The bartender is trained to mind his own business. If (when) the customers ask for drinks, he provides them. If (when) the customers want to unburden their usually tawdry or scared secrets, he listens. If (when) they get rowdy, he motions the bouncers forward. Other than that, he just stands there and rubs the clean glasses cleaner because it gives his hands something to do as he looks around at the crowd, filtering their actions as background noise. Sometimes a customer or two will catch his eye, and then he has a bit of fun observing them. Not an exciting life, but the booze is easy to come by and the pay not bad.
Tonight, the business is slow, so he is doing his usual survey of the patrons. There is a woman in a shabby coat and a face almost as shabby, chugging her beer with the desperate ease of a professional. There is a group of young men who are knocking back hard liquor and the bartender makes a mental note to keep an eye on them in case the bouncers will be needed. And there is a young woman in the corner (dark hair, dark eyes, dark coat) and a light-haired man with her. They are likely to be more interesting than a tired drunk or a bunch of rowdies so that's probably why he watches them. Or maybe the gleam of the girl's hair caught his eye. He can't tell.
They are a couple. It is evident in the way they talk, the comfort of shared sentences mixing with the rhythm of speech shaping itself to another's familiar pattern. There is the casualness of the way she leans against her chair, and the fact that he keeps looking at her and his eyes are warm. They are on opposite sides of the small table and the bartender wonders briefly why the man or the girl don't just scoot the chairs closer together, the way couples usually do (late at night, before closing, they often get a lot closer than that). They maintain distance at all time but it's turned into a lie by the way her mouth tilts up at the corners when she watches him, and the way his face opens up when he watches her. His hands are loose on the table and she smiles up at his face at some unheard comment, reaching for her drink. The table is rickety (no need to waste money on new furniture when old one will do, and most patrons here end up drunk enough that extra wobbling makes no difference anyway) and her glass starts to tip over and she reaches for it, instinctively, to catch it before it falls. Their hands almost brush and all of a sudden she twists back, jerkily. Her hands are on her lap and she looks as if she wants to put them behind her back. Her eyes go flat but within them something necessary is snuffed out. There is hunger, and fear, and love on the man's face, and a half-dozen other emotions harder to identify. The bartender catches himself thinking that no man's face should be this naked. Not ever, not when people can see.
She is on her feet, her hair an angry curtain behind her, and she says something to the man, low, and furious, and short. His reply is so soft that his lips barely move. Then she strides out, decisively and without a second glance, and he is left sitting there, and he stares after her, and his eyes are lost.
The bartender wonders briefly what that was all about, but then the young men get rowdy and he has to call the bouncers and in the resulting commotion he forgets about it. A bartender is trained to mind his own business, after all.