I caught someone coming up to the bar out of the corner of my eye and looked up just as she looked over at me. “Is there a waitress ?” she asked. I started giggling, almost uncontrollably. One look at the graffiti strewn walls and sad sack pool table in the far corner should have told her it was a beer and shot joint. Dag Nasty playing through one speaker with a blown out woofer and a well worn bar. This place had seen better days, but even on its best day, I was pretty sure there’d never been a waitress. “Sorry sweetheart,” I chuckled, “you’ve only got me tonight.”

“Just for tonight ?” she said to me and smiled. And, because I’m a sucker, I was up off my stool and behind the bar. We flirted back and forth as I grabbed a handful of beers for her and I helped her carry them back to her table. I bid her and her friends farewell after I dropped off the beer and went back to my seat. Right about then, the bartender came back up, sniffing and rubbing his nose. I told him I’d just bought a round for a group of girls in the back and asked him to put it on my tab. She came back a couple more time during the course of the night, each time stopping to chat me up a bit more. Finally, around midnight, I decided that I was just drunk enough to make an ass of myself and went looking for her.

I found her in the back, rocking the Kiss pinball machine and racking up quite the score. She stood there, transfixed on the table, hip checking the machine without tilting it and never knocking over the pint glass on top of it. I stood behind her for a full minute or so before she finally noticed I was there. She turned around and gave me that smile again. We hung out and played pinball until closing, goofing around and flirting with each other. When the bouncer finally came round to give us the boot, I walked her out and asked her for her number. She gave it to me and kissed me on the cheek. Then she sauntered off down the sidewalk and into the night.

I called her a couple of days later and she told me to meet her at a pub not far from where she lived. I got there early, grabbed a spot at the bar where I could see the door and ordered a pint. After about ten minutes she came up behind me and tried to tickle me. “Sorry kid,” I said, “I’m not ticklish. But where’d you come from ?” I had been watching the door most of the time I’d been there and hadn’t seen her come in. “There’s a back door,” she said and she promised to show it to me later. I laughed and pulled out her chair. We sat and talked and drank for a few hours before she grabbed my hand and told me to come up to her place. She told the bartender to keep the tab open and he just nodded, like it was something she’d said a hundred times before.

The back door was through the kitchen and it led to a couple of flights of stairs. She had the apartment on the top floor. We headed in and she showed me around a little bit. The she stuck her tongue down my throat and we’ll stop there…

We started seeing each other more often and we always ended the beginning of the night downstairs at the pub. We called it “The Living Room”. Usually, we’d have a drink or two and then we’d head upstairs. Tonight, however, she’d come out swinging. And now here I was, standing in the cold on a February night and desperately in need of a new “living room”. I smoked my cigarette as I walked the couple blocks to a nearby hotel, reflecting on the night, beginning with where it had all gone wrong. I grabbed a cab and headed to Old City.