“Hey, Baby!” Woody called out as he entered the bar. He was dressed in his usual garb of slim black pants, a short white sleeved shirt, a skinny black tie, and a beige three quarter length over coat and a pork pie hat set back on his head framing his face.
He wasn’t unattractive. He wore black horn rimmed glasses that were too big for his face. Behind his glasses were some beautiful blue eyes. His short black hair was combed to one side with just enough Brylcreem to keep it in place. He carried a custom made pool cue in a black leather case.
“Give me a pitcher of beer one glass at a time,” he said jokingly as he slapped a $20 bill down on the bar. “Ha! I’ll take another city for it!” Woody said as he gulped down the first one.
Kristie smiled big at her favorite customer, poured him another glass, and got ready for a night of fun. She really liked her job although it was hard at times to make ends meet. It wasn’t just the money, but her energy. She was trying to balance her bar tending job at night with her college classes in the daytime.
She loved talking to Woody especially. He knew about all the philosophers, major religions, epochs in history, and jazz. So, why was he hanging out at Tommy’s Joynt – a working man’s watering hole? He was a bookie and had done some time in the joint. He taught her how to play the dozens… trading insults back and forth. No one really knew what he actually did as a cover job, but if you wanted to score some weed or speed, you asked Woody.
He wasn’t the type of guy she’d go out with and she wondered if he ever got any since she never saw him with a woman. She guessed he must have paid for it or taken it out in trade to cover a habit. He just wasn’t her type, but she loved talking with him, playing pool, imagining situations where different characters in history would meet up in an odd mash up and discuss their various points of view.
As the night wore on and he got drunker and drunker, he began to smell. He smelled like piss, vomit, and failed kidneys. He had her call him a cab. He always took a cab home. She smiled sadly as she cleaned up the bar, emptied the ashtrays, wiped down the tables, washed the glasses…. Who would care for him, feed him, clean his house? She worried. She had a soft spot for drunks.
She had learned not to drink on the job after the first few nights of getting blitzed, cutting herself on a broken ashtray, stumbling around in front of Boss as he swept the floor and she finished her side work.
She learned to pour the drinks people bought for her and let them sit under the bar out of sight from the customers. She would take one or two obligatory sips and raise the glass in cheers of thanks in their presence and then when they weren’t looking, she’d dump the flat remainders out into the funnel in the sink.
She really liked this job! She played pool, shuffleboard, rolled the dice for the juke box, talked and joked with the customers and made a little money too. Boss offers her a ride home and she accepts gratefully. It has been a long shift.
She doesn’t expect Clark to be standing there waiting for her in the front yard frozen like a deer in the headlights. “Who is that guy?” Boss asks. “Maybe we should call the police?” A well dressed black man holding a paper bag standing alone in an all white residential neighborhood was suspect in the early 70’s.
“No, he’s cool. He’s a friend of mine,” Kristie explains.
“A friend of yours?” Boss is suspicious. “What’s he doin’ here at 2:00 AM?”
“Oh, he’s waiting for me… We’re gonna have a drink and talk… that’s all…”
(“Yeah, right. And after that I’m gonna suck his big black dick and fuck his brains out!” She thinks to herself, exasperated by his overt racism).
The next night she goes into work. Everyone seems to know about some black guy waiting for her at 2:00 in the morning. After work, Boss tells her that he’s made other plans for her shift. Essentially, she’s fired.
(“Racist asshole!” She thinks).
“That’s alright,” she says aloud imitating Woody’s demeanor. “I’ll just take another city for it.”
Over the remaining years of her life, she saw Woody in many of her future customers, employees, and even her own father. The classic small man, intelligent, funny, and helpless to alcohol addiction. She didn’t see Clark again for 30 years until she happened on him while surfing the social network.
(First published 10/20/11)
