THE BAR
By Duncan
I was enjoying my ride in my two-seat Mean Yellow convertible back to Indianapolis from Metamora, passing through Morristown.
The speed limit indicated that I should slow to a crawl. I pulled back on the manual transmission to the third position. In fact, the speed limit posted was so slow that I only had to guess the town council had decided to slow people down so that the masses could see what the small town had to offer.
After all, isn't that what the town council is designed to do? Then again, I felt "John Drams” needed to earn a few extra dollars from the unsuspecting “lead foots” that ignored the posted speed limit.
I noticed a small bar on Main and decided to stop. I turned the Mean Yellow around and found a safe place to park next to the used car lot. I crossed the small two-lane street, walked to the entrance, and pulled on the heavy wooden door.
The place was deserted. The room was very long, with high ceilings. Several stagnant fans draped the ceiling. Big round tables with chairs askew were scattered over the heavily used wooden floors. The tavern had the lingering smell of stale cigarette smoke.
It was four in the afternoon. I slowly walked past the tables and moved to the back of the room, where the bar was located. A woman was sitting at the end of a long wooden bar, making love to her whiskey and coke.
I assumed she might be the bartender. I walked closer.
“Is this place open for business?”
The woman sitting at the bar was dressed in black. She had a large broach draped around her neck. She had sad eyes and long, disheveled hair. She turned her head slightly toward me, and without answering, she looked back at her cocktail glass. She threw her head back and took a long drag on her cigarette. She exhaled the smoke from her mouth and nostrils and said,
“I am here, aren’t I?”
The room felt tired, and the woman at the end of the bar was a perfect bookend—tired, worn out, and perhaps used.
I walked closer and decided to take a seat next to her. I still assumed she was the bartender getting ready for a long night ahead behind the bar.
Behind me, I could hear footsteps on the worn wooden floor. I turned to see who else was in the building besides the old woman and me.
I focused on a pretty peroxide blond in a skimpy black party dress. My first reaction was that she looked and dressed like a kewpie doll at a carnival. She seemed out of place in this run-down tavern.
She looked to be in her mid-thirties. She had a round tan face and was wearing thick lipstick. Her arms and shoulders were bare and tan. Her fingernails were painted a garish pink to match her brassy pink lips. The black eyeliner around her eyes was dark and heavy—too heavy for my taste.
She was sporting way too many bracelets on her left arm. I could tell the bracelets were cheap and made of plastic. The colors were childlike: pink, lime green, bright orange, black, and silver.
I wondered where she found those bracelets at a children’s store? In addition, hanging on her ears were oversized round earrings swaying back and forth. The large round gold rings would touch her bare tan shoulders as she moved.
The dress was black and had lots of lace. It had a plunging V-neckline and was very low cut. Two small straps supported the weight of this very healthy grown woman. She also wore cheap, dime-store necklaces around her neck that danced in and out of her cleavage as she moved behind the bar. Her skirt was short, and her legs went all the way to the top. She was the bartender, getting the bar ready for the night.
I watched her parade as she walked from one end of the bar to the other. She finally walked up to me, purposefully leaned over, and said, with a big high school cheerleader smile.
“What can I get you, sweetie?”
