Tags
adventure, alcohol, bar, brooding, change, depression, drinking, fantasy, imagination, karaoke, life, relationships, travel, unsung hero
It would be several more hours before anyone woke up.
She swirled the ice in her glass with a practiced flick of her wrist and set the glass down square on the napkin, exactly where the water-ring had already left an impression. She watched the watched the trickles snake their way down the glass, watched the colors and light alternate as they went.
“Get another started for you?” Mark asked, pointing to the Long Island with his fingers but staring pointedly at her with his eyes. She felt the gaze.
“No, it’ll be good to finish this one.” Mark nodded, satisfied, and went back to washing dishes. He was always looking out for her.
Annabelle took another sip and turned to gaze around the bar. At the beginning of the night the bartenders and bus boys took care to clean the floor and leave neat bowls of peanuts all around. By now, the peanuts had turned to shells on the floor, the bowls were scattered among tables along with remnants of slurped-down cocktails and assorted foodstuffs from the kitchen. Mostly, the unpolished wood and red leather details were covered in trash.
Kenny and Marion were up on the little wooden platform dismantling the K.J. set.
Kenny fancied himself an unsung hero of the karaoke underbelly. The most music, the best kept library of performer’s cards, and if there were an award for enthusiasm, he would certainly earn it. More like, Kenny was the socially awkward librarian of karaoke. Sometimes, his enthusiasm would turn into aggression, other times he lie and say he’d left a set of music at home if he was too lazy to go to his van.
Marion was Kenny’s perfect paramour. A little off her rocker, Marion bought into Kenny’s self-proclaimed stardom and fulfilled the role of groupie and body-guard all at once. Mostly she seemed like an over-attached thrall.
Together, Kenny and Marion scared away customers with their antics and Annabelle had never been fully convinced that at least one of them didn’t have some sort of developmental disorder, but all-in-all they were a couple of older individuals who had found love and a mutual passion.
Annabelle turned back and snorted into her drink. The bittersweet oddity of it all deserved a toast.
At the far end of the bar sat Phil, the obligatory old man. A plump, sad-eyed, red-faced cliché hunched over a beer. Once, when he had finished more than a few-too-many Phil had tried to get Annabelle to go home with him. Mostly, she remembered him being a real gentleman about it when she had said no, with an acidity that could have melted diamonds.
It was all stewing in her gut. The years of memories she had formed here in this dingy bar and, looking at Phil and Kenny and Marion, all the memories to come – that was the most depressing thought of all.
Slipping some wrinkled cash under her napkin, Annabelle hopped from her bar stool and wrapped herself into her coat. The movement had made Mark look over and give her a nod goodbye.
A couple peanut shells followed Annabelle outside into the rain. It wasn’t the pleasant autumn sprinkle from that morning, but the kind that came with cold, worming its way through layers of clothes to find the uncovered nooks and crannies – settling at the back of the neck and the uncovered wrists.
She climbed into her car and turned the heater up, fogging up the windows before starting up the defogger. Holding her hands, sticky from the cold rain, up to the air vents for a moment’s respite. As she watched the fog clearing slowly from her windshield her gaze softened and her thoughts went back to the day she’d had. The mundane evolution of her life – class, work, home, class, work, home, class, work… Was this what her life was going to be? When she graduated, would it get better or become more of the same? Was it worth being alive in a world where everything was so dull and where even the colors were becoming bleached shades of grey?
No one had given her a choice when she was being born. No one has asked her if she consented to living in this world.
For the thousandth time the thoughts began to carry her off. She could pull out to the left and get on the freeway. She could drive out North or East and drive until she found someplace else, where she could be someone else, and everything would be different. She could sell all her possessions for a modest plot of land, waitress at a diner, live on a plain and write in her free time. She could live off the land and have a cow and chickens and grow plants. Maybe one day her car would break down and a handsome fellow would come to her farm to fix it and they would fall in love.
And then…
And then Annabelle’s windows had defogged. She pulled out of her space and down the lot over three speed-bumps, and checking both ways before turning, she went right out onto the street and drove home.