In the booth closest to the swinging entrance doors, a red-haired woman spoke of her father. She has six pierced beads on her left ear and wore a red wool sweater with black leathery boots.
In the booth adjacent, two labor workers bantered over how many beers they could drink before they permanently damaged their liver.
On a bar stool farthest from the door and closest to the lavatory, a man holds a Heineken with his right hand, resting his palm on the laminated spruce.
A younger man sits down next to him, despite the bountiful selection of seats that were at least two spots away.
Knowing this was an obtrusive but otherwise deliberate gesture, the Heineken man grunts in response. He looks at the newcomer: oily, matted hair that paralleled his Rolex and grey slacks, a prominent nose bridge that connected his fivehead and sharp nose. He could see the hairs within his nostrils, and cracked lips that signified the man had enough sense use chapstick but habitually licked them off afterwards. Everything about this unexpected character juxtaposed another detail that he inhibited. It was, frankly, a bit unnerving.
“Hello,” the fivehead says.
He spoke! The Heineken man released his fingers from the can.
“Yup.”
“May I sit here?”
No, he thought. I want you to sit as far away from me as possible. Matter of fact, I want you to leave this establishment and comb your hair, and learn the fact that licking your lips after applying ointment is a thing only dense people do.
‘Sure, no problem.”
“Thanks.”
They sat for a while. The bartender was casting glares at the new man, for he did not purchase any alcoholic beverages, or any beverage at all. If the man had arrived two hours later, when the bar was at its peak, he would’ve grabbed him by his collar and tossed him out onto the wet pavement like trash in a compactor.
“My name is Brand,” the man says.
“Okay.”
“I was fired from my job twenty minutes ago.”
The bartender coughs and attends to an imaginary patron opposite the two.
“Oh. A shame, that is,” Heineken replies.
When the beer drinking man was under a certain amount of pressure, he had a tendency to mix up the ordering of his words. While giving a toast at his granddaughter’s wedding, he addressed 512 attendees with the opening words, “Marriage, I am most proud of my daughter for. She is loved, very much.”
“I agree with you wholeheartedly, sir. May I ask your name?”
“Why would I be tempted to share?”
“I don’t know. I suppose it’s become a habit to exchange first names. But I understand if you’re uncomfortable. You don’t have to tell me.”
“Okay.”
Mr. Heineken asks for a check.
“Leaving so soon?”
“What?”
“We’ve only been talking for an instance.”
“Why would I want to talk to you?”
Brand turns his head and looks pensively at an exposed halogen light.
“Because I asked you to.”
The other man picks up the pen. He puts down the pen. He asks for two beers.
