he was a half-hour early to meet his friends, so he decided to duck into a nearby sports bar and grab a beer and maybe see if they were showing the tour de france coverage.
scene: a narrow, wood-grained bar packed with small tv screens, each with its own silent display of baseball, soccer, and other sports. no cycling, though.
surveying the few empty seats, he sees two together. one is next to a fiftyish man with buzzed grey hair and khaki shorts talking furiously into his cell phone about what an asshole george steinbrenner was. the yankees owner had just died the day before and it was all over one of the tv screens. the other seat was next to an early-thirties blonde woman in a dress. she was pretty, but looked tired and distracted.
he chose the stool next to the red-faced cell phone man. it seemed like the more private seat of the two.
a minute passes and he can't seem to get the bartender's eye. he hears the blonde woman talking in his direction.
"is he talking about george steinbrenner?" she asks.
he looks over at her, unsure if she's talking to him.
"who? this guy?" he asks, motioning over his shoulder.
"yeah. what the hell is his problem? the guy just died. he shouldn't talk him down like that, even if he was an asshole."
he tacitly agrees, then scans the bar for the bartender.
she pulls an ipod out of her purse, then leans over to him across the empty stool and slowly, deliberately hands him the earphones. he stares at them blankly, unsure of the meaning of this gesture.
"can you untangle these?" she says thickly, "I can't seem to get them undone."
she seems drunk. no, beyond drunk, he thinks, but it's so strange for a pretty woman in a nice dress to be completely smashed in a sports bar at 5:30 in the afternoon. without a reason not to, he begins to untangle the mess of rubber-coated wires that she handed him.
they chat idly. she asks him what his favorite band is. "oh I dunno," he says, "it's so hard to pin down just one." he thinks up an easy answer. "radiohead is always a favorite."
"oh my god," she says with slow, exaggerated hand motions, "that's my favorite band!"
the bartender comes and he orders a yuengling. he finally gets the earphones untangled. "thank you so much," she gushes, "let me buy your beer."
"that's really not necessary," he says, but she insists. with heavy, slow movements she hands a crumpled-up bill to the bartender.
he drinks his beer and they keep chatting. she has a vodka & tonic in front of her but seems to not be drinking it, which he guesses is a good thing. they talk about jobs, about living in d.c. (she hates it; she's originally from new york), about sports teams. he realizes that she's only understanding about two-thirds of what he's telling her and she keeps repeating a few of the same questions to him. she tells him she hates her job, that she used to be a special ed teacher in san francisco and loved it.
"it's important to do work that you care about," he offers.
they talk about baseball. she tells him she roots for the tribe, says she lived in cleveland for a while and got to meet david justice. "once he gave me $50 to make sure I got home all right," she says without further explanation, "isn't that nice? he was nice."
she asks him his name. "oh, that's my dad's name!" she exclaims. "actually, he goes by jack. In fact, he's a bit of a jackass." he asks about her mother and her face collapses. she's immediately graven. "she died two weeks ago."
"I'm sorry," he pleads. "I'm so sorry."
they sit in silence for a while. he gets a call from his friends; they say they'll be meeting nearby in a few minutes. he feels sad and more than a little worried for the woman. he's trying to think of how to exit gracefully. this woman clearly needs a good friend, but he can't be that friend; she is a potential riptide of baggage and emotions.
"I guess I'm going to take my leave," he says. "it's been nice talking with you. thanks for the beer."
she starts to say something. he's worried she's going to ask for his phone number or e-mail address, and he doesn't want to give it to her but doesn't want to write down a fake, either. he pre-empts her.
"I hope you get to be a special ed teacher again someday."
he slips off the stool, shakes her hand goodbye, and exits. he later realizes that she seemed not drunk but disoriented and slow like his friend would get when she was on too much klonopin.
later that evening he passes the same bar, but from across the street. he glances in its direction, trying in vain to peer in the windows. he hopes the woman is long gone, safe at home.
