Hey, You

Truth or Dare.  It's time to TRY and tell the story of the barmaid.  What the hell time is it, anyway?  Waiting on the sun.

No matter.  Some stories are timeless.  Not so sure about this one, though.  

We decided to drive down the coast to a restaurant in another town.  But oops!  I made a mistake.  We had passed the restaurant I was talking about miles before in another town.  I hadn't been to the coast in so long. . . .  It didn't matter, though, because T and I were not talking about the same restaurant in the first place.  

We were on Highway 1 and had to cross the bridge over the river to get back to the coast.  It is a lovely river and the bridge is high so that you see miles of river and mangrove from a god's view.  It was late in the day, a beautiful golden hour, and I nearly wept from the beauty of the thing I had seen most of my life but now not for a very long while.  

But that is not the tale.  

There are two restaurants in town that you can never get into without a wait, and tonight, the lines wrapped 'round the buildings.  T had never been to one of the two, the one with the rooftop seating, and that place seemed less crowded, so that is where we went.  

"I've got to piss like a racehorse," T said as he went to find a restroom.  

"How long did they say the wait was?" I asked man standing out of line against the wall."

"I don't know," he said. "I haven't gotten to the hostess yet."

The line was at a standstill, so I walked ahead to see what I could see.  What I saw was T talking to a barmaid.  He saw me and pointed to two empty seats at a small bar.  

"Is it O.K. if we take these two?" T asked her.  

"Honey, you two can take whatever you like."

Cha-ching.  $20.  Boom.  This girl knew what she was doing.  She was a moneymaker.  

We were seated next to the station where she was mixing drinks. 

"You two can watch me make drinks all night."  She said that without ever stopping.  She was making drinks for the entire downstairs restaurant, and as the waiters and waitresses put down their orders, she would glance and mix without pause.  She was a perpetual motion machine, but it didn't keep her from talking.  

"What can I get you?" she queried.  

T got a chocolate tequila martini.  No kidding.  I was shocked, too.  I had the usual Negroni.  

She brought the drinks and two menus.  

"Can I bring you starters?"

"Pan seared scallops wrapped in bacon sounds good?" T asked me.  

T's a talker and the girls like him.  I'm a listener, and sometimes in the past. . . . 

It was the usual thing--how long have you been working here, blah blah blah.  Then. . . "Are you married?"

"I'm getting a divorce," she sneered.  

"Kids?"

"Three."

WTF?  She couldn't have been over 19.  

"Wait, what. . . you have three kids?"  I was astonished. 

"We were only going to have one, but that guy couldn't pull out of a driveway," she quipped.  She said she was 30.  

"What?!?!?"

The couple sitting at the bar next to us apparently knew this, and the woman looked at me and said, "Can you believe it?"

"No."  I looked at the barmaid who hadn't stopped mixing drinks for a second.  The servers came cautiously to her on tiptoes like nervous cats, and I could tell they weren't messing with her.  

"Oops," she said looking me in the eye, "that wasn't right."  She grinned and kept mixing.  

"Three kids and a job.  Do you have a lot of support?"

She frowned. "Not really."

"Where are your kids tonight?"

"With my ex."

"Wait.  You are getting a divorce and have an ex?  How many times have you been married?"

"Just one.  I already consider him my ex."  She sneered.  

"Well what did you like about him when you met him?"

"I met him at A.A.  We were both court ordered."

"Oh, sure. . . there's a formula for success.  It's pretty weird you went to A.A. and are a bartender.  Is it hard?"

"Oh, no.  I drink. I've had two DUIs since then."

T and I were just shaking our heads and laughing.  We'd finished the scallops and the best pesto pasta I'd ever tasted.  

"Do you guys want dinner?"  

We took her recommendation, a seared tuna steak on a potato pancake with edamame and crunchy noodles.  We ordered wine.  

She worked and we chatted.  Dinner came out and holy smokes, the tuna steak was huge.  It was a good call.  

While we ate, she mixed, but she was up for talking.  

"I can top that," she said in response to one of our queries.  "I'm a felon."

My head spun.  

"For what?"

"Xanax."

Holy shit.  It was the whole catastrophe.  I looked at her for any signs of rough strife, any hint of criminality, any telltale signs.  Nothing.  Her face was benign.  

"Do you have a lot of support with the kids now?"

"My mother watches them once in awhile, but she's not really into it."

"Brothers and sisters?"

"Not really.  I was adopted."

There it was!  It was genetic.  

Chat chat chat.  Then T did what he had been doing all day.  

"This guy is the best photographer I know."

"Really," she said offhandedly.  

"Yea."  He picked up his phone.  "Do you want to see some of his work?"

"Uh. . . sure."  Again offhandedly.  

"I don't know,' I said shaking my head, but T already had the phone pointed in her direction.  He was scrolling.  She looked at me and said, "Wow. Those are great."

"Thanks.  Wanna make some pictures?"

She quit mixing for a minute and punched her name and number into my phone.  Yea. . . she wanted to make some pictures.  

T said, "Let me see your phone."  He looked at her name, then typed something into his.  In a minute his eyes were popping.  He'd found her Instagram page.  He put his phone under the bar and turned it to me.  Yea. . . our girl was no church lady.

One last drink for the road.  The bar was incredibly stocked.  They had seemingly everything in the liquor store.  I ordered a scotch.  When she poured it, she just looked me in the eye and grinned.  Yea, it was a good pour.  

Dinner done, the check always arrives, and it was a good one, but I had no objections.  Dinner had been great and the company even better.  The price never matters as long as you get your money's worth.  I felt I had and tipped accordingly.  

"What nights do you work?" T asked her.  

"Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday."  

"We'll be back."

The road home is always the road home.  My first day out had been a pretty good one.  I was full with it now.  We drove through the dark to the interstate half an hour away through moonlit southern prairie and pine.  T put on some music and we recounted the day's highlights.  

Bike Week.  What a concept.  What a freak show.

What a girl.