I walk into the bar again. Another Friday night under my belt. So many good movie scenes take place in bars. Once again I come back to Casablanca. Is there a more seminal movie bar than Rick's Cafe Americain? You walk in and hear Dooley Wilson singing Knock on Wood. Yvonne sitting at the bar, Sasha coming on to her relentlessly as our desperate lost soul waits for some acknowledgment from the ever present Rick. Karl the waiter bounces around, quipping about his boss, keeping tabs on who's winning and who's losing at the roulette tables in the back room.
This place is a bit like Rick's. There's a piano player in a black suit, looks to be Ralph Lauren. He spends most of the night tucked in behind a black Steinway baby grand churning out some of the old standards. The floors are hardwood, the bar is made out of cherry wood with a granite top. There's a brass railing and the draft beer comes out of brass taps. On the wall behind the bar, hanging over the bottles is a picture of Sinatra, his fedora perched loosely on his head and a single Lucky dangling between his index and middle finger.
Oh but there are some great bar scenes in the movies. Pretty much all of "Cocktail" counts. "Lost in Translation", just thinking of Scarlett Johansson. She's pretty much able to single-handedly put any movie on a guy's Top Ten list. Any of the bars from "Swingers", probably the seminal bar movie of the nineties. Speaking of Frank, the way I was just a second ago, "Robin and the Seven Hoods", great Sinatra bar movie. Sammy Davis Jr. singing Bang! Bang! As he blasts bottles away standing at the cleared out bar. Or Frank and Dino lecturing Bing Crosby on how to dress like a real man while they sing Style.
Ah the art of dressing with class. A lost art. Well, for men anyway. I undo the buttons on my jacket and saddle up to the bar. "Tony." The bartender smiles at me as she spins a coaster along the granite. It stops perfectly at my fingertips.
"Hey, Callie." I smile as I play with the coaster. I'm a regular here now. I pop in Friday after work. I listen to the piano player for a few hours, hoist a couple martinis, smile at a few of the yuppie single ladies that come in. Nothing too serious, just enough to keep my skill sharp. Then there's Callie. Her real name is California Jones, I kid you not. Just over five-foot-six and probably close to exactly a hundred and twenty pounds. Full lips, great hips and so much in between, including a strawberry blonde ponytail. She's got a raspy, husky kind of Diana Krall like voice. Everything I would want.....two years ago.
"Absolute martini, shaken not stirred, with a lemon peel." She chimes in her seductive alto. "Wrap up a big case?" She starts polishing a different cocktail glass.
"They're all big cases, as my boss likes to say." I mutter a reply and run my finger around the rim of the cocktail glass.
"He was the one in here with you a few weeks ago, right? The salt and pepper hair, Paul Newman disposition and Old Granddad neat." She smiles, leaning her right elbow on the counter top behind her.
"Leroy Jethro Gibbs, former Gunnery Sergeant in the Marine Corps. The one and only." I answer with an affirming nod.
"Kind of cute." She sticks out her lower lip appreciatively.
"I've heard Gibbs called a lot of things, cute doesn't even make the top one hundred." I joke as I take a sip of my drink. "I mostly just call him Boss."
"He single?" She asks.
"Not sure that strawberry blonde is close enough to red for his taste." I joke. "Boss has a thing for redheads."
"Little old for me anyway." She smirks and sets the cocktail glass down. "You still hung up on that girl?" I sit silent, staring down at my drink. Am I still hung up on Ziva? How do you ever know when you're hung up on someone? In my case, it's probably easier than most. Ziva would probably say that the fact that I don't chase every skirt like a hyperactive bloodhound any more is probably a good indication.
A good bar should always have music. And the music should always fit the bar. Jeff Healey and his steel guitar, the perfect music for "Road House". A movie that is, by the way, the best bouncer movie of all time. I don't know what Callie meant by Gibbs' Paul Newman thing, he's always kind of been more of a Sam Elliot to me. While we're on the subject of Road House. Then of course there's the one I keep coming back to, Dooley Wilson as Sam, pounding out torch songs on that old upright at the Cafe Americain.
Rick was hung up on a girl. But what man wouldn't have been hung up on Ingrid Bergman in the 1940s? Drinking gin, sitting at a bar, listening to the same old song over and over again trying not to think about her. Who does that? I take a sharp inhale and cast a glance down at the cocktail glass at my fingertips. Maybe I shouldn't be so quick to judge old Rick.
Then there's the kiss. It wasn't a real kiss. You know a real kiss when you get one. Almost feels like it sucks the adrenaline right up out of your back. For a guy I know that if it's done properly, it's addictive as hell. Like when a cigarette is almost down to the filter and every inhale feels like it's going to light your lips on fire. I could probably do a solid few hours on the great movie kisses. Everyone probably has their favourite. I stare down at the vodka in the glass. A good martini is always cold the best bartenders can almost create a fog on the outside of the glass. To the naked eye, it makes the vodka appear cloudy, one of the great simple visual effects.
It wasn't the first time Ziva kissed me. Nah, I can remember our undercover mission. Those weren't real kisses either, just very good imitations. A trained eye like mine can tell the difference. I'm the kind of guy appreciates the small things about a kiss. Like when a girl reaches back and grabs the short hair on the back of your head. Or that little ridge some girls get on their bottom lip from biting down on it too much. It catches you on the way out, letting her taste linger, like a fine martini just burning your lips for that extra second. The lemon peel now sits at the bottom of the glass almost taunting me. As much as the vodka might burn a little bit going down, the burn of Ziva's lips on my cheek is still a little more potent.
"Man, you got it bad, huh?" Callie comments as she leans, semi-seductively on the brass taps.
"I have no idea what you're talking about." I put on my best bravado, even staring at her chest to amplify the effect.
"Come on, the thousand yard stare into the bottom of a cocktail glass? I've been a bartender too long not to know what that means." She laughs lightly as she plucks the glass out from in front of me. "You're a romantic, Tony, don't fight it. What's her name?"
"How do you know I'm not just considering taking you home?" I toy, my machismo working a little overtime on this one.
She smiles and stops polishing a whiskey runs her tongue lightly over her cotton candy pink lip gloss and leans over the bar on her elbows. I'm trying hard not to just stare down the front of her blouse as her breasts rest on the granite of the bar. Maybe I pushed the flirting a little too far here. I really wasn't expecting her to challenge me. "Any time, anywhere, stud." She breathes in that husky contralto and I have to gulp.
"Tony?" I hear from the reception area and I look over my left shoulder to see one of my co-workers standing there.
"Probie?" I peak a curious eyebrow at McGee who walks over to the bar. He slides in along the bar next to me. "What are you doing here?"
"I was, uh, working late filling in for a sick technical worker in MTAC and on my way home I figured I'd stop in for a drink." Probie shrugs at me but I'm not convinced this is entirely a coincidence.
"So, Gibbs didn't tell you that I'd be here?" I question.
"What does the boss have to do with this?" McGee's mouth narrows and his eyes kind of bug out. Okay, now I know he's telling the truth. I hear Callie clear her throat and I snap back to reality.
"Right, sorry." I shake my head. "Probie, this is Callie. Callie, this is Special Agent McGee, my sidekick."
"Tony, we talked about this, I'm not your sidekick." McGee protests.
"Come on, McGee, don't fight it." I'm joking with him. "Callie, I'll let you decide. The less attractive one is always the sidekick. Who's more attractive?"
She shakes her head at the two of us and laughs. "I'm not getting in the middle, boys."
"Normally I'd say we were a comedic team, McGee. Like Martin and Lewis, but that doesn't work. Because if you're the straight man, that makes you Dino and let's face it, McGee, I'm clearly more Dino than you." I joke again and McGee shakes his head.
Callie laughs. "What can I get you, Agent McGee?"
"Uh...a Mojito, please." McGee is hesitant and I wave Callie off.
"Come on, McGooberry Pie. If you're going to drink with me, you have to order something less...girly." I mock scold.
"Well, then what should I...?" McGee shrugs his shoulders.
"Get him a whiskey sour, Callie." I nod to the bartender and she nods to me. I look over at McGee who looks slightly puzzle at my selection. I relent. "On me." I add. She mixes up another vodka martini for me and squeezes a fresh Wiser's whiskey sour for McGee. She spins the drinks down the granite and they pause right in front of us.
"How does she...?" Probie is once again confused, this time by Callie's elite bartending skill.
"How does Gibbs know what we're saying when he's not in the room, Probie? The answer is a mystery of the universe. Like why it always rains right after you wash your car." I start into my second drink.
There's a pause. A heavy silence that passes between me and my Probie partner. He takes a drink and taps idly on the glass with his thumbs. "So, Ziva's back."