Halloween

For Halloween, most of the girls come to work dressed in costumes. Terry dresses like Demi Moore in the movie G.I. Jane, or like Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2—remember that scene near the beginning where Linda escapes from the mental institution? One very tough lady. That's Terry tonight.

Bambi dresses in a flowery short dress with gaudy costume jewelry. I can't figure who she's supposed to be.

Ashley wears a convict costume—with black and white stripes and complete with handcuffs. I ask Ashley about Bambi's  costume, momentarily forgetting that Bambi and Ashley have not been on good terms.

"Ashley, what is Bambi supposed to be?"

"A slut," Ashley replies. Ok, Ashley. Point taken.

Susan wears a nun's habit. It's fitting, as Susan is so not like that image. Susan is spiritual but not religious. It's a dichotomy I appreciate.

"Susan, are you the 'flying nun'?"

"What?" Susan asks.

"You know . . . remember that TV show, 'The Flying Nun'?"

Susan looks mystified. "I've never heard of it," she says. I forget she's 23. I thought all the old shows lived on in syndication. Obviously, not all do.

Heather is a doctor (with stethoscope), Carol is a "pink lady" from the movie Grease, Bridgette wears a St. Louis Cardinals jersey. Darlene dresses like the "scarecrow" in The Wizard of Oz. She has straw in her hair, on her clothes, and sticking out of her sleeves.

"Darlene," I tell her, "your costume gets a 'number one' rating from me, for one reason. It looks absolutely like the most annoying costume to wear."

Cathy is a hippie tonight. Sidney doesn't dress up at all—she comes to work wearing her Applebee's uniform.

"Sidney, you're dressed up like an Applebee's waitress! That's a very good costume. It looks so realistic."

"I made it myself," she says. "It took months to sew the name on."

Joan wears a sign around her neck that says, "Don't yell at me. I'm not a real manager." I tell her that if I had a pencil I'd make myself a sign—"Don't ask me for money. I'm not a real customer."

But you already knew that.

Ashley

It's the day before Halloween. I sit at the bar and wait for my lunch to arrive. The restaurant is not crowded today, and Ashley has time to sit with me. I've already introduced Ashley. She's a 22 years old waitress and she's a cutie. She has a pretty face, and she's meticulous with her makeup and appearance.

"Ashley," I say to her, "can you cook?"

"Hell no!" Ashley replies. "Do I look like I can cook?"

Now that you mention it, no. What was I thinking?

Ashley has never been my server, but we've seen each other in the restaurant many times. Sometimes, as I come through the door, she will walk up to me and hug me. Sometimes, she yells "Wayner!" when she sees me. Sometimes, she punches the back of my barstool as she walks by. And sometimes, she punches me as she walks by. If this is flirting, it's not serious. It's just Ashley being Ashley. I think she trusts me to ensure nothing comes of it, and that allows her to feel safe to do it.

If she gets bored she might open a notepad and doodle a picture—a car outside, or me sitting at the bar. Just for grins, I scanned in a couple of her drawings, threw some color on them, and printed them letter size. When I brought in the prints and showed them to her, she seemed pleased to have them.

Today she reads her horoscope, then asks about my birthday so she can read my horoscope. "Come in tomorrow," she says, talking about Halloween. "I'm going to come as a prisoner. I've got a striped suit and handcuffs." Then she sees a new customer in her section. She jumps off the barstool and she's gone.

Ashley is looking for a job that pays more. I don't know how much longer she will be at Applebee's. She's not a bartender and she never serves me food, but if she goes, I'll miss her. I'll miss hearing her yell "Wayner!" at me, and I'll miss those mischievous, flirtatious looks she sends my way.
So, Ashley, I'll understand if you have to leave, but I hope it doesn't happen for a while. A long while.

A Night at the Bar

I sit at the bar, I sip my beer, I look out the window. The room is crowded, the bar is crowded. Tonight, I don't look at the people around me, I just listen to their voices. It's a babble of conversations, but now and then one voice momentarily rises above the babble for a few words, then all the voices blur together again. It sounds like . . .

babble . . . babble . . . babble . . .

(man's voice) "hey there . . . "

babble . . . babble . . .

(another man's voice) "So I said . . ."

female laughter . . . more babble . . .

(female voice) "And then I ran out of condoms . . ."

Huh?

I take a quick look at the female who said that. She's about 20 years old and very cute. What was that about?

I sit at the bar, I sip my beer, I look out the window. The manager walks out of the kitchen and up to my barstool.

"How do you spell Schwarzkopf?" he asks. "As in General Schwarzkopf."
Uh, like it sounds?

"Write it down." He hands me a notepad and pencil. I write it down. He walks around the bar and shows the pad to other bar customers. As he passes by me again he says, "You were right. I told the bartender to give you a beer on me." Then he disappears into the kitchen.

Huh? What was that about?

I sit at the bar, I sip my beer, I look out the window. A loud male voice to my right says, "You're very quiet tonight!" I look to my right and see a guy I recognize as a regular, though I never talk to him.

"Yes, I am," I agree with him.

"It's been a hell of a week," he says. "I'm being sued for two hundred thousand dollars."

"You are?"

"Yeah, I beat the crap out of this guy in a bar, so he's suing me."

"You beat him up?"

"He attacked me with a bottle—a broken bottle. I used to be an expert at karate. I beat the crap out of him."

"He attacked you?"

"He threatened me. He threatened to attack me with the bottle. So I beat him up."

After a while he leaves to talk to another customer. I'm alone at the bar again. I sip my beer. I look out the window. Then, I look to my left at the woman sitting two seats from me.

"Hello. Are you from Roanoke?"

She looks at me, then turns her barstool slightly toward mine. "I live in Galax," she says with a smile. "I'm in Roanoke on business."

"What's your business?"

"I'm an investment broker," she says. "Stocks, bonds, mutual funds. Boring stuff."

Boring is ok. It's just a night at the bar.

Nancy

Nancy is the weekday daytime bartender. On this Thursday at lunch I have the bar to myself, and  Nancy and I have time to talk. For a while our conversation wanders. Finally, she tells me about what happened to her four years ago. It was the night of December 23, 1995.

Nancy worked at the Christiansburg Applebee's that night. As she closed the bar and prepared to go home, one of her co-workers asked if she could give him a ride home. Nancy agreed, and proceeded to drive him to his home in Radford. The restaurant didn't close its doors until 1 AM, and for those who had to close, it was typical to work until 2 or 2:30 in the morning. It was 3 or 3:30 AM when Nancy turned her Bronco around and headed for her own home.

The most direct route was a "back road" over the mountains. Nancy decided to take this winding, single lane, unpaved road, though she wasn't very familiar with it. The road wound between steep hills which shielded it from the weak December sun and allowed icy spots from recent snowfalls to remain for days.

When she was about a mile and a half from her home she encountered a curve. As her Bronco rounded the curve it hit an icy patch. At first she thought she could recover and keep the Bronco on the road. But it was not to be. The Bronco hit the shoulder and rolled over, rolling several times on its way down into a creek.

Nancy's head hit the windshield and the impact knocked her out. When she awoke, she heard a noise and wondered what it was. She soon realized what was making the noise. The Bronco had landed on its side and the rear window had broken out. The noise she heard was the sound of creek water running through the Bronco. As she regained her awareness, she realized that she was lying, inside her vehicle, in the icy creek water.

Nancy opened the Bronco's door and pulled herself up and out of the vehicle. She was wearing a short miniskirt and tennis  shoes. She fortunately had on a leather coat, which she would  sorely need. The temperature was ten degrees below zero and she was soaking wet.

Nancy knew that a friend lived just a mile down the road, and, though her circumstances were dire, she felt she could make it. All she had to do was climb an embankment to the road and then hike to her friend's house.

In the darkness of the night, disoriented and confused after being knocked unconscious, Nancy made a near-fatal mistake. Instead of climbing the embankment to the road, Nancy climbed the opposite embankment. She struggled forward looking for the road, not knowing that every step carried her deeper into the woods.

Deep in the woods, Nancy knew she was in trouble. She didn't know which way to go, but she knew that she would never be found alive if she stopped. She had to find her way back to the road.

It was a new moon night, and the woods were pitch black. Nancy stumbled and fell repeatly over barbed wire and brambles. Soon her legs were torn and covered with blood.

At dawn she encountered a small river and swam to the other side. Once there she found a road and started walking down it. It was the road to her home, but she was too disoriented, too exhausted, to realize that she was walking in the wrong direction. By 10 AM she was 10 miles from the site of her accident. She had been trying to find her way home, wet, in subzero weather, for six hours.

Then she encountered two men walking down the road toward her. They were dressed in jeans and flannel shirts and were wearing ball caps. Strangely, neither man had on a coat, nor was there a vehicle in sight on the road. "They must have been angels," she says. "What were they doing out there without coats and with no car or truck?" At the time, Nancy had little time to ponder the matter, as she was close to losing consciousness.

"Please help me," she cried to them. At that point, both men turned around and walked away. Nancy fell backward and collapsed on the road.

When she awakened again, the rescue squad was there. Her wet clothes had frozen to the road, and the men in the rescue truck used a shovel to break the ice holding her down. They took her to the hospital suffering numerous injuries and severe frostbite. At the hospital, doctors at first did not expect her to live. One doctor told her later that the lowest body temperature that they had been able to revive a person from was 85 degrees. Nancy's body temperature on arrival at the hospital was 82 degrees.

After she had revived, doctors warned her that she might lose her legs from the severe frostbite, but they were wrong again. She bounces around behind the bar with no hint of her ordeal, save for the small scars up and down the front of her legs.

"I guess God wasn't through with me yet," she says of her brush with death.

Yeah, Nancy. That, and you're one tough cookie.

Terry’s Double Part 2

It's dusky dark outside, an early Tuesday evening, as I sit at the bar. The bar is slow tonight. Darlene works the bar; I'm the only bar patron. The restaurant is crowded, and a group of people hover just inside the door, waiting for a table to open up. Finally, another customer comes in and sits at the bar. I don't know him, but Darlene does, so he must be a "regular", though his visits are on a different schedule from mine. He talks to Darlene for a while, then I hear him ask, "Who is that?" as he points toward the kitchen door. Terry (see the vignette titled Terry's Double) is disappearing through the door.

Darlene shrugs. She didn't see Terry in time. So he tries to describe her—brunette, thus and so tall, etc.

"He's talking about Terry," I tell Darlene.

"Does she have a twin?" he asks Darlene.

Darlene isn't sure. I tell him no, she doesn't have a twin.

"She has a twin," the newcomer says. "I've seen her around here." He pauses, then reiterates, "She has a twin."

Then I understand. He doesn't mean "sister". He just means a lookalike.

So I tell him, "There's a woman I've seen around here who looks just like her."

"Yeah," he says, "that's what I'm saying. There's a woman around here who looks just like her."

So I'm wondering, if he doesn't know Terry well enough to know her name, why would he think that Terry isn't the same person as this other person? Maybe he really did see two women who looked enough alike to be twins. Or maybe it's just a ploy to start a conversation with Terry, which he tries to do moments later when Terry walks by.

"Hey, you've got a twin, you know that . . . ?" He tries a couple more times to get a dialogue going.

Terry handles it like a pro. If he was hitting on her, he got nowhere. Three and out.

He may or may not have been hitting on Terry. But I believe him when he says he saw Terry's twin.

Too weird.

Connections

Here's my question to you—do you believe in synchronicity? Do you think that all of us, and all the events in our lives, are connected in ways that we don't normally see? Or do you think it's all coincidence and random circumstance? As for myself, I believe in synchronicity. I think we're connected to the people and events in our lives in ways we aren't aware of, and if you start being more aware of these connections, you begin to notice them more and more. For example—

Susan is a waitress and occasional bartender. She's a sweetheart and, at 22, exhibits a maturity beyond her years. When I found out the date of her birthday, I decided I had to get her a little gift. She is very much a New Age person, so I thought that a New Age book would be something she might enjoy. As her birthday drew closer, I reminded myself now and then that I had to drop into the bookstore and pick out a book for Susan. But I didn't seem to be able to get around to doing it.

About 10 days before her birthday, I'm having lunch at the bar  when I look around and see Barbara Gibbs sitting behind me. Barbara is a local TV personality so I recognize her immediately. Though she has been anchoring the nightly news for quite a while, this was the first time I had seen her in person.

I thought no more about it until a week later, just a couple of days before Susan's birthday. I'm walking from the Kroger store to my car when this little red Miata zooms out of the parking lot and runs right up to me. Clearly, the driver is impatient to get past me. I look through the windshield at the driver. It's Barbara Gibbs again.

I had never seen her, and now I've seen her twice in a week. I told you I believe in connections . . . in synchronicity. What could running into Barbara again mean? I watch the Miata as it pulls back into the parking lot in front of the bookstore.

Seeing the Miata park in front of the bookstore jogs my memory. "Oh yeah, "I suddenly remember, "I want to get Susan a book. I might as well do it now."

So I head over to the bookstore. As I walk in, I seen a poster advertising a new book by P.M.H. Atwater. Ms. Atwater is a pioneering researcher in the field of near death and other transformative experiences. Plus, she will be signing books later that day.

"That's the book I'm going to get for Susan," I think. I buy the book and promise myself I will come back that evening and get the author to personalize it for Susan. As I leave, I see the little Miata still parked in front of the store.

That evening I come back to the store and I meet Ms. Atwater. She writes a message in Susan's book, and I talk to the author for about 45 minutes. The subject of her books is one that has long interested me, and I enjoy this conversation with her. I find myself wishing Susan could have talked with her, too. I think she would have enjoyed that.

So I get a cool gift book, personalized by the author, and I spend almost an hour talking to the woman who helped pioneer a field of research that is one of my big interests, and it happens because a woman I don't even know just happens to cross my path in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.

Random circumstance? Or connections?

Thursday Night

It's dark outside, and even the bar seems darker than usual. They must have some of the bar lights switched off, or the dimmers turned down. It really is a good atmosphere, and I really do love it. The bar never got crowded tonight, and after happy hour ended it thinned out even more, with only a half dozen or so bar-goers sitting around it.  I watch people at the bar, watch the waitstaff, watch people in the room, watch Darlene. I'm a watcher now, I guess. I'm an observer. The Prime Directive prevents me from interfering.

Amy saves me a seat beside her and again we talk for a couple of hours. A guy sitting beside her talks to us and does little bar-type  magic tricks. I once did magic tricks myself, long ago. Maybe that's why I see all his sleight-of-hand moves. At one point he tells Darlene to pour me another beer and put it on his tab. Nice guy, huh? Shortly after that, he gets up and walks out without paying for my beer which, at his request,  was on his tab. "What do you want me to do?" Darlene asks. "Do you want me to run after him?" "I'll pay for it," I tell her. The people you meet at the bar—sometimes I just shake my head.

Amy says she has to go. We pay our tabs. I was intending to leave, also. But instead of leaving, I stay and order another beer. I want to soak in a little more atmosphere.  The ambiance is just too nice to leave just yet.

What is there about a dimly lit bar that feels so comfortable, that feels so much like . . . this is is the place to be? There is an unspoken camaraderie among the people sitting by themselves at the bar. We may not speak to each other, but we are in each others' company. We're people who have nothing special to do, no place special to be. We sit at the bar, we buy nachos, or wings, or ribs, and we order our beer, or our mixed drinks, or our shots, and we chill. We soak in the ambiance. If you're a true bar-goer, it's a place you love to be. Amy knows what I'm talking about.

"God help me," she says, "I love sitting at the bar."

I can't say it any better than that.

Darlene Revisited

Several people have asked me about Darlene. "What's that about?" they say. I don't really want to get into it. It's over. But as I was the one who did mention it, I guess I owe an explanation. So here is my side of it. Get yourself a beer, take a smoke break, or whatever. This page is going to be lengthy.

I used to eat at the bar every day for lunch and three or four times a week for dinner, plus another two or three nights just having beer at the bar. Darlene got my evening business. I spent a lot of money at Applebee's. A hundred to a hundred fifty a week or thereabouts, every week. Plus, while I don't leave fifty-dollar tips, I always left more than the standard twenty per cent.

One night at dinner I asked Darlene if she would get me a few extra slices of jalapeno pepper. She did, then tapped it into the little computer they have at the bar so it would go on my check—thirty cents. I was surprised.

"You'd think a regular customer could get a few slices of jalapeno without you having to ring it up."

"I can't do that," Darlene replied. "I could get fired. If you don't like it, take it up with the manager."

I really didn't believe she would be fired for giving away a small amount of condiment to a good customer. Nevertheless, it probably would have ended there with no further bad feelings, except . . .

I knew the manager (from being a regular customer—I didn't know her outside the business), and she happened to be walking by at that moment. So I told her what happened. Her response was, "Why does being a good customer entitle you to free food?"

The man sitting at the bar to my left had watched events unfold and could contain himself no longer. "He didn't ask for free food," he said to the manager, "he just wanted a condiment!"

My reply was simple. I told the manager, "Nothing entitles me to free food, just like nothing entitles you to my business."

I didn't return to Applebee's for six or eight months. If Darlene had thrown a glass of water in my face, I don't think it would have had a greater impact. It was like she said to me, "You're not worth a dime to me. Your business isn't worth thirty cents to me."

What could she have done? She could have said, "Look, I have to ring it up or I'll get fired. But you're a good customer, you spend a lot of money in here, and I think it sucks that you have to pay thirty cents for a little condiment. I'll pay for it." Then she could have reached into her tip jar and taken out thirty cents.

How would that have made me feel? First, there's no way I would have let her pay for it. Second, I would have been her customer for life. I would have considered her wanting to pay for that little condiment to be a really great gesture. It would have made me feel wonderful to know my business was appreciated enough that somebody would take their own tip money to pay for something for me.

Instead, Darlene and the manager made me feel like my business was totally irrelevant, that they were doing me a favor by accepting my money.

I know it sounds like a trivial thing. But it wasn't about the thirty cents. It was about the attitude of the restaurant's management toward a good, regular customer that spent a lot of money in their business, every day, every week, every month. Were my feelings hurt that my business wasn't worth thirty cents? You bet.

So Applebee's got the thirty cents. And for the next six to eight months, other restaurants got the four to five thousand dollars that Applebee's would have gotten. What a deal for Applebee's!

One day I went back into Applebee's and there was a new bartender. She no longer works there, and she doesn't want me to write about her, so I won't. But she treated me really well and made me feel like a regular. I came back to Applebee's largely because of the treatment I got from her. Eventually I separated my feelings for the people at Applebee's, most of whom I liked, from my feelings for the way one or two Applebee's people treated me.

I still resented Darlene, but I was acting small and I knew it. I knew that having a grudge against Darlene, however much my feelings were bruised by what she did, was wrong. I knew that I needed to do the right thing and mend fences with her. By this time I was at the bar often enough to run into her occasionally. I didn't speak to her and she didn't speak to me. One night I decided to put it behind me, and I went to the bar when I knew Darlene was there, at a time when I knew the bar would not be crowded.

"Darlene . . ." I said.

She walked over to where I sat. "I'm willing to say bygones if you are," I said to her.

"Bygones," she said with no hesitation. I shook her hand, and we were talking again.

It's hard for me to believe that such a trivial event hurt my feelings that much and bothered me that much. I would like to think I'm a bigger person than that. I guess everybody likes to feel appreciated. I felt betrayed by people that I thought appreciated me, if only for the money I brought to them.

So I treated Darlene rather shabbily by not speaking to her. She hurt my feelings, but that does not excuse my own behavior. I'm not proud of the way I reacted. The next time my feelings are hurt, I hope I handle it better . . . a lot better.

How do Darlene and I get along now, you may be wondering. I don't know how Darlene feels. She probably has no feelings about it one way or the other. To her, I'm just a bar customer who got pissed off at her just because she put a thirty cent item on my check. To her, I walked back in one day and started talking to her again, so everything must be ok.

When I returned to Darlene as a customer, my feelings were ambivalent. Despite all, I liked Darlene. But the negative feelings I had didn't magically all go away just because I decided I had to mend fences. I still had to work at letting go of those feelings. It was difficult, but it was the right thing. When I'm at the bar, now, Darlene is attentive to me—making sure I don't run out of tea with my meal, and so on, but then, she's probably just as attentive to all her customers. Sometimes I wonder if she feels there is still something between us that needs healing, and maybe she's trying to do her part by being a good bartender with me. Then again, maybe she's just a good bartender.

That's the Darlene story.

For Michelle

I thought about this page for a long while before deciding to publish it. I never met Michelle, but I learned about her, from one of her friends, at the bar in Applebee's. This page is for Michelle.

Michelle was Amy's friend. One night, while she was on the phone with a friend, Michelle's doorbell rang. Her friend at the other end of the phone line heard Michelle go to the door, heard her say, "What are you doing here?" After that, silence.

When Michelle failed to return to the phone, her friend phoned Amy and told her what happened. Amy went to Michelle's house and found the lights on, the door open, the phone off the hook. Michelle was not there. This happened a few years ago. To this day, Michelle has not been seen again.

I just wanted to say . . . though they don't know what happened to you, or whether you're alive or dead, your friends have not forgotten you, Michelle.

Signing Off

Friday Night. Cathy goes off the clock and sits down with me and we actually have a conversation for an hour, maybe more. I've known Cathy for a long time, and she rarely speaks to me, so I'm fairly amazed at this sudden friendliness. Is it an omen? I believe in omens. But what could it mean? I have this funny feeling, and I can't quite put a name to it. Regardless, I enjoy her company. I'm glad she joined me.

Saturday Night. Terry clocks out and I tell her, "Join me and I'll buy you a beer."

"I'm going to Mac and Maggie's," she replies. "Do you want to join me?"

So we go to Mac and Maggie's. We talk for an hour. I have a good time. I like Terry and I enjoy her company. But when I leave, I have this funny feeling again. And tonight, I can put a name to it. I know what it is.

It's the feeling you have when you're out of place, when you're with people who are with you for lack of anything better to do. It's the feeling you have when you're with people who would rather be somewhere else, if only they had somewhere else to be. Maybe you've never had that feeling. Maybe you can't identify with it. I'll tell you this: live long enough and you will have that feeling. Oh yes, you most definitely will have that feeling. I find myself thinking, "What am I doing here?"

I'm glad Cathy and I finally had a conversation. I'm glad Terry and I sat at the bar in Mac and Maggie's and talked this Saturday night. I had a good time.

It's not a bad way to sign off.

...October 10, 1999

Gus

It's another rainy Monday. I enter the bar and the only bar "customers" are Terry's kids, Ryan and Shannon. Terry is clocking out and Bridgette is clocking in. I order food and drink, and I watch Bridgette interact with the kids. She's really good with the little ones. After a while Amy, my acquaintance from the previous rainy Monday, comes in and sits beside me. We talk and drink, and drink and talk, and time goes by.

Suddenly Bridgette says, "You know Gus died, don't you?"

"Gus is dead?" I ask, mildly astonished. I saw him here at the bar just a few weeks ago. I can hardly believe that he's dead.

Gus was a regular bar customer who always carried a bag of hard candy with him. When he came into the bar he would spread a few dozen pieces of candy on the bar and invite everyone around him to have some. Though I saw him at the bar many times, I knew him only as a "regular".

"How did he die?" I ask.

"He died in his sleep," Bridgette replies. Gus had health problems and always used crutches or a wheelchair to get around. I didn't know that any of his problems was serious enough to kill him.

"I went to his memorial service on Wednesday," Bridgette says. "He was 48."

Forty eight. That's young. Too young to die in your sleep. I guess his mission on earth was finished. He had learned, or failed to learn, from the lessons he had taken on. I didn't know him, didn't know if he had family or friends. It seemed to me he slipped away with barely a ripple.

Amy and I resumed our conversation. No one talked about Gus anymore. But when I left, I thought about Gus, and his death, and I thought about death in general, and life in general, and my life, and the meaning of my life. And I wondered if one day my memorial would be spoken by a bartender, "Did you hear about Wayne?"