Bad: Chapter 19

"What's this whole world coming to?
Things just ain't the same
Any time the hunter gets captured by the game"

- The Marvelettes


'Going to get food' was actually Faye's tacit code for 'going to the bar.' She knew she wouldn't be missed for awhile anyhow.

Her drink has been sitting in front of her untouched for nearly an hour, but she couldn't seem to conjure up the desire to consume it. The sun was beginning to set and the color of the amber liquid was made even richer by the rays of orange light pushing in through the lower third of the bar windows that were mostly covered with roller shades.

Despite how monumentally crappy she was feeling, there was a part of her which refused to let go of her present misery, refused to dilute the acute, exquisite pain brought on by her exchange with Spike in the hangar.

She felt a hand on her shoulder.

"You alright there? You ill?"

One of the bartenders had snuck up behind her—the tall one with the curly, graying ponytail threaded through the back of his black ball cap.

"I'm fine, thanks."

"You look like you've got a bowling ball tied around your neck, you're navel-gazin' so hard."

"Bowling ball, no. Albatross, maybe."

He hopped up onto the stool next to her.

"How's that?"

"Oh, no. No way," she stated adamantly, laughing.

"What?"

"I'm not going to sob to a bartender."

"I guess it's a bit of a cliché."

"Yes, it most definitely is. Shouldn't you be avoiding this kind of thing like the plague?"

"Normally, I suppose I would."

"So what makes me different?"

"Well, for one thing, whatever's eating you is eating you so bad you can't even bring yourself to drink your sorrows away. Having you sitting down here, sober as a judge, it's like bad press for alcohol."

She snorted, appreciating the candor, and lit a cigarette.

"You own this place?"

"Yes, ma'am. Been here every day for the last twenty-two years."

"Every day?"

"Every day."

"Then shouldn't you know by now that I'm too young to be called 'ma'am'? It's not exactly a flattering form of address for a girl in her twenties."

"Just my way of showing a lady respect."

He sat sideways on the stool, both of his arms bent at the elbow, his hands clasped in front of him, one thin bicep pressing into the bar at his side, the other pressing into the back of the barstool, keeping him centered and steady as he faced her. His zen pose made him feel strangely familiar.

"I'm not much of a lady."

"Well, it won't keep me from treating you like one."

"That's a first."

"We're not all flesh-hungry monsters."

She pushed back the hair that had fallen into her eyes, shaking her head.

"Spare me. Even if a man believes that, when push comes to shove his virtue rarely extends beyond his manhood."

"That's a pretty rough way to go through life."

She cast her eyes back down at her lap.

"It's all I've ever known."

"Then why's it troubling you so much now?"

"Who says that's my problem? Maybe I just found out I have brain-eating parasites or something."

The bartender laughed, his face becoming even craggier in the process.

"I only ever saw one other person come in here and refuse to drink their drink. Couple of years ago, this guy would come in almost every night and just sit in the corner, always order a whiskey, but he never drank it. Just sat there in the corner and stared at it, just the same as you're doing right now."

"And?"

"Well, I never did get his whole story, but after awhile, hearing him talk a bit here and there, I put it together that he was probably in love with someone who didn't love him back."

Faye's lips came together in a thin line, the ugly truth of the matter sounding so common yet so poignant on the tongue of a stranger.

He pushed himself down off his stool, reached up to pat her shoulder once again. She got the feeling that while his sympathy was genuine, this was truly a ritual that had long since lost its gravitas. She wondered briefly if she had disappointed him with such a garden-variety barstool story.

"Don't beat yourself up. Even foxes get outfoxed. And drink that drink. You'll feel better."

She sighed to herself, hearing the words in her mind.

He was probably in love with someone who didn't love him back.

She turned to the window, the sun having skated off beyond the horizon, leaving behind only a faint trail of violet to remember it by.

There was nowhere left to run to now. It was the irrefutable truth.