The problem only got worse when Roberta Jean was drinking, which was why the bartender, Joey, was keeping a close watch on her on this particular night.
Joey was going to get Roberta Jean Richardson's ass out of the bar and back onto the street at the first signs of trouble.
He figured he would, in this manner, keep Roberta Jean from hurting herself or others. More likely others.
Sitting beside Roberta Jean at that moment was her very best friend Bertha.
Bertha Klemmer.
The woman was not a calming influence on Roberta Jean. Not at all. Roberta Jean's equally tough friend's appearance on the bar stool next to the blonde at the bar did not make Joey the bartender feel any better.
This was double-trouble as far as he was concerned.
Bertha was famous in and around Painted Post, Pennsylvania for her many tattoos which literally covered her body.
Her hair was dark.
Cut short.
Butch.
In spite of the fact that it was a Friday night, the bar was not crowded. There were a couple of guys shooting eight ball, and some girl that looked like she was still in high school, wearing tight jeans, kept playing the jukebox. Everything was calm. The calm before the storm.
"Another beer?" Joey asked Roberta Jean. His voice was low.
"Sure, fill her up. I want this to be the sort of night I can't even remember in the morning." Roberta Jean said.
"Bertha?"
"Yeah, fill her up. It'll be a cold day in hell before I can't chink with Roberta Jean one for one," Roberta Jean's equally tough friend said with a toothy grin.
Joey could see that there were gaps between Bertha's teeth.
Roberta Jean was wearing some tight jeans herself on this night. Her denim trousers were so tight that they left nothing to the imagination. Anyone who cared to look could clearly see the cleavage between Roberta Jean Richardson's buttocks – not to mention the cleavage between her vaginal lips in front.
Roberta Jean's jeans were so tight that they had to be peeled on and off. The muscular and super tough blonde bombshell's jeans were so tight that they looked as if they had been applied with a can of dark blue spray paint.
They were not designer jeans, but cheaper imitations of the same.
Roberta Jean did not have money for fancy clothes. She had been born poor and she had stayed poor. Roberta Jean Richardson was hardly a little girl who had been born with the silver spoon in her mouth.
The spoon in Roberta Jean's mouth had been copper – and reeking of poverty. Roberta Jean Richardson was poor white trash.
"You feeling okay?" The blonde bombshell's heavily tattooed buddy asked, leaning toward the blonde a bit as she spoke. Joey served up the beers and took the money out of the pile that had already accumulated in front of the pair of tough broads on the bar.
Joey pretended not to listen as he served the drinks.
But the tops of the bartender's ears were burning, and he couldn't help himself. He had to listen.
"Take a hike," Bertha said.
"I'd rather kill you than look at you," Klemmer said to the bartender, and he quickly retreated.
"Yeah, I feel okay. Why wouldn't I feel okay?" Roberta Jean said.
"I thought maybe you were still upset about Harv…"
"SHIT! I don't fucking want to talk about him, Bertha!"
"Right."
"That motherfucker is going to pay one day," Roberta Jean Richardson said, hammering a clenched fist onto the bar so hard that it made the head of her beer spill over the side and roll down the glass.
"Easy."
"I have never been so mother-fucking humiliated in all my mother-fucking life," Roberta Jean Richardson said.
"You're getting loud," Bertha Klemmer said in a soothing tone.
"I'm sure I don't give a fuck how loud I get," the blonde said.
"Yeah, okay, suit yourself," Bertha said, sipping her beer calmly.
"Imagine him leaving me. He deserves to die," Roberta Jean Richardson said.
"What about the chicks he dates from now on?" Bertha asked.
"They fucking deserve to fucking die too!" the blonde said.
"I see. We are going to be busy," Bertha said with a throaty laugh. Bertha Klemmer lit a non-filter cigarette and took such a deep drag that it made her squint.
She coughed a little as she exhaled and spit a clam on the sawdust floor.
Just then the door opened and Tammy walked in. Bad timing.
Tammy Cunningham was Roberta Jean Richardson's sworn enemy. Tammy was tough too and many times the pair had fought long drag out battles which inevitably ended in a draw.
Roberta Jean seethed at the sight of Tammy Cunningham. Tammy seethed at the sight of Roberta Jean Richardson.
They had fought their first fight in the fourth grade and things had been downhill as far as their relationship was concerned ever since.
"Roberta Jean, Bertha," Tammy said as she entered.
"Fuck yourself," Roberta Jean muttered into her sudsy brew.
Tammy Cunningham pretended not to hear. She had fire-red hair piled up on top of her head and hips that weren't what they once were. As Roberta Jean Richardson liked to say, "Tammy is going Crisco. FAT IN THE CAN!"
Tammy took a seat at the far end of the bar. Tammy ordered herself a beer and a shot. Tammy Cunningham winked at Joey as he served her. He filled the shot glass to the brim, past the little black line that measured out a perfect fluid ounce.
The redheaded and loud-mouthed local barfly knew a secret and she was never very good at keeping secrets. Roberta Jean's much-despised and sworn enemy was particularly bad at keeping secrets when they concerned the blonde.
"Joey, you'll never guess who I saw tonight driving down the main strip," Tammy Cunningham exclaimed.
"Who?" the bartender inquired, his eyes lethargy filled.
"Harvey Henderson. What a panic!" Tammy exclaimed.
Roberta Jean's head snapped toward the redhead for a moment and then she quickly stared back into her beer, watching the little bubbles rise to the surface where they popped one by one.
"You want to know why it was such a panic?" Tammy asked the bartender.
"Not really."
"Well, I'm going to tell you why anyway," Tammy said.
Bertha sensed a fight. Bertha Klemmer tensed the muscles in her arms. Roberta Jean's equally tough friend made several tattoos stretch and ripple as she tensed her muscles. The blonde bombshell's heavily tattooed buddy had a sixth sense when it came, to trouble. Of course, it took no intuition to know that there was going to be trouble when Roberta Jean and Tammy Cunningham found themselves seated at the same bar.
Since there were only three bars in all of Painted Post, Pennsylvania, this happened more frequently than Joey, the bartender, would have liked.
Beads of sweat formed across the bartender's brow.
It was obvious to the hayseeds shooting eight ball that the bartender was a hell of a lot more nervous than any of the women involved in this potentially violent tension.
Off in the distance they could hear the thunderclap roar of bowling balls rolling down, alleys, then the crash of scattered pins. The bar would fill up once the Friday Night Bowling League had finished up.
"It was a panic because Harvey wasn't alone," Tammy said.
Roberta Jean turned her head toward Tammy once again, and this time she kept her head turned. Roberta Jean Richardson was squeezing her glass so hard that it was threatening to shatter in her fist. The muscular and super-tough blonde bombshell was squeezing her beer glass so hard that each and every one of her knuckles had turned white.
"You want to know who he was with?" Tammy Cunningham asked.
"Tammy, please, shut up," Joey said, sweat now pouring from his face.
"No, no, no, no, no, I want to tell you who Harvey Henderson was with. This'll kill you. He was with that little mouse of a babe, Sheree Messmer, and I can't be sure – but it looked to me like they was headed straight up toward Sex Hill!" Tammy said.