by Lisa Rhodes-Ryabchich
A poker-faced, muscular blond bartender stood erect with sharp blue eyes like a hawk, but he never cracked a smile, not even a small wrinkle line appeared across his cheeks, as he peered over at an average height, 25-year-old, voluptuous woman, wearing a yellow cotton v-neck dress and white medium-heeled sandals, with her long artistic fingernails painted in parrot-green nail polish with a diamond stud at each tip, as she walked towards the bar to order herself a drink. And Julia is scared and at the same time nervous.
There are a variety of women of varying ages dancing and laughing with nondescript men on the dance floor near the bar. And in a split second, the bartender lifts his head higher into the air, as if he is smelling the fragrance of Julia’s rose perfume wafting through the room. He is busy preparing a margarita by icing a tall glass depicting a Hawaiian dancer with colorful Leau Lei flower necklaces around her neck, into chunks of pink Himalayan salt, and garnishing a piece of lime into the concoction, then stuffing a cocktail parasol with blue hummingbirds into the drink. When he speaks, it is with his lips controlled, “What would you like Miss?” as he stared at Julia to notice that she missed her right ring finger. At once a twitching occurred in his arms as if being bombarded with creepy black ants crawling across him in a hypnotic-like trance, and he found himself drifting back to the room that his twin brother stayed in after he air-lifted to the hospital last year, after his bike accident, where his family found an amputated finger hidden inside his brothers shoe, and they did not know who it belonged to or how it landed in there. The ambulance drivers later reported that they arrived at the accident scene in the dark and did not remember seeing the finger there.
And it occurred in that moment of utter revulsion after eyeing Julia’s hand, that the bartenders bile fluids regurgitated into his mouth from deep within his stomach, and as if in a chain reaction, like the way one churns cream into butter, he imagined the juices sloshed through his veins, bringing forth the tragic memory of his comatose brother, lying pathetically in the hospital, and he himself a witness of the dead thing, bloody, black, and blue, with the nail torn off.
In an instant, he gulped down a slug of seltzer, and tried to regain his cool composure, by wiping his face meticulously with his waist towel, to hide his humiliation, as if he dusted imaginary crumbs of joy from his face.
Julias unlucky finger, taken away by amputation, in a motorcycle accident a year ago, after crashing with her fiancé Jake, into an oncoming suicidal bicyclist always irritated her. It happened on a Friday in the wee morning, with the bicycle bereft of reflectors, and the rider wore all black clothing, that melted sinisterly into the ash-strewn darkness.
With no idea of what Jake crashed into, Julia’s body flew through the air like a bullet, into a red Schwinn bicycle, and her right hand mangled itself inside the spokes of the rear wheel. Jake suffered a blunt trauma to his pelvis, after ejecting six feet into the air, and his front teeth cracked like eggshells. The selfish bicyclist rode without his hands on the handlebars and veered into the path of the motorcycle. The bicyclist died from internal bleeding a week later. And Jake and Julia broke up afterward. “It became a complete horror scene in a matter of seconds, one I’ll never forget in a millennium,” Jake said about the accident, giving a reason for his reluctance to go forward in the relationship with Julia.
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The arduous task of finding suitable boyfriends who did not size her up by the imperfection of her hand, her weight, and how much money she possessed, seemed to be Julia’s biggest obstacles and her worse nightmare when needing a date for a casual Friday night, to beat the blues away from being lonely and single. “Everybody thinks I’m beautiful at first, then deformed once they see my missing finger,” she complained to her therapist one day. Julia hoped to meet somebody to begin a new journey towards self-healing. She prided herself enough to be an affluent writer and enjoyed living in a roomy apartment in the outskirts of London, and being an American with privilege did not occur by chance.
Julia’s parents came from that elite group of entrepreneurs who happened to have an eye for inventing gadgets, to help beautify people in the comforts of their homes. One of the last big items they invented included a diet belt, that calibrated one’s waist and massaged the fat around the tummy with electrodes to destroy fat cells. All you needed to do is to wear the belt before meals, and you could eat whatever you wanted. It became an enormous success with the royals across the globe, who discretely wore it underneath their fashionable attire to exclusive weddings and celebrations. Even Oprah endorsed it as one of the most useful products to help women maintain their health.
And Julia wore the belt whenever she put on a few pounds, to try to eradicate herself from a depression. The belt often referred to as a 'lifesaver' for many people who viewed food as a comfort source, and later found themselves addicted to the ease and availability of food which led to their obesity. “Don’t be a poverty-stricken child,”Julia remembered her father saying when she scraped her plate clean as a first grader, only later to find her mother being directed by her father to give her more food. This memory stayed cemented ofJulia’s experience growing up and her father’s neurotic insistence that no one in the house should ever behave like Oliver Twist. Food however remained plentiful and there became no need to act without table manners. Leaving just a little bit of food on the plate made one advantageous. And Julia would always be expected to eat a hearty meal three times a day, but she often overindulged when the blues took hold of her.
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Now going forward after the accident, Julia wanted a deeper connection to men, more so than she did with Jake. He possessed the traits of an obsessive cat lover and it worried Julia to find him crying the day his beloved cat got run over by a car during an overnight snowstorm. The poor creature lay splayed dead cold with its paws up in the air like it got assassinated by a police officer looking to steal its soul, or its organs for re-transplantation. Grey hairs like a cloud of smoke stood frozen on its carcass. “Such a tragedy,” that is what Julia told Jake, and she harbored a nightmarish thought, that he would make a horrible father, irresponsible and unprotective to let their future child run loose in the streets, without direction, same as the cat he let out during a snowstorm to freeze itself to death. These thoughts lurked inside her becoming irksome and troubling, and she wished she didn’t have them.
Yet, the rings they bought at a diamond exchange store manifested into being symbolic of a long-term friendship turned matronly. The baby in the tank waiting to be born, unleashed into the world, unwanted by him and unnecessary, but in the summer evenings when they made love, things became forgivingly beautiful, full of adventure and passion. Soon innovative ideas blossomed each day on how to keep him safe from the clutches of law enforcement. He an unpretentious nut about obeying the law, but wary of any boundaries when it came to sex, and creating an atmosphere to romance a girl, who might want to be part of his dream someday. Trespassing in parks after dusk seemed to be an exciting place to be still and watch the stars twinkle like alien sentients.
Anything appeared better to Julia than waiting for something to manifest on its own, or to happen the way it did in the movies, scripted with the ending tied up with a ribbon. They met by happenstance in the supermarket aisle one weekend, after she put her items in his basket by mistake. And they later enjoyed discussing over a Chinese dinner, everything from what do you believe is your greatest asset, to why did you pursue me in the first place. And nothing should have happened in the park, under the summer night sky, over a log, but it did. Lovemaking happened like in a dream, with the treetops leaking light like fireflies above them, and they felt intoxicated by the mere escape and relief to find a nesting place to make love without attracting attention to themselves. Nature provided them a comfortable loft and a great place to dream for free.
Yet death never came across their minds, and when it did, it brushed through their hair like a razor blade, jagged and messy. Her miscarriage should not have happened, but it did— unplanned like their relationship and demanding attention. Could Julia be doomed to rediscover Jake at some point later in life, after finding another lover, and one more caring and mysterious than he? After all, he did not hide the fact that he loved women and liquor more than life itself. And it showed the day of the accident, when the acrid smell of dead skunk hung in the air, and sweet white wine wafted from his breath like an unforgettable kiss.
After the accident, the ache of love, strained like sore muscles and churned like acid later during the Christmas holiday season. Julia almost felt breathless and anxious to complete herself, to dot all the i’s and cross the t’s, to be ladylike in her mannerisms, listening to her balcony chimes blow in the wind, a quiet, gentle sound pleasant to the ears, like a wave lapping across the wet sand, sunken in the earth, sucking at one’s toes for stability, screaming stay, stay for a while.
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Now after seeing the bartender, Julia seemed disappointed. He didn't need to be attractive, but a mere tool to heal and go forward with her therapy plan. Her therapist recommended that she go out into the world where people rallied for companionship and to make herself relevant. But there he stood out as the first person she encountered in the crowded room, alone underneath a skylight, surrounded by a waterfall of multicolored water, making the bar look like a heavenly paradise at a tropical island, and enticing a lonely woman’s wildest fantasy, so she could feel safe and herself there. What would she order? A pina colada or better yet a blue ice daiquiri?
Clumsy as a monkey, the bartender dropped a glass, and it shattered across the floor. He grabbed his towel hanging on his waist and picked up the hunk of ragged glass and laid it on the bar like a war trophy. His eyes jutted-out pinpointed and frozen in a hard stare as he glanced Julia’s way to follow her as she sat at a table with two men and a woman chatting about an upcoming wedding that they planned to attend somewhere in the state of Hawaii. The woman, resembled a prettier version of Marilyn Monroe and tactfully recited poetry by Anne Sexton, dressed in a white sequined lambswool sweater, smelling of Chanel number 19. Everything made it seem like an early Christmas. A candle on the table wafted aromas of sweet pine; the cake they indulged in sat covered in powdered sugar, so their lips stood out like white mustaches painting a frown over them. Julia awkwardly felt an urge to say something to them before she became uncomfortable.
“Is it OK if I sit here? There does not appear to be any available space anywhere else in the bar?” Julia glanced over at them noticing their eyes all covered by eyeglasses. And not just any kind of eyeglasses, but the kind you find at the drugstore for reading. They shared a common defect of the middle-aged, presbyopia. They glued themselves to a menu of desserts. And as if the yellow of Julia’s jacket brought the sun into his eye, the tall, handsome, brown-skinned man with a cleft chin peeled his kind eyes away from the menu first to examine the wearer's face. He saw Julia smiling with cotton-white teeth and confident in her mannerisms, as her body language said, friendly and relaxed. Her yellow linen jacket, she wore unzipped, and her red lipstick spread over her sensual lips, so when her lips opened, her mouth looked like a juicy candy apple. The man offered no resistance to her decision to sit down and waved his hands as if he began directing traffic. And Julia took that to mean OK and sat down making herself comfortable.
Within a minute, the bartender came around asking for their order. She ordered a simple Rum Coke and the woman resembling Marilyn ordered another round of Margaritas for herself and her friends. When the bartender came back 5 minutes later, he handed Julia her drink in a dark colored glass with a parasol decorated with 4th of July insignia on it. He also brought a complimentary bottle of red wine and three Margaritas as the woman asked for. Julia quick to indulge in her drink to calm her nerves picked up her glass and started to shake it to see if it contained a lot of ice in it. It felt heavier than a usual glass, but she harbored insecurities because the sensation in her hand tested as being damaged, and so she stuck her spoon in it to see why it weighed so heavy. Her spoon stirred for a second and got stuck on something jagged. She surprised herself and used the utensil to lift out the heavy object. To her dismay, it weaponized her, seeing this object for its true identity as a sizable hunk of jagged glass. It devastated her and frightened her wits all at the same time, seeing the object in its gruesomeness, and the others at the table turned to her, as she let out a whale-like gasp.
“Ugh, what the hell is this? A piece of glass!”
Both men sitting at the table watched in shock. Soon they started to argue.
“That son of a bitch, trying to kill the girl. Can you believe that friends?” The brown-skinned man said.
“Why would he do, such a foolish thing? Doesn’t he know we hang blokes like this? This is an outrage,” the South African man said adjusting his glasses, so they didn’t fall onto the table in front of him.
Within a minute the bartender returned to the table with a pitcher of water and slammed it down on the table hard, and it spilled over onto Julia’s dress, so she sat there drenched with water leaking like a faucet in her lap.
“Oh, good gracias God, he is a real winner today, isn’t he? I have not gotten a change of clothes either,” said Julia.
“Let me go to my car and fetch you a pair of jeans and a top. I have a couple of new outfits that I bought for Tracy for her birthday today, and I did not have a chance to wrap them,” the brown skinned man said in a hurry.
“Oh, thank you! If Tracy does not mind,” said Julia in a tone of desperation.
Julia glanced over at Tracy who is sloshed and almost ready to slip under the table, as she nods her head in agreement. The brown skinned man next gets up and walks outside to find his blue Mercedes Benz in the parking lot, but he does not know that he is being followed by the bartender who is spying on him as he is retrieving the outfit from his car trunk. And as soon as he leaves his car, the bartender drops a broken glass under the left front tire of the Mercedes and retreats to go back inside. The brown skinned man does not know he is the victim of malice for being a good Samaritan.
Back inside at the table, Julia is waiting for her new clothes to change into them and to escape the embarrassment of being soaked and a spectacle for all the prying eyes around her to glare at. Nobody from the restaurant staff said anything to console her, not the management or the waitresses, only a kind old man offered her a handkerchief to wipe her dress with saying "tsk, tsk, shame on that man; he is a cumbersome lad. I hope you forgive him. He's a troubled soul caught between heaven and purgatory. I've seen this type; they don't last long here." Julia smiled and thanked the man, reaching out her hand to touch his shoulder.
“Here is the outfit I promised. You look about the same size as Tracy; you are in luck,” he said. Julia acknowledged the brown skinned man with an expression of gratitude and said, “thank you,” and her eyes latch onto his as if she prayed that he would rescue her afterwards and take her home.
After Julia returned from the ladies' room, the brown skinned man noticed how beautiful she appeared to the image of the goddess Sita, and the red pants fit her body like a glove outlining the curvature of her hips as if she hid inside a Chablis wine glass. And then he tried to tame an uncontrollable urge causing his heart to race frantically beyond its usual slow rhythmic beat and he knew to fix something. And so, he walked up to the bar where the bartender stood flirting with his lips pursed like a trilling bird, and over exercising his glottis while bursting large breaths of air out toward a busty female customer and then a clenched hand reached over the counter and grabbed the bartender by his shirt.
“You are a stinking ignoramus! You do not know who you are fucking with do you? Well now you are fucking with me, and I do not like your shenanigans!” said the brown skinned man speaking in an authoritative tone with his green eyes piercing the bartender’s cold blue eyes like a dagger. And with that he released the bartender and slammed an idle wine glass on top of the bartender’s pale skinny hand with long boney fingers, pinning him to the counter. The bartender, now shook up, managed to wriggle his hand free, snapping his fingernails on the lip of the glass, then backed away from the bar with his hands up in the air like a guilty perp and said,
“No harm done Man. It's all just a joke.”
And then as if an entity from another dimension summoned this egregious commotion, a beautiful hummingbird flew in through the window from behind the bar and hovered next to the multitude of trumpet vine flowers hanging from the ceiling around the bar. It began to feast on the sweet nectar, going from plant to plant, enjoying showing off its long tongue, sucking in the sweet sugar like an addict and the speed of its flapping wings, and its heart pumping 500 beats per minute. Then after getting its sugar high, it flew backward back outside through the same open window it arrived from.
After witnessing this bird, the brown-skinned man knew the power addiction posed over any creature and realized that this bartender must also be an addict of his own strange disgruntlement with this poor girl looking to find herself on a Friday night. He refused to continue in this way, realizing he took no interest in continuing to lower himself to the bartender's level. And he recognized in that moment that love could be resuscitated from this horror show, the hummingbird showed him with its incessant need for sweets, that he still possessed lots of sweetness left inside himself. He became determined to not let this deranged bartender destroy the rest of Tracy’s birthday party, nor would he let Julia leave that evening without seeing how fast his heartbeat when he saw her. Even if he reluctantly returned to back track their conversation and start from the beginning again, he now knew he shared similar traits with a compulsive hummingbird full of sweetness. And this time he would say to her,
“Hello, beautiful, you look so lovely, may I have the pleasure of your company?” and in his mind Julia would smile and flash her pretty teeth and he would kiss her like a movie star in heat, tasting her agile nose, her cherry cheeks, her dimpled chin, her succulent lips full of nectar and sweetness, caressing her softy and she would say,
“Yes, and what took you so long to ask?”
Lisa Rhodes-Ryabchich is an adjunct professor at Westchester Community College and teaches screenwriting. She was a 2016 fellow at MVICW. Her MFA is from Sarah Lawrence College. She has authored 6 poetry books. Her short stories can be seen in Drunk Monkeys, Kairos Lit, Arlijo and elsewhere. Visit her blog.
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