Siren's Garter: Issue One August 2016 (19 page)

She watched him in the mirror
behind the bar. Seemed like the nice type of man, with a nice
smelling musky cologne that she thankfully couldn’t smell from this
far away and easy dimples in his cheeks. Not the type to be chasing
a girl with tattoos on both arms.

Waiting for a date? Probably… He
sat tall, back straight, shoulders relaxed.

Tonight the bar was hot.
Uncomfortably so. Cheryl’s panties felt wadded up in her ass crack,
but maybe only because she was working so hard. She had bitched to
Robert to fix the air or she’d leave for good this time. Bound to
happen one day, anyway. Problem was, she enjoyed her night job, and
the rent on the upstairs apartment was just right for a
student.

Cheryl went up to the man, and
wiped away peanuts and spilled beer from the previous customer.
Squatter’s Dive smelled constantly of spilled beer, peanuts, and
fried cheese. Even on Saturday mornings when Cheryl came in to mop
the floor, the smell was ever present.

The music was usually good, though
tonight the guitarist and singer were out of key with each other.
The cheese was always great.

“
What’s your poison?” She leaned
forward, elbows on the bar, letting her low-cut tank top fall open
a tad. Cheryl wasn’t well endowed, but the men tipped well when she
flashed a little skin.

He turned around in the barstool
and flashed her a smile. His teeth were pearly white, and damned if
he didn’t have a twinkle in his eyes. Perhaps it was the funky blue
and green lighting in the bar.

“
Bacardi and Coke,” he said. He
glanced down at her breasts, and then looked her in the face. “No
ice, please.”

For once, Cheryl was disappointed a
man stared into her eyes instead of lower.

“
Sure thing, sweetie.” She tossed
a paper coaster in front of him.

He turned away, gazing again at the
front doors. Like many of the guys who drank here, he’d probably
leave with a girl on his arm.

Cheryl would have her law books,
and she’d sleep naked with a battery operated toy.

The band hit the final chords of
the song they were on and let the reverb hang too long. The drummer
crashed the cymbals as if he wanted to purposely annoy every dog in
a five block radius.

Usually
the music was good. Tonight, Robert had hired a doozy of a
band. They were retro-grunge with out of season flannel shirts and
acid-eaten jeans. Cheryl couldn’t even remember their
name.

She made the drink and brought it
to him. When the “music” died down enough for normal sound, she
leaned forward again.

“
Cheers, mate,” she
said.

He glanced back over his shoulder
and grabbed the glass, hand just a hair away from her left boob.
His mouth moved in what appeared to be a “thank you”, but the band
had already started up again. Sounded like “Kick Start My Heart”,
but without any discernible bass or recognizable lyrics.

Cheryl served, chatted, and flirted
with her other customers. Old guys with receding hairlines and
beer-bellies, handsome punks with pretty dates, ladies on girl’s
night out.

The man with the twinkle in his eye
sat alone, but gave up his vigil on the front door, drink still not
downed. He stared at Cheryl, and when she stared back with a wink
and a smile, he found his rum and soda more interesting.

A drunk at table five threw a beer
bottle at the stage, and hit the lead singer below the belt. The
bottle left a liquid trail from his crotch down the torn up jeans
to his fire-engine red Chuck Taylors, and shattered on
stage.

The singer yelped and jumped back.
The guitarist kept smashing the fretboard, face hidden by massive
dreadlocks.

Bob the bouncer (not to be confused
with Robert the manager) picked up the guy at table five by the
scruff of the neck. The drunkard flailed his arms all the way to
the door, smacking other patrons in the head on the way
past.

Meanwhile, the singer knocked over
his microphone, kicked the bass drum hard, and stormed off stage to
the back room.

The dreadlock guitar boy caught a
clue, stopped played mid-measure, and looked confusedly to his
band-mates. They all walked off stage.

The entire bar applauded and
cheered.

Cheryl used the humorous situation
as a mask to keep smiling and nodding. She made her way back to the
other end of the bar.

“
Does this happen often?” said the
roguish man in the black shirt.

“
Only on Saturdays,” said Cheryl.
“Must be the full moon.”

“
I should come here more
often.”

“
Waiting for a lady friend?”
Cheryl couldn’t help herself. She half hoped the lady was a tramp.
Or didn’t show up at all.

There really was a twinkle. His
eyes were dark, Mediterranean. Italian descent?

“
Yeah.” Another good look at his
pearly whites. “She recommends this place. Said she comes here all
the time.”

“
Oh?” said Cheryl. “I work here
all the time, seems. Maybe I know her.”

“
Perky. Blond. About my
height.”

“
You described half the women
here.”

“
At least I didn’t describe you.”
He lifted his glass in salute, then, when thinking about his
phrasing, meekly retreated the toast with slumped
shoulders.

Cheryl smacked his wrist like a
school teacher disciplining a youngster, leaning forward on the bar
again, this time on only one elbow. She had dyed black hair,
originally mousy brown, and sure in hell wasn’t perky in the way he
meant. About the right height though, or so she guessed. Hard to
tell from the wrong side of a bar.

“
What are you gawking at anyway?”
she said.

“
Oh. Nothing.” He sipped his rum
and Coke.

She poked his elbow. “Come on. I
won’t tell your girlfriend.”

“
Just admiring your
tattoos.”

Cheryl had a pair of twin dragons,
one on each arm. Their tails wrapped around each other at her
shoulder blades. The lithe bodies slithered in spirals down her
arms.

“
Check it out.” She pressed her
forearms together. The dragons’ tongues kissed at top of her
wrists.

“
Wow,” he said. “I… I’ve never
seen that before.”

“
Hope you never do again,” said
Cheryl, winking. “Makes a great conversation starter here. Means I
have to wear long sleeves at court.”

“
You at court often?”

“
Only when I’m bad.”

“
What? I took you to be the warm
cuddly type. My mistake.”

“
Fine, mister,” Cheryl laughed.
“But you only get one!”

A woman came in the door right
then. Tall, blond, perky. With a Gucci bag and a cell phone pressed
to her ear.

“
Date’s here,” Cheryl
pointed.

He turned around. Whatever slouch
was in his shoulders disappeared. Color flushed in his cheek and
ear. Cheryl found that cute.

The blond bitch couldn’t be good
enough for him.

“
Not her,” he said.

She was glad. For him, of
course.

“
She’ll show up,” Cheryl said.
“Flag me down when you want a another, okay?”

She didn’t intend a double meaning
there.

He nodded anyway, the dimples
returning.

She attended her other customers.
Canned music now played from the speakers. Cheryl refilled his rum
and soda. Then got him a Killian’s. And a Rolling Rock.

More people flooded the bar, then
left. Until after midnight the bar was near empty, odd for a Friday
but no bother. The music was a quiet background beat. Bob mopped
the floor. The line cooks punched out. Cheryl did her share of
cleaning, and put on a fresh pot of coffee.

The full body bean aroma clashed
and mixed with the smell of bleach and cleaning suds.

The man in the black shirt
remained, alone on the same damn stool at the end of the bar,
slouching over his beer bottle as if it were his only friend in the
world. No perky blond hung on his arm.

The twinkle most certainly wasn’t
there.

2

Cheryl set two ceramic mugs in
front of the mystery man who got stood-up, and poured coffee. Steam
rose, perking her up after a long afternoon and night of work. Her
feet were sore as hell inside her tennis shoes, the ache throbbing
it’s way up her calves and thighs.

Only the stragglers stayed behind,
and they weren’t hard to take care of.

“
Coffee’s on me,” she
said.

“
Thanks,” he said. “Looks like I
need it?”

The reek of rum and beer
overshadowed the nice cologne he’d come in with. His speech was
slurred and slow. One of a bartender’s superpowers is translating
drunk talk. Sometimes that meant smiling and nodding at the right
moments.

She didn’t want to just smile and
nod for him. No, this man deserved so much more, and maybe she
could at least keep him company.

“
Looks like you lost a fist fight
to a kitten,” said Cheryl, extending her red polished nails into a
claw. “I could add some scratch marks to make it more
convincing.”

He laughed. Might’ve been the booze
doing the work for him, but it sounded genuine from the pit of his
stomach.

“
Pete,” he said.

Cheryl introduced herself. Pete
grabbed her hand and shook it, squeezing her knuckle bones ever so
slightly. He held on a long moment too much, eyes tracing the
dragon’s curved body up her wrist and forearm, to her bare
shoulder.

“
I’m sorry she didn’t show,” said
Cheryl. She meant it too. Nobody deserved to go home lonely.
Especially a man like Pete.

Pete sipped his coffee. “Wow,
that’s hot!”

“
The better to sober you,” she
said.

“
Isn’t your job to get people
drunk?”

“
It’s a complicated affair.” She
brought the coffee to her nose, sniffed it. Smelled bitter enough
to slay any bad mood, strong enough to resurrect the dead. “Need
cream or sugar?”

“
Both, please,” said Pete. He
sipped, and his face scrunched. He raised an eyebrow in mock
astonishment. “Wondering if you were killing me with whatever this
is.”

Cheryl turned around to grab the
creamer and sugar bowls. In the mirror behind the bar, she could
see Pete. Watching her. Her jeans hugged her hips like a second
skin, exactly why she wore them when working. She was used to men
staring, occasionally touching and being too forward. Part of the
job, and she had ways to discourage without being off-putting. The
attention was sometimes annoying, infuriating when from the wrong
men, and—amazingly—at the same time empowering.

She stalled, letting Pete stare.
Allowing him to imprint the image in his head.

“
So,” she said, spoiling his view
by turning around. She set the cream and sugar by his cup. “Tell me
about her.”

“
What? Oh,” he said. “Nothing you
want to hear.”

“
Pete,” said Cheryl, and handed
him the stir straws. “I’m a bartender. What else do you think I do?
Besides get you drunk and then sober you with radioactive
coffee?”

He chuckled, shaking his head,
picking an orange colored straw and stabbed it into his coffee.
Pete dumped two creams and three sugars, and stirred.

“
I cleaned the entire house,” he
said at last. “Vacuumed the floors. Cleaned the bathtub and toilet.
Washed a load of towels. Had fresh food on hand for
breakfast.”

“
That’s a lot of work for a
no-show,” said Cheryl.

Pete waved his hand, nodding
sagely. He blew the steam off his coffee and took a another
tentative sip. No scrunch or evil eye glare.

She leaned forward, on her elbows,
not directly in front of him this time. She wasn’t working for a
tip anymore. The money was good tonight, near five hundred in cash.
And he was nearly the last customer. A sacred bond existed between
bartender and the final straggler to leave. It was the one-on-one
attention with a stranger, the desire to notice and be noticed, and
be the only two people in the universe for a moment.

He still glanced over at her
breasts.

This time, the attention was
empowering.

“
We met at a birthday party,” said
Pete. “Mutual friend. Buddy of mine, in fact.”

“
Not a bad place to
meet.”

“
Except when that band is
playing,” he pointed to the stage. “Last time the lead singer
dumped a kegger on his head and fell on top of the crowd. The mosh
pit let him fall on his ass.”

“
Too funny.”

“
Can’t think of the band’s name,”
he said.

“
Me neither.”

Damn the two word responses! What
was wrong with her tonight?

They sipped coffee, the silence
hung in the air between them like an Arabian java bean cloud.
Cheryl stretched her legs out, one by one, the hamstrings and
calves burning. Even though she couldn’t wait to feel the cool
touch of lube on her clit, Cheryl didn’t want to go upstairs to her
electric vibrator just yet. The night was too early, and Pete was
too sexy. She’d never study tonight, even if she had to take the
bar tomorrow at eight sharp.