Patrons

The shades are pulled down by Mick before the summer sunsets. Mick is a regular: he spends every day, open to close, in the bar drinking Bacardi and Cokes and shots of Fireball. He buys drinks for everyone and tells them he loves them. He loves me the most; he’s proposed seven times. 

His facial veins match his red hair, and his arms are speckled in bruises that are as dark as frostbite. He’s in his early sixties with an adopted teen at home. He tells people his wife died from a flu vaccination, but he told me once that her body couldn’t take anymore, and he doesn’t talk about her until closing time. 

Mick throws a fifty down and says he’s gonna pick up a pizza on the way home. “Coming back?” I say. 

“You know it,” he says. 

And I do. 

Buffy refuses to sit on the left side of the bar because she has Mac D. She’s been divorced five times and loves to talk about her sex life. Most people sitting at the bar top have seen at least one of her nipples. Buffy drinks vodka sodas in a pounder and needs a napkin to wipe the lime off her hands after squeezing. 

She tries to hook her straw with her fat tongue and asks about me. I’ve learned my lesson with this question: no one actually wants to know. 

“Great,” I say, smiling and hopping a little. I feel happy after taking a shot in the back. “I have a date for WNGD.” Buffy grabs her phone and shows me a picture. She’s already told me this, so I know that WNGD stands for World Naked Gardening Day. She is sixty-two, and not only does she have a better sex life than I do, she is confident enough to pull weeds naked while a man she met online watches. 

A woman I’ve only just begun to recognize scoots down to sit by Buffy. She tells us about her tomato plants: where to get them and how to nurture growth. We don’t care, but we pretend to. 

When my patrons ask me how I am, I say I’m good, busy, but good. I could say that my life is messy, and I move from toxic to toxic, and I spend my time watching Kim K tutorials on how to contour my face in hopes that I’ll make more money if I am no longer myself. I’m good; I’m busy gets me a nod and smile as if my Daddy were calling me a good girl after I fetch him another beer. 

Mick’s back, and he says all his kid wants to do is play video games. I could say that it’s his fault because he’s never there, he’s here, but instead, I get us shots. “Damn kids these days,” he says. 

I pour beers for the men and vodka for the women and shake sugary liquor for the newly-legal. I allow myself a shot for every hour that passes because I tell myself I can’t handle the drunks when sober. 

Mick sits by Buffy and makes jokes about her wet wet pussy, and she laughs like she genuinely means it. People play pool together and request that I turn the volume up on the jukebox when their song comes on. Unfamiliar faces come and go and play pool and throw darts and dance and laugh and touch. 

A keg blows, and the tap sprays my face with white foam, making my mascara look wet. “I bet that’s not the first time someone’s blown in your face!” Clint says. A patron who wears four-hundred dollar cowboy boots and blazers and sells things on the radio. When I swivel the new keg to its place, my boobs nearly fall out and catcalls follow. I laugh like Oh well! and give them a little shake as I readjust. 

My oldest patron is named Dick, and he used to direct plays on Broadway. Without fail, he tips two bucks. He offers me fifty to take him out back and show him the girls. “Maybe for your birthday, Dicky,” I wink. He’ll be eighty-two in January, and I hope he’ll die by then so I won’t have to. 

The bar-back shows up, and we take a shot together. He hugs me, and the women tell us how cute we are, and the men pretend not to be jealous. We take a shot, and I know he’s in love with me, but I have a boyfriend that no one knows about because he isn’t allowed in the bar. Boyfriends are unpredictable, and mine’s a Gemini: moody like fire. According to the Zodiac Gods we are destined for each other. I don’t feel it when he’s cold, like winter mornings, but when he’s warm, I am a fucking Queen. I am everything. 

A month later, the tomato lady disappears, and it’s because she died of liver failure. Everyone at the bar will take a shot and cheer: “To the nice tomato lady!” 

In the new year, Lo, the pizza guy who drank Coors Light, will overdose. I just saw him the other night. He was sitting right there,” we all say. 

Jenn will crash her Honda into a nail salon. She was trying to quit, but the tremors––she lost control. 

Mick’s doctor will tell him to quit drinking, and for two days, he’ll switch to beer. A young drunk woman is scared of a man who got her a cab, so I sit her down and say: Don’t move. When I look up again, she’ll be gone. 

Steve will get a DUI, and we’ll all forget about him. 

An employee and friend will die of a seizure after two months of sobriety. We really loved her. We’ll attend her funeral and drink to her favorite shot: Tuaca and Red Bull. We’ll look at pictures of her when she was in her twenties, and we won’t recognize her because she wasn’t pickled. 

We cry at our losses and devour our poison and tell ourselves that only the good die young, so full of life, and we swear we won’t be like them. 

We won’t.