Chapter
17
I
pushed open the front door, a heavy plank affair that looked as if it had been formed from the trunk of a mighty oak. An eerie
creeeaaakkkk
followed me inside. I glanced at the door handle. It was fashioned from some fake gold metal and was made to look like an elongated leprechaun wearing an evil smirk.
Classy.
I half-expected a few seedy looking regulars glued to bar stools, seeming to have been there for eons. Actually, the chairs were upside down atop the tables and the only body in the place was of a woman around my age with a thick tangle of red curls, and biceps showing beneath a sleeveless black top that made me do a double take. Clearly a workout maven. I felt instantly weak and worthless. I was going to have to do something serious about exercise soon or risk my mother’s thickening waistline.
The woman was bent over a mop, swabbing the wooden floor down with repressed energy. She moved the mop in quick, hard strokes, her chin set. I could smell beer but the odor was surprisingly pleasant. Not stale and sour but inviting and fresh.
She stopped swabbing and gave me a hard look. “We’re not open.”
“I ... was just looking for someone. Mark McGruder?”
“You want my husband?”
She said it like a challenge. “Not really,” I stated matter-of-factly, an automatic response. “I just ...” I paused, thinking how to explain. She waited, and I forged on, “Mark and I dated about a hundred years ago and I’m just kind of reconnecting—checking in—with my exes. He’s not expecting me. Don’t ask me why I’m doing this because I’ve already forgotten.”
She leaned on the end of the mop. “Easy to forget things when it’s been a hundred years.”
I laughed. She took me completely by surprise. My initial impression had been that she was seething with anger or jealousy or something. Being with Mark could foster any number of unwelcome emotions.
“I’m Colleen,” she introduced herself. “The fool that married the man.”
“I’m Ginny Bluebell.”
“Oh, you’re that one.”
She sounded so knowing that I was instantly on alert. “That one?” I repeated.
“Better than most.”
“Well ... good.”
“What’ll it be?” Colleen turned the ‘closed’ sign I hadn’t noticed in the window to ‘open.’
I couldn’t imagine drinking at this hour. I glanced at the array of bottles behind the bar. Sunlight slanted through wooden blinds. Both the blinds and the bottles were dust-free. I was impressed. Product of Colleen’s work, not Mark’s, if I were any judge. “Irish coffee?”
She snorted, which could have meant anything, and circled to the back of the bar. With an economy of movement that signified long hours as a barkeep, she grabbed a clear glass cup in one hand, a bottle of Irish whiskey in another, poured the shot, set down the bottle and picked up the coffee pot. I decided not to comment that I preferred a little sugar in my drink as she topped off the coffee with a spurt of whipped cream and then drew a thin green line of creme de menthe across the top. She slid the cup my way. I glanced around for some sugar packets. None. Carefully, I dipped my tongue in the whipped cream. All I could think about were the calories. If I could catch about 10 percent of anorexia, just a mild case ... But being a little anorexic is kind of like being a little pregnant.
I was encouraged to see that Colleen was pouring herself a beer. It came out of the tap fresh and bright amber. Seeing my gaze, she asked, “Want one?”
“I think I’d better wait till eleven. I’ve got this to finish.” I hefted my Irish coffee.
“He’s still sleeping,” she said. I watched her press a cigarette between her lips and light it with a Bic. I decided not to point out California’s no smoking law. What the hell. It was her place. “Tell me about this checking off the exes thing.”
I shrugged. “My friends and I had this ... meeting, I guess, and somehow we all said we’d try to improve our lives. Deal with the biggest problems that are affecting us. I have a friend who’s basically anorexic.”
“Basically?” She exhaled with authority.
“Sometimes bulimic, I think. Not that she’s been diagnosed by a professional. And another friend has problems at work.” Note to self: ask CeeCee what’s up with the boss. “And another one’s trying to quit dating losers. She seems to be closest to realizing her goal.”
“How’re you doing?”
“I’m getting through the list. Like a purge.”
“Hmmm ...” She exhaled long and thoughtfully. “Mark and I have a son. He stays the weekends with my mother.”
I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to make of that. I examined her surreptitiously. She had a killer body but lines of weariness framed her rather full mouth, and her large brown eyes seemed dulled by time and disappointment. More signs of life with Mark? I felt a rush of relief that was purely selfish. I had dodged this particular bullet. The single life never looked better.
“Mark is unbearable before four o’clock,” she said. “If you want to risk it, I’ll go get him.”
“I do have a time constraint,” I admitted.
She drank half her glass, set it down, stubbed out her smoke, then pushed herself away from the bar. I gulped the rest of my Irish coffee, my eyes trained on the swinging doors through which she departed to the bar’s interior. I heard footsteps on stairs and realized she was heading to the second floor. When she returned a few minutes later, she looked a bit more grim. A moment later I heard a loud thunk behind her and Mark staggered into view.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” he cried upon seeing me, lurching my way.
Now I smelled the stale beer scent. He wrapped long arms around me and hugged me for all he was worth. I couldn’t breathe, which was just as well since the odor of his breath could have asphyxiated me on the spot. Colleen left quickly. So much for thinking she might have jealous thoughts. She seemed more than happy to let me carry the load.
“Hi, Mark,” I said a bit weakly.
“God ...” He let go of me to swing his way around the back of the bar. He poured himself a huge mug of beer and gulped it as if it were life-giving elixir. In the end he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. I don’t know why, but it was kind of sexy. Slob that he was rapidly becoming, he still had that charm. I felt its tug and was a bit dumbstruck. Maybe there
is
something wrong with me. Most women would think twice about being with a man who was coming off a drunk and thinking about starting a new one.
But he had that Viggo Mortensen,
Lord of the Rings
thing going for him: long dark hair, scruffy yet trimmed, short beard, blue eyes, sly smile ...
“Ya came down to see me, huh?” He grinned like a devil.
“Yep.”
“I’m married, y’know.”
“You don’t deserve her.”
He threw back his head with laughter. “She’s lucky to have me.”
It flooded back against my will: the reasons I’d run madly into his arms, away from Don and his rules. If I’d been in the market for lovemaking for the sake of lovemaking—which actually, I was, if you thought about it that way—Mark would be the kind of guy I’d want. But not married Mark. And well, not Mark anymore, either. I hadn’t forgotten the Black Death and I resisted the urge to cross myself in some way in an effort to ward off evil. I had survived my relationship with Mark with only a few scars. I’d run screaming into his arms, then screaming out of them. It had been a long, quiet period between Black Mark and Knowles-It-All, and an even longer one between Knowles-It-All and Nate the Nearly Normal. After Mark, I really thought I’d learned my lesson. Well, I’d learned
a
lesson, at any rate. No matter how attractive they may seem, men like Mark McGruder were to be avoided at all cost. It’s part of the female survivor guide. A part of me wanted to go after Colleen and try an intervention.
“Wanna beer?” Mark asked, pouring me one and himself another.
I took the glass mug and tentatively sipped. Beer, though it appeals in ways that defy explanation, has never been my drink. But a Ketel One vodka martini at eleven-thirty in the morning was a bad idea. So, I drank the beer and chatted with Mark, telling him why I’d come to see him.
At noon I switched to Ketel One. At four I was in the bag and I’d made a whole host of new best friends: Mark’s regulars, who had scattered in over the course of the afternoon.
“You can’t drive home,” Colleen told me. She’d reappeared at some point but by that time my vision was a little fuzzy.
“No shit,” I said. Vaguely, I recalled there might be something I was supposed to do. The thought slipped into my head and flew out.
“She’s staying with us,” Mark told his wife. Colleen seemed slightly perturbed. I mumbled that I couldn’t impose on them. Mark belched, then grinned. He had beautiful white teeth he didn’t deserve. I told him so and he reached across the bar, grabbed my face and kissed me full on the mouth.
The bar erupted in shouts and catcalls. Colleen gave me a pitying look and disappeared again. She had a tendency to swim in and out of the picture.
I said to the room at large, “I think I’m drunk.”
More hooting and hollering. I grinned. They loved me!
One of Mark’s burliest friends suddenly growled, “What’s that fucking noise?”
We all cocked an ear to listen. My cell phone was singing away in my purse. “Oh, shit,” I said, giggling, picking up my purse. “It’s my phone.”
Mr. Burly grabbed my purse, yanked out the still cheerily ringing phone, eyed it malevolently, punched the green button and stated grimly, “Shut the fuck up.”
I grabbed for it, suddenly alarmed. “That could be my mother!” Burly gave it up with a shrug and I said urgently, “Hello? Hello?”
“Virginia?” It was Don.
A jolt of sobriety hit me like a hammer. Not enough to totally kill the buzz, but enough to make me anxious. “It’s Ginny, Don.
Ginny
. Please. It’s not that hard.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m at a bar.”
“I thought you were at work.”
“Believe me, this is work.” I was proud of myself. Scarcely a slur in there. “You rang?”
“Are you going to be home soon?” He sounded prissy, pissed, and skeptical.
“Is my mom there?” I retorted, sounding equally prissy, pissed, and skeptical.
“Lorraine’s at the movies. She wore dark glasses.”
“Did she smuggle in popcorn in one of her big-ass purses?” I asked, delighted that Mom was doing something without Don.
“I don’t know.” He bit off the words.
I looked around. I didn’t want to lose my new friendships because I’d been yanked back to another time and place. Mark caught my eye and signaled
who is that?.
I said aloud, “You wouldn’t believe it.”
“What?” asked Don.
“I’m not coming back tonight. I’ve had too much to drink.”
“I’ll come get you ... Ginny.”
“Nope.”
“Just tell me where you are.”
“San Diego.”
A long, long pause. I listened hard. I could tell he was about to explode. “Fine,” he snapped out. “Let me know when you’re sober.” He hung up.
“What happened?” Mark asked.
I focused in on him. He was beginning to look better and better. It was a damn good thing he was married or I might have found myself doing something totally stupid. I scooped up my purse and asked, “Is there a motel within walking distance?”
Mark put his arm around my shoulders and led me through the swinging doors to the narrow stairway to the second floor. “I spend a lot of nights here,” he said.
“I’m not sleeping with you.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Colleen will break a bottle over my head if I even try. She likes you. So, you stay here, and I’ll go home with my lovely wife tonight.” He opened the door to a plain room with a sofa and a big-ass television. “Pity,” he said.
I collapsed on the sofa, my head spinning.
I woke up at three A.M., dying of thirst. It was as if all the cells in my body suddenly collapsed on themselves, crying out: WATER.
I could still hear noise from the bar below. Sure, it was after closing. The doors were undoubtedly locked. But a few hearty souls were still awake and undoubtedly imbibing. I determined I, too, would never be able to own a bar. The hours would shorten my life.
I stumbled downstairs and pushed through the swinging doors. Mark, Colleen, and a couple of gentlemen I couldn’t remember were drinking coffee. Well, Colleen was drinking coffee; the others were drinking coffee and whiskey. Mark was glassy-eyed and grabbing at his wife. She sidled away but he managed to get a piece of her shirt, dragging her back. She full on slapped him and he roared with outrage. Colleen started shrieking like a banshee and Mark yelled at the top of his lungs. Sexual tension thickened the air. I could almost smell a feral, primitive, lusty scent that seemed to pour out of them like pheromones.