I was sitting in a bar, watching the tiny television in the corner. This isn’t something I do very often. I stopped into this place to have a cold pint before meeting with a client of mine at the Internet Data Center right down the road. I was to be giving him a tour of the facilities and showing him where his equipment was racked.
Anyway, I’m sitting in there enjoying my pint when a girl comes in and walks up to the bar. As she was standing there at the bar, right next to my stool, I casually looked at her, noticing she wasn’t wearing much. She smelled like a cheap hooker – cigarettes and perfume, and perhaps a little sweaty. Her hair was greasy and matted and her tank top was stained and dirty. She leaned on her elbows against the bar, and I could see through the armhole of her shirt that she wasn’t wearing a bra.
She turned to look at me, the dark makeup smeared around her eyes like a sick racoon. She was wearing too much mascara and it had run badly. Her lipstick was pretty heavy too, but only on the corners of her mouth. As she looked at me, she gave me a kind smile and I noticed her teeth were almost completely rotted out. The few she had, that is. They were the color of a dirty newspaper left out in the rain. I blinked and turned away, trying not to show her my unfavorable reaction. I felt sorry for her, but obviously wasn’t disgusted enough to keep my eyes off her. I found myself glancing over there every few minutes (seconds) to have another look at her breasts. Had she taken better care of herself, she’d actually be quite attractive, I gathered. She was really pretty underneath the street skin, and she had a killer body. Maybe a few too many bruises on her inner arm, but who’s counting?
The bartender finally made her way over, and I watched as she looked the nice girl up and down. “What can I get you?” The woman in the tank top dropped a C-note on the bar and asked for change.
“You gonna spend it here?” the bartender asked.
“No, I wasn’t planning on it. I just need cash for parking. Why?”
“Well I can’t break something that big unless you’re one of my customers.”
As if the implications of this had just dawned on her, the fine woman to my right smiled a mischievous little number and dragged the stool up and sat down beside me. “All right, I’ll have what he’s having.” My stomach turned as I realized what this meant and found myself fighting back bile as my uncontrolleable mind went on a lustrous adventure with this dirty, foul-smelling hooker. It was the briefest of episodes, and I shook it quickly with another thick gulp of the beer, but in it I had seen myself doing the worst of things with her – her long skinny legs wrapped round my waist, scratching my back with her dirty nails. I stared hard in my glass, trying not to sick up, but closed my eyes and swallowed it back.
The bartender took a deep breath and pulled a Harp out of the cooler, then poured it in a glass. The lonely woman got her change and looked at me again, smiling kindly. It really was a sweet smile, aside from the rotting teeth and the bad lipstick. As she smiled at me, I held my breath and gave her back a wan smile in return, nodding slightly at her. And then she slid her fresh beer in front of me.
“Here you go sir. Enjoy!” she said quietly, and turned for the door.
I was too stunned to say anything at first. Here I was almost getting sick as I imagined her naked, and she was buying me a beer. I felt horrible. I coughed out a thank you though, and turned to watch her walk out the door. “Thank you very much,” I managed. I was actually choking back tears and a lump in my throat at this point. What an asshole I was.
She looked back and smiled yet again as she exited, and said, “Don’t mention it.” And in that light, I saw her for who she was. The darkness of the bar contrasting with the brightness of the entryhall, her standing right on the threshhold, I could see her face without all the flaws. The darkness hid her teeth and the mascara (or whatever the hell it’s called) and the light made her clean. And in that instant she was beautiful. I turned back to my beer quickly, so as not to have the light of day ruin that final image for me.
The bartender was putting away glasses right in front of me, and stood with her hands on the bar. “Well that was fortunate.”
“What do you mean,” I asked, taking a long pull and draining my glass.
“She needed change, so you got a beer.”
“Oh, yeah, I guess. I wasn’t going to have another one though,” I said.
“Well don’t feel obligated to drink it. She did touch the glass, so if you want a fresh one I’ll get you one.”
I looked at her for a second. Head slightly too big for her body, and mouth obviously too big for her face. Then I nodded very slightly and picked up the dirty woman’s glass, and downed that mother cobbler. I drank every last drop of that beer and slammed the glass on the bar, standing up. I made eye contact again as I pushed my stool in, then turned and walked out the door.
Harp is good beer. But I usually don’t drink more than one or two in a sitting, and certainly I never chug it. It’s pretty strong, and now I was tipsy. But I’d made my point. Whatever the hell point that was, I felt good about it. I would figure out what it meant later.
I made it to the Data Center and met my client in the lobby. I shook his hand and apologized for being late. I told him how I had been at a bar, and a hooker had come in to get change, and ended up buying me a beer over it. Obviously, I talk a little differently with the guys than with the girls. He kind of smirked at that, and said it was no big deal. I showed him around quickly (I had to piss pretty badly at this point) and talked with him for a few minutes before he finally seemed ready to leave. We walked back outside and were greeted with the silence. It’s very loud in those places, you don’t really realize until you’re back outside of them.
Standing under the overhang outside, he pulled a cigarette out of his jacket pocket and – having just polished off two tall ones, I asked if I could have one. It would tie the day together nicely for me. “Sure thing,” he said, and reached back in his pocket. There were none left. “Ah, I’ve got another pack in the car, just over here.” Yeah, you see where this is going.
I followed him to the car, and almost tripped on my feet when I saw her sitting in his passenger seat. “Score, dude,” I think to myself. I didn’t say anything though. He knew what he was doing. He got the pack and closed the door, coming back over to where I was standing, a few yards away. He handed me the pack, I packed and opened them, then lit one.
“My daughter,” he said. “I just picked her up from the bus station. She’s going to be living with me for a while until she can get back on her feet.”
I knew he knew. I knew he knew I knew. I shook my head and apologized. “Man, I’m really sorry. Your daughter is very pretty.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, she’s had it pretty rough for the last few years. That’s why I’m helping her out.”
Yeah, I felt pretty low at that point, and wanted nothing more than to just go home and puke all the beer out of my system and sleep for about a week. It had been about an hour at this point since I finished the beers, and my head was swimming. The hangover was already setting in. I decided I need to learn my own lesson. Keep my damn mouth shut.
It’s been a little over a year since that day, and as if through some twisted form of retribution, I engaged in friendship with that client and his daughter. I’ve become really close with her, and gotten to know her quite well. Her well-to-do father had her teeth fixed up for her, and now she dresses like a respectable woman. She’s clean, has a steady job, and a place of her own. Oh, and she’s hot as hell too.
For my birthday this year she got me a case of Harp beer.