“Pleasure,” he said, again looking her straight in the eyes, not flirting really, but really looking, kind of like the way you want a man to pay attention to your eyes when you talk to him instead of your cleavage. But the gaze made her, what? Not really uncomfortable, but a little unsure. The fact that he didn’t offer his own name in response made her wary. Did he want to be friendly or not?
“Kinda slow today,” the guy finally said, going for the new beer with his left hand. She noticed things like that, right-handedness or lefties. She looked around.
“Yeah, a little, I guess,” she said, even though it was the same thin crowd as usual. “But it’s nice to have the regulars.”
“So they say,” the guy responded and tipped his bottle to her like he was saying so long. Emily took the hint and walked down to the other end. Okay, she thought, friendly but not a chatterer, she could deal with that. She served the guy six beers total before he again got up and left, car keys in his right hand and a big tip under his last bottle.
May 5. The long black dress. Wear purple shirt.
He’d done some more research. Found out that there were these kind of formal evening “Dining Experiences” on the cruise line he’d selected. He had a tux deep in his closet that he hadn’t worn since some county business affair up in Tallahassee years ago. He could see himself back then, wearing that stupid monkey suit, getting the group picture, his balding head shining like a beacon, the white shirt glowing just as bright. But he wasn’t going to be wearing white. He’d have to find that purple shirt, the one she’d once said was so much “cooler” than the traditional white. Cool. When the hell did that word come back? Stuff was “cool” back in high school. Shit. Back in high school he and his best friend Bobby were hanging out on the warm hood of his mom’s Ford Custom 500 in the parking lot of the old Kroger’s, lying back sharing a bottle of his dad’s whiskey, biting back the tears every time they took a hit off the neck and trying not to cough so the other guy wouldn’t think you were some kind of a pussy and this drinking shit was all new to you.
The memory of it was good, though. The taste of it he could remember. They say your sense of smell takes you back to things. Hell, he was always one for taste buds instead. He got the bartender’s attention and she came down with that attentive, wide-eyed look of hers. He ordered a shot of Jameson, straight up. She turned and took a bottle off the back shelves, found a stubby thick glass, not just one of those thimble-like shot glasses, poured it near full, and gave him a little smile, just a crinkle of the eyes.
“Switching up on me again, eh?” she said, friendly like.
Just toasting a memory, he’d replied. He knew he was stretching it. A smart guy wouldn’t be making any comments to the bartender. A smart guy wouldn’t be doing anything to make himself stand out. He’d just be one of those unknown types the newspapers always quote the neighbors saying “Nice guy. Quiet. Always said hello. Never any trouble” about. But that was usually a description of the guy after the arrest, and he wasn’t going to be arrested. He wasn’t going to get caught.
He sipped at the whiskey, set the glass in front of him, and looked into the auburn liquid. He’d picked the date and had broken the news of the cruise to his wife and she’d been, what, elated? Christ, it was like he’d offered her a million bucks and a house on the Hillsboro Mile. Yeah, he’d said, let’s get away. Just you and me. We’ll have a little fun. Relax. Maybe go dancing (she’d been bitching about never going dancing for like a zillion years). You could take that long black dress you wore at your company’s award thing.
Christ, she’d actually gone up on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. Shit. The long black dress was perfect. It would blend in with the shadows late at night on the ship. The lights on the side deck wouldn’t catch it. When she went overboard, her pasty white legs wouldn’t be so quick to glow even if the surveillance cameras did catch something falling along the hull. Along with her dark hair, they’d never pick her up in the dark water and he’d wear that damn purple shirt with his tux, nothing white to gain attention on the deck. He sipped again at the whiskey, considered a refill while he continued scratching his plan into the bar below.
“Just toasting a memory.”
Hey, Emily thought, the guy actually is human. First of all, he was now hitting the whiskey. Second, he gave up an entire sentence this time and it was a little personal. She was about to answer, something like: Yeah? Hope it’s a good one. But the guy’s eyes were gone from hers by that time and she figured he was doing his private thing again. She’d seen a lot of guys, women too, who came in and stayed to themselves. Depressed? Maybe. Lonely? Possible. Just looking for a place to chill before going home to the wife and kids? That too. There were as many characters in a bar as there were walking around outside one. Hell, on a good Saturday night in here she’d have a novelist at one end of the bar talking to the tattoo artist from next-door. At the other end there’d be a Florida Power & Light lineman and a Scottish carpenter buying a lawyer shots while in the middle a married woman was having a hell of a discussion with her husband’s girlfriend. She’d seen it all. But damn, she couldn’t peg this guy. What, it’d been a couple of months now? And she’d watched him go from kind of apprehensive in the corner sipping lights to the point now where he was smack in the middle of the bar banging Jameson with ale chasers. And he was leaving a little bit later each time. Yet, he never looked drunk and he kept up the big tips. Yeah, he was looking a little more haggard each time, the shirt not quite as stiff and starched, the hair a little longer on the sides and not as carefully combed, a little more pouch under the eyes. And that irritating habit of never putting both elbows up on the bar. What was that all about? It reminded her of her brother, who always took everything their mom taught them about manners to heart. “Don’t put your elbows on the table!” But who didn’t do that in a bar? Then, he drank with his left hand but held his keys in his right when he was walking out. Okay, she did have this obsession with hands. And she knew the guy wasn’t doing something obscene with himself under the bar. She knew that type. She’d have him out on his ass in a minute if he were that kind.
Oh well, all kinds, right? But she was already guessing that he was going to take a seat a little farther down the bar next Wednesday when he came in and she was betting that he’d order the shots first. Guy was turning into a boozer and didn’t even know it.
“A double, please,” he said, not knowing why the words seemed to feel so good in his mouth as he let them flow over the bar. The time, as they say, was nigh. He was feeling confident. He’d planned it all out. Had been extraordinarily thorough, not to mention careful. And all was going to plan. The bartender poured him the double of whiskey and asked if he also wanted the Yuengling back.
“No, thanks,” he said and then detected a bit of a smile on the girl’s face, like she’d just won a bet or something.
“What?” he said, trying to match her smile.
“Oh, nothing. Just good to see you again.”
“Right,” he said, tipping the glass to the girl before swallowing the entire thing in one gulp. “Another, please.”
Today was the twenty-seventh. The cruise ship left in three days out of Port Everglades for Cancun. He owed himself a celebration. He dug the key into the wood above his lap.
Over the rail midnight. Insurance $$$.
Hah. His wife was actually getting giddy at home over this freaking cruise, he thought. Bragging to her friends. Buying a new swimsuit. Packing every damn outdoorsy thing she ever owned. And nagging at him, of course, over what he was going to take.