(Part 2.)

The layout was a narrow rectangle.

It was a room with three choices. Go left, sit at the bar. Go Right, there's a row of two-top's against the wall with clean plastic ashtrays waiting in their centers. Nobody ever sat over there. She knew that much.

Or, you could follow a strip of red paisley carpet running the middle, going out the back door at the end of it's path.

An official looking black and orange sign was thumb-tacked up, it promised a HIS and a HERS.

A man in a white Mexican shirt waited behind the bar. She thought he might be a Mexican, except his eyes were so blue she couldn't decide. He dressed better than most people might expect is was what she thought about him

A dozen round leather stools with chrome legs supported a few alcoholic looking men.

Some of them watched her in the big mirror, some didn't bother.  None of them seemed very surprised she was there. Most of them just went back to drinking and smoking.

" Good Morning. How can I help you?”

She knew what he was thinking; this girl needed directions to somewhere else.

"I'd like a screw driver. That's vodka and orange juice, please."

"Miss, how old are you?" He said this is slowly. As if he didn't want her give the wrong answer.

"Twenty-one. "

Who cares if you get kicked out of a place like this? Except, it was warmer than anywhere else right now.

"That's an answer. Okay then....breakfast for the lady."

A small white towel folded and unfolded in his hands. He smoothed it on the bar. There was a pair of reading glasses in his shirt pocket connected to a very thin chain surrounding his neck.

He was a professional, if she were the judge.

Two things she decided: She didn't mind so much the way the 'young lady' part sounded – coming from him; and, she'd never seen a toupee' that she'd liked. The one he wore suited him and his eyes.

"Well or Call?"

"Well I don't...."

The bartender decided the thing.

A neat pyramid of bottles rose in the mirror. He used one of those. For the rest of the men, he poured from bottles stored in a metal rack below the bar. Bottle's with their labels nearly worn off.

It came in little clear highball, a miniature iced tea glass. Four or five square ice cubes floating supported by vodka and  weak yellow veins. She saw that in here, you get what you pay.

"That's a dollar-ten Miss. Or would you prefer a tab? "

She delivered a faded and flattened two-dollar bill onto the bar-top.

Thank-you.

“Thank-you.” The man snapped it open and closed, pulling it with his fingers from each end. He studied it up to the light as though he might see through it.

“Haven't seen one of those in a while.”

“I guess my dad forgot and left a couple behind.”

She didn't think he'd know what she meant by that. He didn't exactly,  but after a time, when she thought about it, she supposed a man in his line of work could have guessed in less than three tries,.

Now the girl wished for a shovel to bury the sentence. She fidgeted. She looked down and picked something off on her skirt and kept talking.

“No big deal. People think they're special, but I asked the bank. They told me all they're worth is two bucks.”

“Well, my name Sean if you need anything.”

He smiled at her right in the eye.

He moved away to a man with wild hair wearing a fatigue jacket who was dry

A voice near her asked, "A little early don't you think?"

A tattered man to her right, with his neck wrapped in a scarf belonged to the voice that asked her that question. He chuckled to himself politely without making a sound. Because of this, she wasn't exactly be sure what he meant by that, but he was very nice about it.

“Maybe it is,” she said.

“Aw...just teasin', n'ever too early. It can be too late...na-ehver too early.” She watched him say something else, but silently to himself again. His lips made a shallow curve in his rubbery face.

"I'm waiting for the pawn shop to open."

"Umm Hmm. " His head bobbed, his Adam's apple followed it.

After he said whatever he meant, they both took a sip in the short silence between them. That was okay for both of them.

"Henry, will ya look at them shoes."

This voice was different. It was the man on her left. He tried to whistle Wit-Woo!, but only air came out. The shoes he was talking about were hers . All three of them looked under the bar rail and down at her shoes

"You see those shoes Henry? Henry?”

She thought maybe Henry was deaf or something very close to it.

"Yeah, them's pretty nice. Yeah boy!” He stared back down at her shoes one more time. “High tech is what they call it these days. High-ya...high technology.”

She thought he might be a little drunk.

She also was thinking he must be from Texas, or Alabama buy the way that he talked.  

Talking straight into an empty glass he said, "Y'know what? I was thinkin' about getting a pair like that too. What are they askin' for them things do you think?"

The other man shrugged.  She looked away, then down at her drink. The truth of it was, she wasn't one hundred percent sure they were talking to her. Sure, they were looking right at her, but it seemed pretty random just the same.

The man Henry might have been asking, said, "I have no idea,” but he wasn't afraid to take a guess. “Twenty-five, thirty bucks, at least. All the niggers playin' ball's got 'em now. But I imagine they get them free. Same as everything these days.”

Henry took a couple of bites at his straw and stirred where his bourbon used to be.  He raised the empty at Sean.

“Well, I'll bet you know what your own shoes cost.” He was grinning again. Henry waited for her answer like he was winning a bet.

“I really don't know for sure. Sorry. My mom bought them. They were like an early Christmas present."

“Hear that Henry? She got her's for free too.” Henry's friend pushed away from the bar. “I'm going over to Sonny's. You want to come?”

Henry didn't answer. He just told the bartender thanks when another bourbon was there.

Henry's friend said, “Suit yourself,” and startled the bell over the back door when he left.

“Good shoes, good bed. My mom's so weird. She's always saying that.

Henry stayed quite. He was looking at his shoes.

This, made the girl look at them too. That was only natural, wasn't it?

But as soon as she did it, she wanted to crawl into a hole. One time her little sister said to her that, 'you can't fix stupid.'. How that connected itself here she didn't know. But her stomach told her it did.

White plastic loafers with soles no thicker than peelings. Her own feet went suddenly cold. She was in plastic loafers, outside in December. Hard sidewalk grit and freezing cement was coming up through their papery soles. Her toes curled up inside of her socks.

One sock was black, one sock was gray. Christ! She was poor, but her socks always matched.

“What I mean is, I mean you can get one's on sale at The Mall for only twenty-something. Mine aren't the best kind in the world.”

While she was talked through him, Henry followed along with a polite string of 'uh-hugh's' and a 'zat-right's?'

On sale! Not the best kind in the world? Awwh...!

She bit a bloody gouge inside her lip, so she'd remember not open her mouth for the rest of her life - that didn't hurt as much as she would have liked.

But then Henry came back and offered up a smile.

He tipped at his drink, he drained almost half. There was a new spark in his eyes. Well, one of them anyway. She was happy about that.

He said, “Aw..I see what you mean. Twenty bucks ain't nothin'. Later on, I'm going down town. I think I better check-in up on that deal. Probably get me a pair. I sure like them shoes."

The girl added that the best deals were on Friday's. The sales. He didn't have to go shopping today, not right away.

He said he appreciated what she was saying, about the sales that is.

“You see these shoes right here?” 

Oh God, again? Yes, she said that she did, but she didn't look down.

“You guess what these beauty's cost me?”

No, she couldn't guess. Not in a million years. For the lives of all the poor babies in Biafra...if someone was making her eat dirt...she was keeping her mouth shout.

“Well, I'll tell, 'cause I know. These shoes cost me FIDDY-THOUSAND DOLLARS!”

She gulped vodka and waited for whatever came next.

“You believe that doncha?”

She did.

“ 'Cause, every time they saw OPPOTUNITY...they walk-ed the other way!  Ah..hah..hah..!” 

He was as tickled with himself as a child. 

“What DO you think about that? Huh?”

The girl in the bar with the bare legs ,wearing the sweater she liked, was not thinking much. She really couldn't, because with all of the vodka, she thought she might cry.

She looked back down at his shoe's. She hated them.

So, she looked down at her own.

But that just forced her to wonder: How much the shoes she had on were going to cost?