*****
I sat in front of my empty plate with a half glass of coke talking intently to the person across the table before I noted his blank and careless expression.
“I don’t know dude, I just clean tables.” The man grabbed the plate and left shaking his head. The bartender a few feet away chuckled looking in my direction. I looked back bemused.
The bartender was tall, bald and though friendly looking enough, not someone to meet on poor terms with. When he opened his mouth and a deep voice accompanied the broad structure of the man, though it was steeped in cynicism. “Matthew and Sarah hey. You going to marry her, live in the ‘burbs and live happily ever after - hold hands while you walk together through a meadow?” He laughed, a great belly laugh and I think I just looked horrified. “Hey, Chuck, you think you got it bad, maybe she let you off easy”. He was pressing my buttons now.
“My name’s Matt” I stated back at him defiantly.
“Seriously though, maybe you should see this as a good thing” he persisted ditching the snide tone.
“I get home to find my girlfriend’s doing some guy in our place- on our couch. And you’re saying to me it can be a good thing? Because I found out what she was like before I married her? Because I found out how absolutely blind I can be?”
“Nah, you got me wrong Chuck” he replied and I sighed.
“OK. I’ll bite – how so”. I did not expect some words of miraculous wisdom from a man running a bar on the side of the freeway in no man’s land, but hey, you never know. Also, right now I thought it fair to say I was not the best judge of character either.
“The problem is you think you have everything planned out. Got the girl, studying, saving money, you do all the right things.”
“That’s bad because….”.
“How old are you?” he confidently asked me in a way that made me want to mumble my answer.
“22” I replied.
“And this is all you want. Girl, marry, buy house and then….?” He shook his head and furrowed his brow while pouring a beer for one of the patrons hunched over the counter across from him. I got up from my chair and table and took a seat at the counter to face the bartender.
“I don’t know. I thought I’d figure it out along the way. We’d figure it out” I mumbled back at him.
“You are following someone else’s dream for you Chuck.”
“My name’s Matthew” I grated back again.
“You have got to figure it out. How can you be thinking about a life forever with some chick you’ve known for all of five minutes. I stopped planning for ‘we’ and started planning for ‘me’ 20 years ago”.
Here come the pearls of wisdom I thought sarcastically.
“How is that working out for you?” I mocked him assuming the worst but there was a sting in it when I said it.
“A different woman every week, no shackles, no hassles. It is working like a dream Chuck.” I just shook my head and looked irritated as the barman continued, leaning close and pointing discretely across the room. “See that girl over there. She is hot. See who she is with?” He was pointing out a good looking athletic brunette in high heeled boots, skin tight blue jeans and a low cut red top standing impossibly close to a man in a denim jacket – the Viking from the petrol station, I immediately recognised. I automatically scanned for the girl, and there she was sitting quietly watching the game of pool from a table. Her eyes shifted to me and I looked away again.
“You mean the enormous wall of a man who looks like a reject from a Viking documentary?” I replied.
“No friend. Who she is with is not you. It’s a cliché, I know. Girls like bad guys Chuck. I see it a lot.”
“My name’s Matthew.” I said through gritted teeth, though defeat flavoured my tone, while I gazed in to my half drunk glass of coke.
The barman smiled knowingly. I wondered how many other unfortunate people had sat, listening to this rant. “Doesn’t have to be. Just because someone else gave you that name, the idea of who you are, doesn’t mean that it’s you forever. You want to live happily ever after – good for you. Find a library and in there a woman that looks like a horse. Be happy, then in 15, 20 years when you wonder where your life went, look in to the mirror…” he leaned towards me “… and say this to yourself: My name is Matthew”. I was still. The bartender poured a shot of scotch and pushed it in my direction. “Here Chuck. On the house”.
“I’m driving….I can’t…..” I stopped what I was saying when he raised an eyebrow and gave me a look I had seen as a child many times before. I took up the glass and the barman looked happy.
“There man, medicine for the melancholy. Have another”. He poured one shot more and stepped to the side while someone else came up to the bar. This was a large man, in all ways but mainly round the middle with a dirty beard and a hat that looked forty years old which he slapped on the counter.
“Phew–ee” he said. “Did you even see such a beautiful ve-hicle?” His larger, darker friend came to sit next to him on a bar stool. The barman automatically whipped out two beer glasses and started pouring as if he knew automatically what they wanted, while he noted some interest and asked what the truckie meant.
“What’s that you’re talking about?” he asked.
“She is beautiful. A Lamborghini Gallardo Privilegio, brand new looking and shiny just begging Pete for hammering along this road. I might just have to find the person driving it and have them a small accident so she and I can be alone.”
“That’s my car” I responded absent-mindedly, and as the words escaped my lips I immediately wished to be able to turn back time. “Well, not mine, my uncle’s, well not his. I’m taking it to the guy who bought it.”
“I underestimated you friend,” said the bartender said with a smirk. “Pete here is a car connoisseur. I haven’t seen him this excited over a car in a while.”
“Callin’ it a car is blasphemous…” retorted Pete “…. So boy” he turned to me. “How about a ride in the car for old times sake”. A grin passed the drawing lips of the man now known as Pete, and it was not one I liked or trusted. I felt the colour drain from me and a sick feeling come up in my throat.
“’Fraid I can’t. I shouldn’t even have stopped here”. I got up and fished around in my pocket for some cash.
“Don’t be like that.” Said Pete standing up. “Don’t make me ask all rough like. Bobby here,” he thumbed behind him to his friend who stood up on cue “Keeps telling me I need some help with anger management, but I keep telling him I never ask any other way but nice…..” I felt like a deer in headlights. My mind was calculating trajectories, looking at exits and wondering why the hell I had stopped here, of all places. Why not down a chicken sub at a petrol station. I took a step to widen my stance – to run, to fight (not that I could), when it happened.
There was a commotion and the little guy in jeans that had been playing with the Viking flew across two pool tables. I wasn’t sure how that was even a possibility but became aware that I had my mouth gaping as Pete and Bobby turned and started striding over towards the Viking man and another two guys who had just arrived to stand with him. This was not going to be a place to be caught inside or out of in the next few seconds.
The bartender looked at me and I looked at the bartender. “Get out of here” he said.
“Already gone” I replied and moved towards the door. On my way out though, I turned my head back. The bartender already had a shotgun in his hand. “What’s your name”? I asked. The bartender looked over his shoulder as he headed towards the pool tables. “Chuck” he said, flashed a grin, and was off.
As I walked through the door I wandered if the girl would be alright. I hopped in to the car as the sound of smashing glasses was heard a split second before a gunshot rang out. I was gone, winding down the windows and breathing in the night air. One more stop to see Michael in the next town and hit a motel further down the road.