Sal's Paradise.

Title: Sal's Paradise (1/1)

Author: Tinuviel Henneth / smolderingbunny@aol.com

Rating: PG/PG-13

Spoilers: Just general information - no real spoilers.

Summary: A bartender tells about his strange encounter with Rory and Jess, age 28.

Author's Note: Written for the Bookends August/September Challenge, but I'm posting it here until Bookends is back up.

The Challenge: "When I Grow Up." The requirements were: R/J must be over twenty-five and the following items must be featured: a bowl of fruit, the Stars Hollow Bookstore, and the New York Mets.

Sal's Paradise.

Looking back on it, it was a slow night. That's funny, too, because it was a Friday, as in the day before Saturday. And Saturday, as any bar hopper knows, is the busiest night of the week for a bar, especially those with televisions. In the bore the night had been, I was led to pay more attention than usual to the few customers I got. There had been the pretty girl who'd nursed a cosmopolitan while reading a thick book about legal jargon. To her delight, I carded her even though she looked to be about twenty-eight or so. Once in a while she would look up and around the bar, scanning for someone. That someone turned out to be a man of about her age who appeared sometime after ten.

"You're late," she admonished with a smile, closing her book. Probably a Third Year law student if she was reading that book.

"I'm never late. I always arrive precisely when I mean to and not a second more or less," he replied with a cheeky grin.

"What can I get you, sir?" I asked him as he sat at the bar beside her. He cocked his head to one side and thought for a moment.

"A Heineken," he said after his deliberation. "Bottle, please."

"Right away," I said and turned to dig in the cooler for his order. In the mean time, she was speaking.

"Why beer? It smells so gross."

"And that fancy pink stuff you've got isn't revolting?" he quipped. "Nobody drinks mixers anymore, Rory."

"Oh yes, Mr. All-Knowing-Bartender," she said with what I figured was an eye roll. "I happen to like this fancy pink stuff."

I turned back around to hand him his beer, popping the cap off first. "So you're a tender, too?" I asked him. He shrugged.

"I do it to pass the time while she's studying or in class."

"I never see him anymore," she interjected, "if that's what you're wondering. I'm starting to wonder if maybe he has another girlfriend." She pouted at him.

I raised my eyebrows at him, but he only laughed, kissed her forehead, and shook his head. "Nope, my dear, only you. I didn't put that sparkly thing on your finger for no reason. I do intend to marry you eventually."

"That's Jess code for: 'I'll marry you when I get a real job and stop being jealous that you'll be a lawyer making twice as much as I'll ever make.' Whatever else, he's still an old fashioned boy. Has to be the breadwinner." She smiled and took a sip of her cosmo to spite him.

"Is that true?" I asked him.

He shook his head, leaned forward, and stage-whispered to me, "I don't even argue with that anymore. I never win."

"See, he's smart," she said. "I wouldn't consider marrying him if he weren't."

"I seem to remember your last fiancé, Rory," he teased. "The tall blonde one with the dimple and that weird earring thing. Remember him? He had the intelligence of what? A thermos?"

"I maintain that Guy was not a bad guy. My relief that you got fed up with him and finally arranged it so he'd catch me kissing you a week before the wedding was only based on the fact I did not want to get hitched before I was done with grad school."

"Please. The only reason you dated him was because he shared a name with a literary character. A character he's probably never heard of."

"Okay, so Guy wasn't the brightest crayon--"

"Rory, black would outstrip him in watts."

She laughed. "He was sweet, though. Quite unlike that girlfriend of yours. Does Kitty ring a bell?"

He blushed. "She was just insecure."

"Jess, Kitty rang half of New Haven's bell," she said. "Being a slut is not a symptom of insecurity. Misanthropy is. Reluctance to meet new people is. I dare you to deny it."

"So, how 'bout those Mets," Jess interrupted, directing it to me. "Think it'll be an all-New York World Series this year?"

I laughed as he dodged her. "Nah. I think it'll be the Mets and Cleveland. I'm just really impressed with that little Powers," I said, talking about the Mets' dazzling rookie pitcher.

"Little? The kid's almost seven feet tall!" Jess exclaimed.

"He's seventeen," I explained.

Rory cleared her throat. We looked at her. "Baseball talk will not derail me from my train of thought."

"Rory Gilmore, Lisa Rinna would like her soap box back, thank you," Jess said, cupping his hand around his mouth as though speaking into a radio.

I laughed again. These two were the most fun I'd had in weeks. A new customer entered, and I reluctantly pulled away from the bickering couple to see what the woman wanted. She had dark hair but she was in no way as radiant as that Rory. "What can I get for you?"

She handed me the box she'd been carrying. "It's from Frank. He told me to bring it to Sal's Paradise and I have. So I'll be leaving." Oh, my grocery order. Fourteen each of oranges, bananas, lemons, and limes, two whole pineapples, a can of olives, a pound of cherries, and several bags of pretzels.

"Summer?" Rory asked, hopping off her stool and moving around Jess to look at the delivery woman. I put the box of fruit under the bar to dig out a few pieces to take home for home.

"Do I know you?" the delivery woman asked.

"Well, no, not exactly. I'm Rory Gilmore. We went to Chilton together."

The woman laughed. "My God. I came to New York to escape Chiltonia. They follow like the plague, I swear." A beat. "So, what brings you here?"

"Law school. Columbia," Rory replied. "You?"

"My brother, Ellsworth, owns an import company. I married one of his grocers, Frank Gianini. To everyone's dismay!" she laughed again.

I stood up again. On a second look, this Summer woman looked like she had money, but didn't flaunt it. I figured Chilton was one of those exclusive prep school up north. "How much do I owe you?"

"Nothing now. Frank'll be by in the morning on his collection rounds. This just had to get to you tonight." She turned and left, letting the door slip shut silently behind her.

I shook my head and returned to my only customers. They had moved on from argument and were discussing a book. Evidently, Jess was an author and had just published his first work to rave reviews. I don't read too much, but listening to them analyze it made me want to read it, to understand what they were talking about.

"I'm telling you, Jess, this book it better than. . .The Fountainhead," she grinned. Some kind of inside joke between them. "I'm still mad you didn't tell me you were writing a book. You actually made me wait until I stumbled on a book by Jess Mariano at the bookstore in Stars Hollow, of all places. That's why you arranged that trip last week then, isn't it?" her tone was light and accusatory.

"It was more special that way, wasn't it?" he poked her in the arm. "You know it was. You scared every person in that store when you shrieked at seeing it on the shelf."

"Gotta keep 'em on their toes."

"You sound like your mom."

I guess that was a compliment, because she brightened at it. "She was mad about us not telling them we've been engaged for a year."

"But she was madder at Luke for not telling her," Jess said. I just looked back and forth between them.

"He actually slept in the apartment the whole time we were there."

"It was only for appearances. You know those two rabbits. Once we were gone he was back at the house."

"Only you could completely junvenilize Luke."

"Only you could make your mother sound like a grown-up."

"She is a grown-up," Rory said. "Just not a real one."

A crowd of men came in just then, rather loudly, and I didn't catch Jess' reply to that. I hastily took orders, most of which included beers and other unimaginative drinks (a Smirnoff Ice or two and a Captain Morgan Gold). The guys were all late college age and one explained it was the smallest's twenty-first birthday.

The couple down the bar was observing this, and Rory stood up at that and grabbed Jess' hand. "I remember my twenty-first," she told him, my ear traveling over to them instead of the rowdy bunch of guys. "Do you remember?"

Jess grinned. "It was your first week of Junior year at Yale. I remember how we solved your tension problem."

"Ew, don't be crude. I was talking about the drinking game we played."

"So was I," he replied.

"Sure you were," she said, rolling her eyes.

I love hearing about people's twenty-first birthdays. As a bartender, it's a pastime, collecting stories and savoring new ones. And, since I make my living feeding the alcohol cravings of those over twenty-one (and those with convincing fake IDs), I like hearing about rites of passage, morning-after hangovers not excluded. "So what exactly happened?"

Rory glanced at me and blushed furiously. "That is the first and last time I've ever been so drunk I can't stand up. It was a lucky thing he was there," she said, pointing at Jess, "or God knows what might have happened. Something bad."

"Something exceptionally bad might have happened if I hadn't been there playing good little guardian angel like always." Jess' tone was arrogant and teasing.

She muttered something along the lines of, "Little is right." I turned my chuckle to a cough at Jess' silencing stare. Rory shook her head and pasted her smile back on. "Anyway, my roommate, Tonia, dragged me to a bar that night, and wouldn't take no for an answer. It's a good thing I had the foresight to call Jess and make him meet us there. I would have met a horrible end, I imagine, at the inept hands of Hurricane Tonia. See, once she got me drunk she abandoned me for some random guy."

"I was late, though, because I had a table that would not leave-- I was working in a restaurant at the time. By the time I got there, Rory was sitting at the bar, talking like her mother to a bowl of fruit. She named most of the pieces, too."

Rory looked delighted he remembered. "The banana's name was Petey, the orange was Nellie, and the cherries were Benny, Johnny, Francis, and one other I can't remember for the life of me."

"Don't forget Zooey the pineapple spear," Jess interjected.

"How do you remember that?"

"You made me eat him."

"Oh yeah. I did, didn't I?"

"And you claimed it was homicide after I swallowed because you'd named the piece of pineapple and made it personal by giving him a personality. That's about the time I decided to take you home."

"I gave them all personalities. Except the cherries, because after I named them, I forgot who was who and gave them all the same strong, silent personality."

"That Summer girl brought me a bunch of fruit earlier," I said. "If you'd like to repeat the activity, I could bang you up a banana, an orange, a pineapple spear, and a few cherries. Nostalgia."

"No," Rory said. "I don't want him deciding he likes Ophelia better than me and taking her home instead. See, I'm privy to you, Mr. Mariano, and I know what you like."

Jess looked down at the accusatory finger she was pressing into his chest then back up at her face and said, "If you don't mind my asking, Rory, dear, who's Ophelia?"

"Silly rabbit," she said, withdrawing her hand. "The orange under the counter. Duh." She turned to me. "Isn't Ophelia a good name for an orange?"

"It's got alliteration going for it," I said with a shrug. "Ophelia the Orange."

"Don't mean to tread on your theory, Lorelai Gilmore, but I think a relationship with an orange might be a little difficult to negotiate," Jess said carefully, putting a hand on Rory's shoulder. "The whole intimacy thing would just not work. And conversation? There just wouldn't be any."

"Okay, okay. I get it," Rory said. "But still, no fruit."

I nodded. "It will stay where it is," I promised. She beamed at me, and he just shook his head.

I was pulled away again for another round for the birthday boy and his friends, and when I returned to the couple, they were gathering their things. "Leaving?" I asked, saddened.

Jess nodded sadly. "It's been fun, but she's got court in the morning."

Rory nodded. "I do, but it really was a pleasure talking to you." She shrugged into a black leather jacket and then offered me a hand to shake. Her handshake was firm and professional, well-trained from greeting clients. Jess put on his own jacket, a warm-looking camel corduroy with massive pockets into which he had stuffed what looked like his entire universe. I shook his hand, too. She picked up her book and walked over to stand by the door to wait while Jess paid for his beer and her "fancy pink stuff."

"So, are you Sal?" he asked while digging around assorted pockets for his wallet.

"Yeah," I said. "This is my Paradise."

"Do you have a Dean?" he asked with a smile, extracting a worn brown leather contraption.

"Sadly, no. Always wanted one, though."

He handed me a twenty. "Keep the change. We had fun tonight. And anyone who has Kerouac references deserves a good tip."

"Don't be strangers," I said, waving.

"Wouldn't dream of it," Jess replied, and he joined her by the door. On their way out, he slipped his arm around her shoulders. A gust of snowy air came in and then they were gone.

Other than the birthday party, there weren't any other customers worth remembering from that very slow Friday. It's been a year now since that night, give or take, and they've yet to return. I expect they're married but I haven't seen anything about Jess Mariano or Rory Gilmore in the Times. And something tells me those two are very news-worthy people-about-New York. Shades of Holly Golightly, I think. To this day, I'm not sure what about that conversation stuck with me, because I've owned this bar for years and I've met many crazy people.

The End.

Review me! Tell me I suck. Voice your concerns and confusions. Please!

--T. Henneth

Finished 22 August, 2002; Archived FF.N 23 September, 2002