Chapter 15 The Regular
Sam
I read the room before I pour the first drink. Who is having fun. Who is about to have too much. Who is alone because she wants to be and who is alone because nobody knew to come with her.
The woman in the corner has been here every night for five weeks. She is the second kind.
Same stool every night, in the corner with her back to the wall. Bourbon neat. She watches the show like she's starving for it. Leans forward. All attention. Whatever she came in carrying, she puts it down for the ninety minutes the lights are up.
***
A man tried to sit next to her a few weeks back. Bought her a drink she didn't ask for. Started telling her about himself. I watched him for thirty seconds. He met my eyes once. He found another seat before I finished pouring the next person's whiskey.
She didn't look at me when she noticed. Her shoulders dropped a quarter inch when she realized she didn't have to lose him on her own.
She hasn't looked at me directly in five weeks.
Tonight she does.
***
Some nights move slow. The encore ends and the room thins out, couples leaving with arms around each other, friend groups settling tabs, the entertained-for-an-hour crowd pulling on coats and calling cars. By the third drink it is only me and her and the dim lights coming down on an empty stage.
She is on her stool. I am behind the bar pretending to count the register.
She speaks first.
"You always count the cash when you're trying not to look at someone?"
I look up.
"Caught me."
"Several weeks of not looking. I was beginning to think I'd made you up."
"Made me up?"
"The man behind the bar who watches over the room without ever looking like he's watching." She taps her glass once. "Lets a woman drink in peace."
"Glad to be of service."
She tilts her head. "Did you build the place?"
"With help. A contractor, an architect, a permit office that took six months of my life. But it's mine."
"You don't talk much."
"No."
"That's not a criticism."
"Mm."
A small smile. Mostly for herself.
She takes a sip. Sets the glass down. Looks at me again. Doesn't look away.
"Are you married, Sam?"
"Was. Not anymore."
"Was it bad?"
"It was bad."
She nods like someone receiving information she already had.
"Mine is bad."
"I noticed."
She holds my eyes a second.
"I'm going to tell you the short version. Because you haven't asked. And something tells me that I can trust you, and I think I want to know you."
"All right."
"He cheated. I left. I'm in Chicago because nobody who knows me would think to look here. I have been sitting in your corner for five weeks because this is the only room where I can sit and not think about my marriage."
"You can keep sitting there."
"Thank you, Sam."
I pour her another. She doesn't order it. She doesn't refuse it.
She picks it up and looks at it. Holds it without drinking.
"I watched you a few weeks back make a guy stop hitting on me without saying a single word."
"Saw the angle of his shoulders. Didn't like it."
"Mm." She drinks. "All right then."
She isn't pretending she didn't notice. She isn't making me apologize for noticing her either.
***
She stays until last call. I lock the floor doors and walk her out into the cold.
The wind off the lake gets through her coat. She pulls it tighter.
"Walk you home?"
"I'm two blocks that way."
"Two blocks."
She looks at me. Considers.
"You don't have to."
"I know."
We walk. We don't talk. She stops in front of a door under a buzzer panel for a third-floor walk-up.
"Thank you for tonight."
"Thank you for telling me."
She nods. Goes inside.
I walk back.
***
I lock the floor doors from the inside. Stand in the dim of the empty room. The stage is dark. Glasses on the bar to wash. I don't move.
I haven't thought about Elise in a week.
I think about her now. It sits lighter than it used to.
I think about the woman who just left. The corner stool. How she leans in when the lights come up. The short version she handed me like she'd decided something about me on the walk to the bar.
I go upstairs and lie on top of the covers in the dark. She's married. She's wrecked. She's not mine to want, and I'm not going to make myself one more problem in a life that already has too many.
I tell myself that a few times. I'm awake a long time anyway.