Chapter 2 – Delphine
Chapter Two
Delphine
B uffalo has the most trash ass dating scene in all of America for black women.
I said it! Oh, you think it's bad being in some broke ass bartender's nasty ass polyamorous harem in Washington, D.C.
? You think scrapping for the last man without a drug charge in small town Mississippi is as bad as it gets?
You are dead ass wrong, okay? The worst and I mean the WORST city to date as a black woman in America, is Buffalo.
I have no problem with the fact that the men are all built like plumbers who show their ass crack on purpose.
I can ignore the fanatical obsession with a football team that always chokes in the damn playoffs.
Hell, I might even get used to the constant snow dumping all over me week after fucking week.
But... The men are demons.
I don't care what anybody says. Demons are born and they run, don't walk, to Buffalo, NY.
This time, I've been knocked so far and so hard onto my ass, that I'm at some Italian dive bar. Drinking alone on a Thursday night. Ain't that some shit?
It's some BUFFALO NEW YORK shit, that's what it is.
The cutesy cocktail names just make my mood worse. "The Blizzard" is some variation of a White Russian, and I've had ENOUGH of White Russians. Or Ukrainians. Or whatever the hell that man was. Romanian? He lied about so much, he could have lied about that too.
The chipper bartender is working her ass off overtime for tips that will send me into further credit card debt. I work in IT at the library, so I can’t earn tips, but I wish I could earn a tip or two hundred considering how much time I spend explaining what a .PDF is to my elders.
I can’t bring myself to care about how much I spend tonight. I need the liquor to hit me like a bus and take me away from my sorrows and hopefully into the arms of a sexy man who owns his own HVAC business.
"You look gloomy!" she says in an annoyingly up-beat tone. "Is it because of the Josh Allen thing?"
There's always something with Josh Allen. If it's not his fragile throwing arm, it's the rest of the football team failing to support him while Patrick Mahomes comes flying down the football field towards the end zone.
"Yeah," I respond, lying through my teeth to avoid trauma dumping. "Football is just–”
"I met him once," she says. "He is the most down-to-earth guy. If it weren't for Hailey Bieber, I would have a chance with him."
He's married to another Hailee, but I don't bother correcting her.
"Anyway," the bartender says. "The music starts in twenty minutes so you can work out that Josh Allen energy on a hottie."
I shudder at the thought of another ‘hottie’. I get caught up too easily to cast my lot with a hot man. The ones who look like plumbers torture me enough. A man who has women throwing themselves at him cannot be trusted.
"No, thank you. I've had enough hotties,” I say with a dramatic sigh that curls the bartender’s lips upwards. I’ve slipped from small talk into real talk before I realized what was happening.
Damn it. Bartenders are like therapists with quicker access to medicine. They have a way of dragging the tea out of me faster than boiling water over a tea bag.
"Oh? Bad breakup? Were they a Chiefs fan?" she asks, mentally counting the drunken tips she can extort from me, I imagine.
I can't exactly complain about the football talk when I played along with the Josh Allen comment.
Whatever. I might as well spill the tea. I push my glasses up my nose and nod, "Yup, bad breakup. He was a thief. And a liar. And he slept with a friend of mine who was crashing on my couch."
"EW!" she shrieks with validating disdain for the situation. "What an asshole. Did you throw out the couch?"
I wince. It gets so much worse.
"They left with it in the back of his GMC Sierra."
She gasps and shakes her head. "That's it. You're getting another Blizzard on me ..."
I'm barely done with the first blizzard and it's enough to get me drunk, but this woman isn't going to let me get out of here without another drink, a higher tip and a lot more gossip.
"I can already tell you're too beautiful for him," she says as she shakes up her alcoholic brew in a stainless steel shaker.
"I have the worst luck with men. I don't know what it is."
She nods. "I get it. My last boyfriend had a micro-penis."
She pours the shaken part of the drink and then adds creamy white liqueur to the top. Just smelling the drink feels like enough to get me drunk. Phew! That shit is strong. Maybe that’s a good thing.
"You need to just shake it off, like my hero Taylor Swift would say," the bartender says. "A new guy will be right around the corner. You'll see."
"Hopefully he isn't holding a crowbar and a length of rope..." I mutter.
She laughs aggressively and then moves on to the pair of fratty looking dudes who just walked up to the bar. I sip on my drinks, alternating between the strong, fresh blizzard and the old one watered down by ice cubes.
Loud voices coming through the front door grab my attention.
"You're an ASSHOLE, Luigi. That's why it's so hard for you."
The woman who just loudly called this 'Luigi' character an asshole stomps up to the empty bar stool next to mine and snaps her fingers impatiently for the bartender. Luigi glares at her and I wonder if they’re together until I spot their very subtle but present family resemblance. Their eyes are the same shape. Same nose. You never know in Upstate New York but… I think they’re siblings and not lovers. I would gamble on it.
"Rachel!" the presumed says to the bartender. "I need tequila shots or I'm going to DIE!"
Rachel bounces over to us and rolls her eyes at the woman who just walked in. They must know each other, so this woman is either a regular or one of the many residents of Upstate New York who has never bothered to leave.
"Is that your brother?" Rachel asks while she grabs tequila off the top shelf. “He looks angry.”
The sullen man searches for the darkest table in the darkest corner of the room and he doesn’t seem to notice that since he walked in… everyone is staring.
"Uh huh. Hey," his sister turns her attention to me, drawing my gaze away from her tall, brooding brother. "I'm Angela. What's your name? I love your glasses."
"Delphine."
Angela nods enthusiastically. "Cute name, Delphine. Word of advice? Stay single."
"How did you–”
"No offense," she interrupts. "You seem a little too normal to be involved with a guy from Buffalo. You don't have that beaten down look about you."
"Thanks."
Rachel slides over two clear tequila shots, giving Angela a smirk as she watches her lean dramatically over the bar for them. I assume Angela plans on bringing one to her brother, but she pounds back one shot quickly, then the other before she turns to me.
"Waiting for a friend?"
"Nope. I'm here alone."
"Good," Angela says. "So am I. Let's get to know each other, Delphine... What do you do for work?"
We talk about my job in IT at the library, which Angela claims to find very interesting.
Angela says that she’s an artist, but she doesn’t specify what kind and strangely dodges the question whenever I ask.
Her brother eventually leaves his dark table and orders his own drink before he disappears back to his table in the corner of the bar.
A woman with huge boobs and a low-cut top comes up to his table with a beer and he shoos her away before she can sit down. So he must really want to be alone.
I don’t think about him much after he orders and disappears into the background because Angela keeps entertaining me with stories from her days at dance school and how much she hates being back in Buffalo, which is definitely relatable.
I am fully on the Buffalo hate train since this is the second guy I’ve been with that fucked one of my friends.
I’m thirty-four. I can’t be dealing with this bullshit for too much longer.
My eggs are going to mutate and stage an uprising against my childlessness right along with my mother, who is way too desperate for a grandchild in this economy.
“Listen,” Angela says after a long-winded story about the last dance project she worked on before an accident she had. “I’m a yapper. I talk too much. Let me get you a whiskey shot and we’ll dance it out before I bore you to death. You can dance, right? Not to be racist but–”
“I can dance.”
‘Not to be racist, but’ is not a sentence I want to allow any white person time to finish. Just go on ahead and be quiet instead of tripping over landmines. It’s the best way to keep the peace.
“Rachel!” Angela shrieks at an unnecessarily high volume.
Whiskey shots materialize in front of us. Angela locks eyes with me and then hands me a whiskey shot.
“To our new friendship.”
I smile and meet her gleaming gaze with as much enthusiasm as I can muster. She seems… nicer than anyone I’ve met in the while.
“Hell yeah, girl,” I reply, smiling and taking comfort in the universe’s ability to provide. Just when you’re down about a man, the universe reminds you that female friends will always be there for you and never let you down the same way a man will. The shot burns.
WOO!
The whiskey fires its way down my throat with painful slowness. Damn, the top shelf whiskey really is better because even the burn feels better than the cheap shit.
But maybe it just tastes so good because it’s the last thing I remember from the bar that night.