Trade in all your chips and learn how to be free
I pushed heavily against the door with my shoulder to enter - a leftover habit from the last eleven years. To this day I still don't touch door handles without at least pulling my sleeve down over my hand.
The bar was dimly lit and Howlin' Wolf was crooning quietly out of the sole functioning speaker in the corner next to the restrooms. Somehow not what I expected in a bar filled with Catamounts and Bucks flags. But I don't know if I expected the flags, either.
The place was deserted. Not even a bartender behind the counter.
I approached the bar anyway and pulled up a stool. Lawson's Finest Liquids on tap.
She'd said she'd be here soon. And though I hadn't seen her in 15 years, I knew she would.
I waited five minutes, and another five more.
I nervously reached into my pocket and thumbed my phone. I refrained from pulling it out anyway.
I remembered approaching her 20 years ago in another hemisphere. She'd been waiting for me at a wooden table outdoors of a little cafe in the octagon. She was wearing cat eye sunglasses and a cute little round hat. I never knew what you called those. A bowler? No. Not like Charlie Chaplain. But what struck me was the way - before she was even aware I was there, or at least, I thought - she didn't seem to be waiting. I could detect no anticipation. She just had her chin tilted up to the sky and her eyes gently closed, like she was just calmly soaking in the sunshine and might have even forgot that I was supposed to turn up at some point.
And when I saw her, I suddenly felt hyperaware of how self-assured she was, sitting there waiting for twenty-minutes-late-me. If she'd been that late to meet me, I would have fidgeted and sweated and scrolled and panicked that the waiter would ask me yet another time if I needed more time to look at the menu.
Right about this time I was jolted from my flashback by a heavy cracking sound coming from the kitchen. I jumped slightly and glanced towards the butler doors. Another loud crack followed and the only image my brain could conjure was a femur being broken clean in half, when suddenly a stocky bearded man burst through the doors with arms full of splintered branches.
He was thundering past me when I caught his attention and it was his turn to jump.
"Jeezum Crow!" he bellowed, and I wondered if I'd somehow stumbled into a cariacature of reality. I blinked at him as he regained composure and stooped to sweep up one of the branches he'd lost in his surprise.
"Sorry," he breathed as he continued walking past me, "with you in a minute!"
He disappeared around the corner just as she walked in.
"Hey," her voice came low but bright.
"Hey, hey," I nodded and stood.
She stepped closer and nodded back with a smile, and sat one barstool away from me. Another leftover. I hoped.
After the bartender came back and poured us drinks, he disappeared back into the kitchen - or garden, whatever it was back there - and she cleared her throat before taking a long sip of her stout.
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