1 in 100 - Susie at the Bar

Susie walked into the bar, looked around at the few other patrons, and seeing no one she wanted to talk to, pulled out a bar stool and hoisted herself up. Pulling her yellow and red cloth bag down from her shoulder, Susie watched it as it dropped it unceremoniously to the ground. The dingy, stained fabric of the bag, with a muffled clatter, sank down around the objects hidden inside. She pushed the pile under her feet and rested them there, touching it lightly as if to reassure herself that it was safe.

“Hey girl. What’s up with you?” The bartender put down the menus he was wiping clean and took the few steps to stand in front of the girl. Dan was a big man, pushing six foot six and weighing more than 300 pounds. He moved, incongruously, with the light step of a dancer. But this evening he leaned heavily into the bar, reaching across it and brushing Susie’s unkempt bangs back from her eyes. His touch was light, but his mass would have challenged a less solid structure. Susie allowed the gesture and then grabbed his hand, holding it against her cheek.

“Dan, I don’t know. Everything. Nothing. Life just sucks, y’know?” She looked up, still holding his hand, and allowed a few tears to spill over from her filled eyes. “Just get me drunk, would ya? I told Evan to split yesterday, and I haven’t talked to him since. God, I miss him when he’s not around, but I know I’m better off without him around. Fuck.”

As Dan moved down the bar to grab a beer for her, Susie reached down into her bag and fished around for something with which to wipe her face. Coming up with a square of slightly soiled napkin, she flattened it out on the bar and then worked it around her eyes, careful to leave the remnants of makeup intact.

Susie had been seeing Evan for about six months. He was younger than she, exactly by how much was not clear as Susie was rather ambiguous about her age. When pressed, she had said for years she was less than 40, but that was as far as she’d go. Evan was in his late 20s and Susie had met him when she had taken her car in to be fixed for the last time. He had been the one to give her the bad news – the 20 year old Honda had coughed up its last carbon. That’s the way he broken the news: “Susie, honey, I have some bad news for you. This little gem of a car has breathed her last carbons into our already fucked atmosphere.” At that moment, Susie had fallen hard.

They began fucking that night. He took her home, and she invited him in for a beer. The beers were only half gone when he reached across and pulled her onto his lap. Feeling his stiffness through his jeans and her skirt, she’d turned to straddle his lap, hiking the already short skirt up above her hips. As he bent to taste the day’s sweat on her chest, moving her small breasts out from under the fabric stretched across them and holding each one as if it contained nitroglycerin, she slid her hands under his belt and freed his penis. They explored each other’s bodies for the rest of the night, touching, tasting, and listening to the responses. It had only taken a week and a half until he’d moved in.

Susie found out early that Evan wasn’t to be controlled. He came and went as he pleased, and there were days at a time she had no idea where he was. He’d show back up, and while she yelled and cried and threatened, he’d hang his head, apologize, and begin to touch her. She always forgave him, but over the months, those absences and his inability to give her more than the current moment, wore away at her love for him. This time, when she threw him out, she thought she meant it. But, of course, she’d thought the same the other times too.