001 Jack smiles
'One double gin and tonic and something else... whatever he wants.'
Mike points to Jack. Jack says 'Scotch and dry' and the bartender nods and starts spinning bottles unnecessarily. Next to the bartender is a barmaid (if that is the correct term these days) doing something similar. Jack is transfixed on her.
‘Oi! Are you coming?’
Mike has the two drinks already in his hands and motions for Jack to join him.
It is dark in the bar. The music is loud but no one is dancing. It’s chill out music. Jack hates chill out music. They’ve come here to talk but it’s a struggle. Mike sips on his drink and scans the room, nodding randomly, slightly out of beat to the music. Jack begins to cough. The air is so thick that smells have become irrelevant. The body adjusts to breathing in alcohol fumes, the collective after-dinner breaths of a thousand people and passive smoke that has been passive for days and days. It is 1 am now and all the decent patronage have either gone home or moved to a better bar.
‘So Lauren rejected you, Jack. You’ll bounce back.’
Jack tries to ignore the inadvertent rhyming couplet that just came out of Mike’s mouth.
‘She didn’t reject me.’
‘So what happened then?’
‘Have you seen that show “Miriam”?’
‘Oh, is that the one…’
‘She’s a man.’
‘What?’
‘Lauren’s a man!’
Jack becomes suddenly self-conscious, half expecting the DJ to stop the music or the power to unexpectedly cut off – anything to produce enough silence for all to hear the announcement he’s just made. But there is nothing. The mind-numbing chill out noise continues on and no one other than Mike even flinches.
‘How do you know?’
‘She told me.’
‘And you believe her?’
‘She told me to feel her if I didn’t believe her.’
‘Feel what? …Oh, you mean down there?’
Jack nods.
‘So did you?’
‘No!’
‘Well maybe she’s lying. You should go back to her. Maybe it was some kind of test or something.’
‘No way! I don’t wanna feel down there if it’s a guy! And besides, you don’t get it. I’ve been having these… these fantasies about her and, well, in them she’s a girl, you know? She’s all… girl. But now I have this image in my head of Lauren and she’s got a … urggh… I don’t wanna think about this anymore.’
Jack won’t say any more on the topic so Mike gets up to buy another round. When he comes back…
‘I know you liked her…er… him a lot,’ says Mike as he comes back to Jack. ‘But I think the best thing for you now…’
‘… is to fall in love. I’m going to ask out the first girl that walks into this bar.’
Jack eyes the door intently. Mike looks at him with subtle disapproval, then slowly turns around to wait with him.
‘You know this has been done lots of times before in movies and stuff.’
‘Shhh!’
As if on cue, a young woman walks in by herself. She is tall and skinny, looking somewhat dishevelled, yet somewhat alluring.
‘OK, maybe the second girl’ says Jack from the bottom of his glass.
‘What’s wrong with her?’
‘She’s not a nurse.’
‘What?’
‘I want a nurse. And she doesn’t look like one.’
‘Since when did you want a nurse?’
‘Since always. When we were 8, I told you I wanted to marry a nurse.’
‘No. When you were 8, you wanted to be a nurse.’
‘No I didn’t! … did I?’
Another woman walks into the bar. She looks to be about 40. All other information about her is irrelevant to this story.
‘She’s not technically a “girl”’, Jack points out correctly.
‘So talk to the first one then.’
‘Um… nah.’
‘What do you mean? You said you were going to.’
‘I just don’t feel like it.’
‘OK, here…’
Mike hands Jack a $20 note.
‘Buy her a drink.’
‘Don’t give me money! Fine! Fine! I’ll go talk to her.’
Mike smiles contently and sips on his drink. Jack walks over to the girl. His heart is beating fast. In his mind he is thinking ‘Please let her not be a man.’
‘Hi’ says Jack.
Please let her not be a man.
‘Hi’
Please let her not be a man.
From up close, she looks prettier. She has a funny-looking nose. But then, so does Sarah Michelle Gellar. And she doesn’t seem to have an Adam’s apple.
Jack stands in front of her with a dopey grin on his face. She is turned to face him, waiting for him to say something. But he doesn’t. There’s only so long you can wait.
‘Actually,’ she says, ‘I’m waiting for a couple of workmates. They’re just coming up from the hospital now.’
‘Oh,’ says Jack. Disappointed. ‘OK then.’
He turns around to leave her but Mike shoots an angry glare at him. Jack turns back his head towards the girl.
‘Did you say hospital?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are they OK? Your friends, I mean.’
‘Oh yes. We just work there. I’m a nurse.’
Jack smiles.
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