Bar Puppy

    Harry sat at the bar with his head forward and stared into the dark mirror in front of him. How old was he these days? The mirror’s dingy surface made it hard to tell. His hands solemnly wrapped around a small cold glass on the bar that had been soaking a poor paper coaster with its condensation. It was filled with a light pink liquid, a vodka cranberry, a double shot, maybe a triple but who’s counting. The small green straw lazily lolled around the rim clinking the ice as it twirled around and around. Clink, clink… sip. Yep, the bartender definitely poured the drink too heavy. Harry had been waiting for a while, and he wasn’t drunk enough. Thank god for generous bartenders.

    Beside him, a woman takes her seat on a rickety stool. Her hair is longer than he would remember, her face is older. But he didn't look, he was too busy looking straight ahead at himself. Her figure was obscured from his perspective of the mirror by the stone-wall-like body of the bartender Harry knew as Donny. Donny always stood here, leading this way and that, making it so if you sat at this right spot and stared straight ahead, all you could see was yourself in the mirror surface.

    From beside him, she spoke a timid, “Hello,” that just barely rose over the dull roar of the bar’s late-night crowd. Somebody had brought a puppy into the bar tonight. Harry could smell it, somehow. Definitely wasn't drunk enough.

    Harry squeaked out a meager response, but it was drowned out by the crowd’s exultation at the puppy’s anxious yawn. Damn near twenty people must have found their way to crowd around the pitiful creature. It could walk, but it was much too scared, and its owner liked the attention so the poor doll was held aloft five feet in the air, surrounded by twisted faces of adoration. We try so hard to pretend that fear isn't adorable to us, but alcohol brings truth in so many ways.

    There was a silence between Harry and the woman with the dark hair for a long while, a silence louder than any noise the collective drunk patrons of Terrigan’s Bar and Pub could ever hope to produce. Harry couldn’t see her, though his own reflection beamed back at him with all the years of his life etched onto his aging skin. Her visage in the mirror's dark surface was blocked from his eyes currently by the large bartender's large ass. Donny’s top half loomed over the bar, helping to terrify the Bar Puppy, but his backside was still enough to at least block out the majority of her head from his sight. And as they say, out of sight, out of mind.

    “You look so different,” she said, breaking his carefully constructed peace of mind with the same dulcet sweet voice he remembered so dearly. “Your hair is longer - it looks great, don't get me wrong, just… longer…” Her anxious voice trailed off, getting lost somewhere in the excited squeal of a drunk man raving about the softness of the puppy’s fur.

    Silence… loud, puppy-adoring silence.

    She continued without his response, music to his ears, “I like your new glasses. They really fit your face well - not that I didn’t like the old ones, they were good too…” It is a shame he hated this song.

    Harry squeaked out a dull, “Thanks,” that was once again outcompeted by the puppy’s entourage.

    “Well…” she adjusted in her seat, jettisoning a few strands of dark brown hair into the reflection Harry dully stared at.

    He flinched.

    She noticed.

    “How’ve you been?” She continued in a flurry, “I’ve been talking to Kyle and Mark a bit and they said you've got a new job?” Harry’s teeth found the grooves on the inside of his cheeks that he made in preparation for this evening as she continued, “That’s great! How are you liking it so far? I know you were looking for a new place to work for a while… what finally made you leave?” Harry was spared a bulk of the anxious interrogation by following the almost imperceptible sound of a pathetic whimper emanating from the small dog, or maybe from himself.

    He let his eyes fall to the rim of his glass as she finished her tirade of related queries and allowed himself a hearty swig of the so-called ‘liquid courage’ - or were they calling it truth serum these days? Whatever it is, they poured it too strongly.

    He flinched.

    She noticed.

    “Good,” he replied with a gray voice, eyes still resting on the rim of the glass, “much better than standing around all day.” Harry used his last line to excuse a nervous chuckle and tipped the glass back once more to finish off the drink.

    He didn’t flinch.

    She noticed.

    Another silence followed, this one particularly punctuated with a frightening chill. Harry thought for a moment that maybe someone had just come in from outside, they were having such a lovely cold winter this mid-March, but he knew the door hadn’t been opened. The cold didn’t come from outside, but from beside him.

    A cold he remembered.

    She noticed.

    She took a sharp breath, one like he would hear before he would get chewed out or be told to sleep on the couch. He braced for an impact that never came. After another beat of dog-adoring silence, he heard her release her breath and wondered how he could hear something so soft over the dog’s continual praise. Harry had always been good at picking out good songs in crowded places. Songs he heard so infrequently, even in the good days.

    The silence returned and Harry figured it was his turn to introduce a question to her. Millions played on his lips, swirling around his mouth like so many bees trying to find a way out. He tried in vain to hold back the only one he truly cared to have answered, but it came tumbling out regardless. “Why did you call me here tonight?”

    She made him repeat it and he did, louder and slower. This time holding his chin up, pointing it at his own sad reflection in the mirror he could no longer stand to see. Busying his eyes with counting the molding ceiling tiles, Harry did not let his head turn to the side.

    At first, the woman only responded with a simple silence, one she must have anticipated. It seemed practiced. The puppy whined. How adorable.

    “I don’t know Harry. I guess…” She stopped to take deep, measured breaths. The bar roared. “I wanted to see how you're doing?” She asked him, or herself. “I wanted to see how much you’ve changed and stayed the same. I guess?” She ended each line as a question, something she does whenever she lies.

    Harry hid a laugh.

    She noticed.

    “Why won’t you look at me?” she jabbed, all poison intended. “I’ve been sitting here almost five minutes and you haven't even glanced!” She turned her full body to face him, flying brown hair in his peripheral vision.

    Slowly… very slowly, he once more brought the glass filled with the pathetic remains of his drink up to his lips, never taking his eyes off of the dim reflection of the bar mirror. He let the drop of diluted melted ice cocktail lingering at the bottom of the glass filter through his closed teeth before it dripped down his throat. Finally, not too strong.

    “Sarah…” the silence gripped around his throat and for a moment he thought he wouldn't be able to continue. But he found his fucking balls, and continued, “I don’t think you understand how much you hurt me…” Silence. “I can't look at you…”

    The dog’s whine made momentarily made Harry think he had gone deaf, or a grenade had gone off. It's so loud, why weren't they taking it outside?

    “I don't want to just come here and notice how much you've changed like you've been doing to me. It's like knives every time you…” Maybe he was too drunk after all, “Sarah I don't want to see your face now. I don't want to see all the ways you’ve changed since you've left.” The mirror seemed to sway. How old was he these days? “Each line on your face, each inch of hair, each new ring on your finger… It's like a reminder that we are not who we were anymore, that we can never have what we used to have, even if we do want it… or even if we don't.” Was that a bead of sweat from his forehead or a tear? Either way, it found its way into a groove on his face, “Each one is a reminder that I wasn't there to see how each year has changed you, and how you haven't seen the years pass through me.” He never noticed how red the walls were in here until now. “And I didn't come here to ogle at something that I can't have, so,” he pointed straight ahead at himself, however older now, “this is good.”
    
    Harry shut his lips and tipped his head low.

    “Oh,” came the soft, sweet reply.

    The puppy that had been brought into the bar finally had enough, and began to piss. The yellow liquid, indistinguishable in color from the beer in the dog’s owner's busy hands, dribbled onto the floor of the bar and created a dispersing ruckus. The foul odor quickly filled the air, though it wasn't too distinct from the bar’s typical odor. Maybe this wasn't the first time.

    As quickly as drunk people can, the crowd turned as sour as the air around them and fled the scene along with the wet-looking puppy and its absent-minded owner. Donny the bartender quickly fled the scene as well, vowing silently to return to clean up the mess with a towel or mop, as is his duty. The Great Wall came tumbling down.

    Harry’s serene view of his old face in the dark, dingy mirror was all at once joined in its dim solitude by a shining visitor. Oh Light Bringer, oh Lucifer. Her hair is longer than he remembered, her face is older. Harry traced the lines, those that he could recall and those that he could not.

    In them, he saw their time together, and a grin split his steel facade. In the lines, he saw their time apart, and all at once he was filled with a wonder as to how they arrived on her serene visage, how they found new ways to accent her beauty. The jealous curiosity he feared was markedly absent, and in its place was one of a genuine, kind nature. A guide. This new curiosity that filled him felt oddly similar to what had overtaken him upon their first meeting and driven him to her all those years ago.

    “Oh,” he managed.

    “Get it?” She asked.

    “I do,” this time it was a tear that fell down his face hitting a curved smile on the way down.

    She noticed.

William Carney, 

Boise, Idaho

 January 2024