger, you name it, yes, she checks all these boxes. Were she the one waving me over instead, I would have been factors upon factors more into it. And yet this isn’t what happened. Beside all that, after investing so much work into this wedding band business, it’s nice to have something simple potentially fall into my lap with no effort at all.
“So you’re married, huh?” Peggy says, glancing down at the convincing ten dollar forgery, as though this just happens to be the first time she’s noticed it.
“Yeah,” I offer casually.
“Where’s your wife at?”
“Well,” I chuckle, attempting to convey untold legions of depth and history here, “it’s a long story…”
But before I can get to my sad tale, she simply must tell me hers — buying more time to fabricate mine, another bonus — and I find myself discreetly picking up the next couple rounds while she talks. She works at a deli somewhere in this Edgecrest area, her nineteen year old daughter’s a hellion who doesn’t drink much but takes plenty of ecstasy any chance she gets. I nod my head and toss in a few mmm hmms at key intervals, and when our trusty beer wench swings by again, pointing at our empties once more, I give her much the same response, without ever interrupting Peggy’s flow of words.
“I don’t go for married guys,” Peggy keeps saying as she continues to flesh out my portrait, “but I thought you had an interesting face. What do you think?” She gives the napkin a quarter-turn spin, so that I can appraise its apparently finished state, and I offer a favorable nod in response.
I also believe she’s a barfly who probably cons a couple drinks a night in this fashion, at a handful of favorite watering holes up and down this strip, but that’s beside the point. It’s beside the point because in addition to this sentiment I also think that the attention is uplifting nonetheless, to help obliterate this post-Jenna loneliness, and that even a hastily drawn portrait rendered by ink pen on a cocktail napkin can conjure up much more than just an appreciatory smile.
As in, well before the closing hour, Peggy has already broached the topic of us continuing to “talk some more” when we split this scene. By now, she has also drawn my own lightly sketched story out of me, which comes surprisingly easily in that there’s actually not a ton to make up: apart from the mild embellishment of us being married, I can otherwise just about relate a blow by blow recap of Jenna’s unexpected departure. This has to make it that much more believable, I would imagine, and yet even so, much like Ann, I detect that Peggy remains mildly suspicious about something — she just isn’t sure what.
Whatever twinges of doubt she’s feeling, though, they clearly aren’t strong ones, and by no means a dealbreaker. As I tab out, having paid for our last three rounds, while she dominated a good 90% of the conversation, we hatch a somewhat bizarre exit strategy. Then again, such a last minute complication is not uncommon, and I’ve always had the feeling in such spots that the women make you jump through these hoops as some sort of final test.
Apparently the heavyset senior age guy lives close to here, on a side street running behind this strip mall. He hoofs it up to his favorite bar stool most nights, but, considering the cold and that he seems mighty wasted even by his standards, this presents an arduous task at this hour, albeit one the gentleman in question has no problems undertaking. It’s just that as a regular here herself, Peggy knows him quite well (though not like that, she insists, which is certainly credible enough) and doesn’t want him returning home in this manner.
I do consider it a positive sign that she’s worried about a fellow bar patron to this extent. So the arrangement agreed upon is that I will follow her to his place, as she drops him off, at which point she will tail me over to mine. And this is exactly what we do.
Though Peggy does gasp a little bit, to enter my apartment and see its barren state, this stark tableau lends considerable credence to just about everything I’ve said tonight. Still, as we crack open the final, coincidentally perfect round of the last two beers I have in my fridge, she’s asking for details yet again.
“But what’s the story? I mean, there has to be a reason why she left. People don’t just up and leave, for no reason.”
“Nope, there’s no story,” I insist, shaking my head, “I seriously have no idea.”
“Was she…like…seeing somebody else?”
“Mmm, I really don’t think so,” I reply.
“Were you?”
“Nope.”
“Well then, I mean…that doesn’t make any sense. There has to be a reason. Something you’re not telling me.”
It’s possible that is all some elaborate, half winking acknowledgement, that she knows my cover is bullshit, and is telling me I should come up with a better story if I’m determined to pull this prank. But I don’t believe this is the case. Thus, considering I have no elaborate tale constructed and was legitimately blindsided by Jenna’s departure, I’m sticking to my guns for now, though leaving open the possibility of concocting a fable in the future.
“No, I’m telling you,” I chuckle, “I have no idea. I mean, she kind of thought my friends were jackasses, but…”
“…no, that wouldn’t be it,” Peggy says.
“…other than that, she was kind of pissed because she was sick for a couple of days and felt like I wasn’t taking it seriously enough. But yeah…I have no clue.”
After we polish off our bottles and cobble together a bed on the living room, the encounter itself is less remarkable than all the other ornamentation surrounding it, the circumstances of how we wound up here. As expected, she’s pale, doesn’t have much of a body, but at least her face still holds up as solidly average under the harsh indoor light. She makes fun of my ratty boxers in casting them aside, with a laugh. Though claiming she “doesn’t really go” for married guys, this was ridiculously easy and, I suspect, a great deal more so because I was portraying myself as such. Wedding Rings 3, Pez Dispensers 0.
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