11
Liza, October 2016
Liza Hummels held open the door of Bernie’s Bar as one student helped another to make it through.
‘Sure you can get him home all right?’ she asked.
‘We live just round the corner,’ the boy snuffled.
Once they’d left, she closed the door and locked it.
‘Why didn’t you let me throw him out?’ asked Eddie, the other bartender at Bernie’s. They took turns at covering the day shift, with the older, more alcoholic clientele; but evenings, when the students drank there, they were both on duty.
‘It was his birthday,’ said Liza.
‘Everyone has a birthday,’ said Eddie.
‘Yes, but this guy found out today that he failed the same exam for the third time.’
Eddie shook his head and buttoned up his jacket. ‘OK if you...?’
‘I’ll do the till,’ said Liza. They both knew she did the till. On the odd occasion Liza had to stay at home because her boy was sick the whole thing ended up such a mess it left her with twice as much work to sort it all out when she came back the next day. So the routine was that Eddie always asked before he left.
She switched the usual playlist with its permanent hit parade for the Delines’ ‘Calling In’. She always played it after she closed up. Once somebody asked if that was her singing, some guy who obviously thought she and Amy Boone sounded the same. Liza swayed about behind the counter as she did the takings. Bernie’s — which wasn’t Bernie’s, there was no Bernie, just three sisters who’d inherited the bar — wasn’t doing all that well, that was pretty obvious. While the other bars in the neighbourhood decorated and worked hard to attract the students, Bernie’s banked everything on minimalist maintenance, low outgoings and lower prices. But the combination of shabby location and shabby clientele had given the place a rock-bottom image, which deterred everyone except those with the least money. That didn’t make it a customer profile impossible to make money from, and Liza had her own ideas on how to make Bernie’s a bar that was both cheap and cool and could attract the alternative section of the student population. These would in turn attract the straight, monied crowd who liked to hang out with the cool artist types in the belief that this made them that bit cooler themselves. It was the same pattern as in uptown; first came the bohemians, attracted by low property prices, and the straights followed them. The sisters had listened when Liza voiced her thoughts, but when it came to funding the small investments such a change would have necessitated they backed off. It was frustrating, and every once in a while it occurred to Liza to make them an outrageously low offer and take over the bar herself. Put her ideas into action. Make some money for once. Buy Bernie’s cheap and sell it at a profit. Because once the straights started arriving it would need to be sold pretty quickly. When the straights moved into uptown and drove up standards and prices, they also drove the bohemian element out. The same thing would happen with Bernie’s, it was just a question of selling before the buyer understood that within another year or two Bernie’s would once again stop being the cool place to hang out.
Yes, yes, a fun way to pass the time, thinking thoughts like these when the days — like today — dragged by.
Liza called her sister’s number.
‘Hi, Jennifer. Soon finished here. Is he sleeping?’
‘Like an angel.’
‘Any dinner left?’
‘It’s in the refrigerator. But hurry up, they’ve changed the timetable again and my last bus goes just before midnight.’
‘Oops, then I better catch an earlier bus myself. See you.’
Liza hurriedly put the evening’s takings away in the safe and turned off all the lights, the clearing up could wait until tomorrow. She put her jacket on, turned on the alarm, knew it would hurt her hip but ran for the bus anyway. Got there just in time to see it pull away from the stop and disappear into the night.
‘Shit!’ she said loudly and pulled out her phone.
‘Second that,’ said a voice.
She looked up.
A man stood leaning against a Ford parked by the sidewalk. She recognised the coat before she recognised the rest of him.
‘Second what?’ she said.
‘It’s shit. I second that opinion.’
‘What is?’ she said without interest as she scrolled back to her sister’s name.
‘Most of it, I’m guessing.’
‘Like just missing a bus?’
‘No, right there we’re lucky.’
‘We are?’
‘I can drive you to wherever you want to go.’
She looked up from the phone. He had a bump on his forehead but seemed to have sobered up from earlier in the day.
‘Thanks but no thanks,’ she said. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m waiting for you.’
She felt something stir inside her, a memory, an old fear that had never quite died away. ‘Because?’
‘Because I want to apologise.’
‘Apologise for what?’
‘For being an asshole.’
‘You weren’t an asshole.’
‘No?’
‘You paid up and you didn’t start a fight with anyone. So in my book that’s not being an asshole.’
He smiled. ‘OK, maybe I wasn’t an asshole, but I still am an asshole. It’s more or less a constant. So I’m apologising for that, at least.’
To her surprise, Liza noticed that both his words and his smile of resignation made her feel calmer. Maybe he wasn’t what you would call handsome, but he wasn’t bad-looking either when he smiled. Charm. Yes, a certain charm. Maybe it had been there earlier too, but her radar for things like that was turned off when she was working behind the bar.
‘Anyway,’ he said as he straightened up from the car. ‘Can an asshole make amends today by offering to drive you somewhere, Liza?’
He must have noticed that she hesitated slightly, because the next moment he opened the passenger door for her with an exaggeratedly gallant gesture.
She laughed drily. ‘After the conversation we had what makes you think I’d dare take you up on your offer?’
‘Your gut feeling when it comes to people,’ said the man. Bob. She didn’t know why she remembered the name. Probably because it was short. She glanced up and down the street. Not a taxi in sight, and if she waited for the next bus her sister wouldn’t make it for hers. She felt the old fear. It was speaking to her, but in a low voice. And she had gathered from the phone call she overheard at the bar that he was a policeman.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘But no funny business.’
He showed her his open palms and backed away smiling round the car.
‘Well?’ he said, after she’d given him the address and they had passed the first set of traffic lights on the road south in a strange but not actually embarrassing silence.
‘Well what?’
‘What’s on your mind?’
‘I thought you were the one who had something on your mind.’
‘Shoe is on the other foot now. I’m your driver and your confidant.’
She smiled. ‘What if I don’t have any issues?’
‘Oh but you have some, my lady.’
‘Oh yeah? Such as what?’
‘You’re tough, but you were afraid when I said I’d been waiting for you. You work behind that bar and it hides your limp, but you can’t hide it when you run. You probably have trouble making a commitment because you’re afraid of being let down again.’
She sighed.
‘Am I wrong?’ said Bob.
‘I guess not, I’m just so tired of men who think a superficial psychoanalysis is the way to a woman’s heart. And the zip on her pants.’
They drove on in a silence that was now slightly more oppressive. Liza noticed the plaster on the knuckles of his hand on the steering wheel.