Life Goes Off

A few days later, I was reading the paper over my hangover cup of coffee. Since I had the night off, I was looking to see if there was anything good playing at the movies. That’s when I caught sight of the notices on the next page. I saw her face in a smiling studio portrait. As much as I didn’t want to believe it, I knew it was her. It was the worry dolls pinned to her shirt. They matched the earrings she had on that night. And those sad eyes. No one had both of those.

I remember the first time I saw her that night at the bar. It was close to closing, around that time when the only people left are too drunk to realize it’s time to go. I was pouring her a double bourbon when she looked up at me, rested her head against her hand, and smiled. And then she spoke. I’ll never get that voice out of my head, that heavy, sultry drawl spoke to me from the newsprint, haunting me.

“Tell me something, sugar. Just how old do you think I am? And be honest. Nothing you say is going to cause me any hurt I can’t drink or fuck away.”

Her blue eyes pressed me for an answer. She blinked and a clump of mascara fell off the end of her eyelash onto her cheek. She didn’t notice. My stare made her uneasy, and she smiled. The lines appeared everywhere. Crow’s feet stepped out from the layer of metallic blue eyeshadow, and the lines around her mouth made her smile look crackling, old. She was once a pretty girl, I’m sure of that, but those days had come and gone.

Thirty-nine is what I told her. I wanted to say forty-four.

“Huh.” She leaned forward, just enough for her loose denim blouse to give me a peek of what was beneath it. Her breastbone was well-tanned and covered with freckles. “You want to hear something curious?”

She wiggled her shoulders slowly in that suggestive, obvious way that I guess some men find attractive. She did it like it was a stock move from her seduction repertoire. A thin gold necklace with a ring on it dangled between her breasts. When I looked back in her eyes, she paused and bit her lip, another move from the come-on grab bag. Only this time it did something for me. In that moment, she looked strangely sexy. I think her voice had a lot to do with it. It was raw, honest—something I wasn’t used to.

“I became an alcoholic by choice,” she said with a smile. “Out of sheer boredom. Because I had nothing better to do on a Saturday night. Does that surprise you?”

I kept silent, probing behind her eyes, wondering if this was another stock plot, her sick idea of party conversation.

“Honey, you don’t know the half of it,” she said. “I’m full of surprises. I don’t eat red meat either. I don’t eat at all.” She looked at me for a reaction before letting out a nervous laugh and sliding her glass forward. She tucked her sagging, dirty blonde curls behind her ears, revealing a pair of dangling worry doll earrings, and said in her seductive drawl, “Pour me another one, sugar.”

Her lipstick left a thick rouge outline on her glass. I turned around and she began to dig in her purse. The gold bracelets on her thin, bony wrists slid up to her elbow, clacking and jangling, as she started pulling things out of the purse onto the bar: lipstick, mascara, a compact, a brush, a set of keys, a blue eyeliner pencil, a balled-up Kleenex and a prescription bottle. She left the bottle on the table and slid everything else back into her purse. She struggled to open the prescription bottle. She cursed and forced it open by slamming it against the bar. Two pills rolled out and she took them in her mouth and downed the drink the moment I set it in front of her. The ice cubes rattled and bounced around her glass as she brought it down with a hard clack. She bit her lip as her eyes danced around me.

“Are you new here? I don’t think I’ve seen you. What’s your name?”

I told her.

“Mmm …” she said. I poured her another one. “Thanks, love. You’re a real doll.” She ran her bony index finger around the rim of her glass. She had too many rings on her hands—a couple on each ring finger, none of them wedding rings, one on the middle finger of her right hand and a plain silver ring on her left thumb.

“Sweetheart, it’s ok. You can say anything you want to me. Why don’t you pour one for yourself?” she said. I dropped a few cubes into her glass and poured one for myself. I looked for somewhere to escape. Two truckers sat at the end of the bar, muttering athletes’ names and sipping Budweisers. A couple of young girls stood around the jukebox, trying to act cool while two guys playing foosball looked them up and down. The girls standing by the jukebox shrieked and giggled as “Brown-Eyed Girl” began to play. I looked at her and rolled my eyes.

“What’s that for?” she asked.

I told her I hated that song. “

What for? I mean, how could you?”

I said I was sick of hearing it every night. It seems like it’s a law that whenever people get together in the South they have to play this song, and all the girls have to scream and two-step together while the guys go to buy another round, bored to tears. I said I wished Van Morrison was known for something unique like “Moondance” or Astral Weeks instead of some bubble-gum pop song.

“I love this song,” she said. “It reminds me of a girl I knew in high school. Eyes big … deep … and bright. All the boys were crazy about her. I hated her for it.”

I said I was sure she had to fight the guys off, too.

“I took what I could get,” she said.

I asked what happened to the brown-eyed girl.

“She found a guy who loved her and treated her right. Ain’t that sweet?” She clenched her glass in her hand. “I want something sweet tonight,” she said. “Why don’t we make this next one a screwdriver, darling?”

I said I thought that was a good idea, and she grinned. I shoved the mixer into the icebox and turned around to grab a bottle of cheap vodka.

“Oh, you are an angel.” She unfolded a couple of dollar bills from the inside of her denim blouse. I slipped a straw in her drink and pretended not to notice. She spread the bills out flat on the bar and slowly pushed them to the edge. This was the first tip she had given me.

She sipped her drink through the straw. Once she had swallowed, she leaned back in her stool, and shook her head.

“Perfect, darling. Really sweet. Stee-rong, baby,” she said. She leaned forward in her chair and laughed that drawn-out, broken, drunken laugh that echoes around your skull. I joined in, just to be polite.

I asked her about her earrings.

“Oh, these are my worry dolls, baby. I tell them my troubles, and they make them go away.”

I asked her what kind of troubles she had.

“Well, now, honey, I can’t have too many if my worry dolls take care of them all for me!” I gave her a look that said I wasn’t going to let her get away with an answer like that, but she just smiled and shook her head. “You remind me a lot of my first husband, you know that? You got those puppy dog eyes and that baby face,” she said Her expression wilted as she looked away and reached for her drink, pulling out the straw and taking a big sip. “That’s what happens when you’re young and stupid and think you know something about love. You married?”

I told her no. I wasn’t.

“Got a girlfriend?”

I told her no. I didn’t.

She lifted the cap from the prescription bottle and set it next to her glass. She took out another pill and placed it on her tongue. She took a hearty sip, holding her head back as she swallowed the pill in one big gulp.

I asked her what the pills were.

“Mother’s little helper, doll. Makes me feel loose and easy and free. You got a cigarette? I love the way a smoke tastes with vodka.”

I went to get her a pack out of the machine.

“Oh, you don’t need to go buying me anything.”

I said that I didn’t have to buy it. I asked her what kind she wanted.

“Something without a filter,” she said. “Those things take all the fun out of it.”

I asked if she wanted me to put any music on the jukebox.

“Yeah. How about some Stones? Or the Boss. Pick whatever you like. It’ll help me get to know you better.” She chomped on a piece of ice. “You can tell a lot about a man by his music.”

I bought a pack of Chesterfields and flipped through the albums on the jukebox. I picked “19th Nervous Breakdown” and chuckled. I put in “Moondance” as an experiment, just to see if the girls would scream when they heard it. Probably not. They were busy flirting with the guys at the foosball table. The guys fidgeted with the handles on the table, a little too eager.

She swallowed a few more pills as I walked back to the bar. “I can’t believe you don’t smoke,” she said, stirring the ice in her drink nervously with her straw. “I thought all bartenders smoked.”

I told her that I had quit. I hadn't. I'd never started.

“You’re a strange fellow, you know that,” she said. I looked at her, startled. It was not something that I expected her to say. “Oh, sugar, don’t look at me like that. I’m only kidding. Just trying to get a rise out of you, baby doll. It’s a habit of mine. I used to talk to trees. When I was little. Not just trees. Walls, plants, dogs, dolls, furniture. My mother never understood it, but I would just carry on whole conversations with them and have a big old time. I told her it was better than talking to strangers.” She chuckled. “I never thought they talked back, of course. I’m no loony. They would just listen, which is more than most people do. They didn’t care. They liked me. I still do it sometimes. Just to amuse myself. I blew it all then. I couldn’t wait to grow up.” She looked away and finished her drink, clutching the glass so tightly that her knuckles were white. “Look at me, getting all upset over something I can’t do nothing about. Those were different times. I just have to learn from my mistakes, and believe me, honey, I’ve got plenty of them. Fretting won’t help,” she said halfheartedly. It sounded like she was trying to convince herself that she was saying something true, something that could help her. She looked at her reflection in the mirror behind me. My eyelids felt heavy. It was only three-thirty.

“How about a tequila sunrise, lover? And get yourself something while you’re at it.”

I thought a little pick-me-up wouldn’t hurt, so I threw together a gin and tonic. I think I saw her take another pill when I glanced up at the mirror. “This is going to be my last one, sweetie,” she said. “Think you could get my tab together?”

I walked over to the cash register and picked up the tips sitting around on the way. I added up her tab and then took about five dollars off of it and brought it to her with another shot of bourbon. She had already finished her tequila sunrise. I told her it was on the house. One for the road. For the best-looking girl in the place.

“That is so sweet of you. You’ve been too kind to me tonight. You do one with me.” I poured one last shot for myself as she shook a few more pills out onto the bar. She lined them up and pushed them off the edge of the bar into her hand. “Let’s wash it all down, darling,” she said. She poured the pills into her mouth and raised her glass. The smile on her face was big. Too big. “Here’s to a good night’s sleep!” We touched glasses and drank. She slowly brought her glass down, but her eyes stayed with me. “What time you get off?” she asked.

I told her that the bar closes at about five and that I leave around five-thirty, sometimes earlier if the crowd was small.

“This bunch looks pretty tiny,” she said, looking at the truckers at the end of the bar. The college guys had left with those two girls a few minutes before. “I don’t think they’re going to be around much longer.” She smiled a nervous smile and rubbed her palms together, making one of her rings slide up and down her knuckle. Her hands were shaking.

I told her that I had worked a double-shift today, even though the bar doesn’t have more than one shift a night. I told her I wouldn’t be much company.

“Please,” she said. “I don’t want to be alone.”

I looked at the glassy, pleading eyes and droopy expression. I had never seen anything like it. I had nothing waiting for me at home but basic cable and a cold mattress. She probably didn’t have much else, but that wasn’t it. I wanted to wipe that look off her face, out of my memory. I shouted that it was last call and picked up the empty bottles in front of the two truckers sitting at the far end of the bar. She grinned and slung her purse around her shoulder and started to walk outside. She left the pills and a fifty-dollar tip. I called out to her. When she turned around, I held up the pills.

“Nah, I don’t need ‘em.” She turned back for the door.

I looked at the name on the bottle. Lily Blanchard. I threw the bottle in the trash and cleaned the bar. I found one of her worry doll earrings lying there. It must have come undone. I put it in my pocket to give to her later.

She was sitting on the hood of an older model Corolla when I got outside. She smiled when she saw me. She climbed in and reached over to unlock my door. “As Long As I Can See the Light” blasted from the speakers when she turned the key. She laughed and turned it down. I told her it was okay and turned it back up. She grinned and threw the car into gear.

She was choked up and sobbing most of the time, but smiled when it was over.

“You can stay over if you want,” she said.

I told her ok. She moved closer to me and curled up to sleep.

When I was sure she wouldn’t wake up, I slid out of bed and gathered my clothes. I changed in the kitchen so I wouldn’t wake her.

There was only one picture of her in the whole house, on the wall by the door. It was the same one in the newspaper that morning. It looked like it was taken a few years ago. Her hair was out of style and her earrings were big and loopy. Even then she had a knowing look in her eyes, but they weren’t eclipsed by eyeshadow, mascara or crow’s feet then. In that picture she looked thirty. She looked sweet.

I found the earring in the laundry. I squeezed it tight in my hand. I wished I was still in her bed, or in her kitchen, dressed, cooking eggs for the both of us. I tried to picture myself there, but all I could see was that face. Not the face in the picture, that would be nice, but the desperate, pleading eyes.

I still have the earrings, in my pocket. I bring them to work every night thinking someday I’ll find someone to give them to. But most days I forget they're even there. They're so small, so light. So easy to forget about.