Halfway to Easy

by Julie Stahl

It is always twilight in the little pub where I tend bar part-time. When someone comes in through the side door and brings with them a slice of bright sunlight, we all recoil from the harsh intrusion. We sigh collectively with relief when the door swings shut, snug in our accustomed, muted interior.

Drinking establishments are funny places during the day, odd collections of business people on the go, retirees, and those who are jobless, homeless or just passing through town. Some, like Albert, strike up a conversation with me or another customer while they down their drafts. “What’s new?” he’ll ask, a rhetorical question followed by commentary on the weather or more frequently, a joke. I have heard the one about the golfer on the desert island three times now. Some customers go directly to the poker machines, postponing or bypassing altogether the consumption of alcohol, while there are those who come in and nurse their drinks in silence for half a day, eyes fixed on the Keno machine. Sometimes I feel like I know the ones who rarely speak as well as I know the ones who babble constantly; it is their regular presence which defines their characters as opposed to anything they might reveal through superficial chit-chat, or even the confidences occasionally revealed as inhibitions slide away. This is not a setting in which one is likely to witness others at their best, their most lucid, generous or heroic. It is not a place to come to observe productivity or creative genius. It is a place of foibles and frailty, black sheep relatives of joviality. They straggle behind and cause trouble, spoilsports.

I am getting used to the company of lecherous, leering men. They line up on a continuum from mild to extreme, and I find the behavior of those who are the least offensive to be at once both irritating and endearing, tiresome yet strangely comforting – not flattering, mind you, never flattering. They are lonely, emboldened by alcohol, unschooled in the social graces of flirtation and banter, and reduced to seeking out intimacy and connection in this improbable place, a place inherently meant to escape such things. I almost admire their gumption. The worst offenders are loud, bawdy, and crude. They grope me given the opportunity, grazing breast or ass with a casual touch should I get too close to their table in my delivery. They throw quarters at me, aim them to land down my shirt, laughing “here’s your tip,” and insinuate aggression into every gesture, glance and comment. These are the men I watch for in the parking lot when my shift ends, the reasons I carry pepper spray on my keychain.

The two Eddies sit side by side most days, a study in incongruent compatibility, in strange bedfellows aligned by circumstance, one confident and talkative, the other an introvert. Eddie P. is about seventy, retired once from the Marine Corps and again, from a wood products plant. He called me “Baby” from the first day I started working here. To my knowledge he doesn’t call any of the other bartenders, all female, that. I don’t know why he has given me this nickname, as I am neither much younger nor more naïve than the others. Perhaps it is because I am the newest; perhaps the next new-hire after me will inherit my baby-ness.

The other Eddie, whose last name I don’t know, is roughly the same age, and has said perhaps three words to me in the several weeks I’ve been here. The only person I know for sure he talks to is Eddie P. They sit there for hours, splitting the cost of Keno tickets dollar for dollar and buying each other beers, rarely interacting with other customers and quietly discussing, what, the price of gas? Barack Obama? Women? I couldn’t say with any degree of accuracy, because they turn their attention to me when I wander down to their end of the bar, Eddie P. reaching out to grab my wrist and squeeze it, or say, “Two more, Baby,” his companion just nodding and smiling at me, a wide, sweet, gracious smile. I was first introduced to him when Eddie P. pointed at him with a flat hand and said, “Do you know who this is?” with a tone that implied necessity for humility. I did not know, and said so. Eddie P. seemed appalled. “Do you know who his father is?” “No,” I repeated. He shook his head in disbelief and something resembling disappointment. “Oh, baby,” he said. Clearly I had let him down. “Look at him,” he directed me. “Who does he look like?” We played a guessing game for awhile, as I retreated to the other end of the bar and other customers then back again. “A famous movie star!” he declared. A few hints later, the clincher being a reference to Moses, I accurately proclaimed Gracious Eddie to be the offspring of Charleton Heston. Well, accurately according to Eddie P. His friend neither confirmed nor denied his celebrity status. Later, after the Eddies had gone for the evening, an amused observer two stools down dismissed the story as a prank, a joke on me. Still, when the Eddies come in and the one feels inclined to remind me of the other’s heritage, I smile and put on my best impressed face, and ask, “Did I tell you I met George Burns once?”, which I really did. I find it easier and more palatable to play along, and to give these men the benefit of the doubt. Eddie does, given the suggestion, bear a striking resemblance to Charleton Heston.

Todd, a steady, gregarious customer, drinks Crown Royal and Coke and talks buoyantly to anyone around, about sports, his family, and his excavating business. I can tell he’s had too much when he heads over to the poker machines. I think of how hard he must have worked for the $200 checks he hands me one after another, feeding the twenties I give him in return methodically and with some mystical faith into the greedy, noisy mouth of that gaudy, blinking money trap. I secretly wish him luck, my hand ready at the till to give him a large payout, while at the same time hoping he’ll lose so miserably he’ll give up and think better of it next time. That’s not, of course, how it works. He plays until he has spent, and overspent, his checkbook. When Diane, his girlfriend, walks into the bar, I rejoice silently at the sight of her. She is persuasive. She is strong-minded. She is loved by him. She will take him home, and curb his excesses.

And then there is Rocky. Sweet, gentle, down-on-his-luck Rocky, who rides a black Yamaha 1100 and wears his shoulder length grey hair in a ponytail. His presence at the bar on my shift is like clockwork, his smile sideways, tentative and disarming. He is a tall man and holds his liquor well. Sometimes he walks me out to the parking lot, sees me to my car, especially if I’m working a night shift. With him I instinctively feel safe. One night he follows me home. He’s crying, broken hearted, missing his girlfriend. He seems baffled by the loss of the relationship. “Come inside,” I say, and steer him to the kitchen table. I feed him chicken salad and sliced tomatoes. “You’re a good cook,” he offers. “It’s deli,” I confess. He eats it gratefully, then stands up to leave. “Don’t go, Rocky,” I say. “It’s late and you’ve had a few drinks. Sleep here tonight.” I take him upstairs and situate him on my bed, where he curls up like a small boy with my pillow and falls instantly asleep. In the morning he leaves early, without a sound, a faint smell of cologne on my sheets the only evidence he’s been there. I drink my coffee alone. The next day, behind the counter at the bar, he acknowledges our exchange with a nod, a smile halfway to easy, and an extra dollar in my tip.