Cocktail Hour (10 page)

Samantha turned back to the men she'd been talking to. "All right, guys, duty calls."

The three men started making moaning poor-me noises, one of them shouting out nonsensically, "Bullshit!"

The bartender didn't seem to hear them, her eyes focused on Sharon's neighbor as she approached. "Dean," she admonished, wagging her finger at him dramatically. "I can’t believe you broke your drink again. How many times do I have to tell you not to play with the dirty money?"

Dean answered in a weird yodeling voice, "Oh, three or four!"

Sharon looked at him and then at the bartender. Were they flirting? And what was this routine of theirs? Oh, who cared what these two were doing? She was just glad Samantha had said his name. Sharon, for some reason, thought it was Dan. As in, Dan-Dan-the-Party-Man. Dean, huh? Dean-Dean-the-Party….Machine? Yeah, it worked. She was glad she hadn’t called him Dan. She didn’t like making mistakes like that. Not only for his sake and for the sake of being polite, but for her own sense of self: a woman who had it all together, and then filed it alphabetically in the tidy drawer of her mind.

Samantha poured his beer and set it on a fresh promotional cardboard coaster in front of him before leaning on the bar with her elbows to face him. "So now you want to talk to me. Before you were too busy. I don't know, you can't just snap your fingers like that. I don't always jump," she said, smiling and shaking her head at him, a little dimple appearing on her right cheek.

“Oh, come on, Sam? For me?” Dean said, leaning in and tilting his head toward hers conspiratorially. “Anyways, my good neighbor here was parched and I thought I could help her out. Or that is, you could. By the way…, Sharon? This is the lovely and talented Samantha, bar-maiden extraordinaire.” He straightened and swept his arm out with a flourish toward the bartender.

Samantha looked over, her smile hardening and her eyes sweeping quickly over Sharon before looking back at Dean. "Hello," she murmured.

“Hi,” Sharon said, deadpan.

Samantha's eyes were fixed on Dean. Sharon knew the look: definitely infatuated. And more than a little proprietary. Sharon wanted to tell her not to worry - she wasn't even slightly interested.

Dean said, “And this, Sam baby, is my next-door neighbor, Sharon, from up in Farmland, also known as Monroe. It really is a co-ink-e-dink. What’s the likelihood that we would end up in the same bar?”

Samantha chuckled and said, “As if you go anywhere else. All she had to do was come here once, and there you’d be.”

Dean put his hand up along side of his mouth, cupping it, and speaking in sotto voce, “Shhhh! You’re breaking up my racket!”

At that Samantha threw back her head and laughed derisively.

Dean said, “Okay, you can laugh, but while you’re doing it, can you pour Sharon here an extra-dry Grey Goose martini and put it on my tab?”

Samantha gulped her laughter down and waved her hand at him. “No problem, Deany boy. You got it.” She turned away and went to grab the back-lit bottle of Grey Goose off of the top shelf behind the bar.

Dean turned back to Sharon, smiling and then looking worried, his brow creasing. “Sorry about that. I guess I spend too much time here.”

Sharon shrugged. “No problem.” Then she turned to glance at the door and see if Chelsea was there yet. There was no sign of her. Sharon turned back. “Excuse me. Just checking to see if my friend is here yet. So…what were you saying…yeah, why would you think I’m not the ‘hard liquor type’?”

“Oh. I didn’t mean anything by it! Really I didn’t. Just…you seem like you’d drink wine, really nice wine, like French, you know?” he said, looking almost boyish in his earnestness.

“Wine? And where would you get that impression?” Sharon asked, not really caring about the answer. In fact, she wished she could skip the cocktail after all. This whole thing – the striver scene, the brittle flirtation between Dean and Sam, the forced small talk - made her feel tired. And old. She glanced again at the doorway. Where
was
Chelsea?

“Well, your house is so nice and neat, at least from the outside. And…oh, I don’t know…I just-I didn’t mean...,“ he said, flustered and turning slightly red.

She looked at him, wondering what the women found appealing about this bumbling guy with his effusive please-like-me act that reminded her far too much of her ex. “Please, don’t worry about it,” she said, averting her eyes. 

Luckily, just then Samantha placed Sharon’s martini on a cocktail napkin in front of her, interrupting the awkward moment. “Here you go. Well, Dean, I’d talk to you all day, but believe it or not, I have to earn my keep. Don’t worry; I’ll keep an eye on you.”

“Thank you, heavenly angel,” Dean said, looking at Samantha and regaining his normal coloring and composure. “And please, both eyes.”

“If you’re lucky,” Samantha replied in a sing-song voice as she sauntered away, wiggling the fingers of one hand over her shoulder at him and walking with an exaggerated hip-sway that seemed, and probably was, deliberate.

Sharon picked up her drink and turned to him, trying to figure out a way to thank him and get away quickly. “Thank you. You really didn’t have to buy me a drink. It was nice of you.”

“But of course I did! You know...I know I make a lot of noise some nights, and you never complain. You’re like the world’s greatest neighbor, or something.”

Sharon’s breath caught. He
knew
he was keeping her up? And he kept on doing it? She stared at him, rendered mute by shock and then flooding anger. He knew. The whole time. He probably also knew how early she had to be at work, saw her car pull out of her driveway in the pale creeping light of early morning.

"Ooo," he said, eyes bugging out a little, both hands going up in mock surrender. "That's not a good look. Have I kept you awake?"

Sharon put her drink back down on the bar and turned to him. Keeping her voice low and steady she said, "What do you think?"

He opened his mouth and looked like he was thinking hard, his eyes going back and forth, searching for an answer.

Sharon didn't wait. "If you knew you were being loud, why didn't you keep it down? Do you know how hard it is to sleep when screaming people keep waking you up all night? Two am? Three am? Sometimes I don't even bother trying to go back to sleep, especially when it's already four and I have to be up soon. I just make coffee and suffer through the day."

Dean's mouth was opening and closing like a fish. Finally he managed, "I, I didn't-"

"No, I really don't want to hear it. And thanks but no thanks for the drink. I can buy my own," Sharon said, spun on her heel, and stalked away, slowing and turning sideways to edge through groupings of strivers when they blocked her path. She was going home. She'd call Chelsea once she got there to explain. The company directory with her co-worker's phone number on it was in her work folder filed under 'T' in her home office's filing cabinet. She'd take some Advil after all.

Pushing through yet another cluster of men near the door, she almost slammed right into Chelsea, who was posed by the door, hip cocked, in another one of her expensive-looking outfits.

Chelsea's expression, a manufactured one of disdain and oh-so-coolness, brightened and became more natural seeing her co-worker. "Sharon! There you are!"

Sharon, stumbling to a stop, raised her hands up, palms out. “I’m sorry, Chelsea, but I’m out of here.”

Chelsea’s face crumpled, her lower lip popping out. “No! But…I was so excited to hang with you? Please? Pretty pretty please? With sugar and ice cream on top?”

Sharon shook her head, but felt herself giving in just looking at the girl she had grown to genuinely like. Under the blond bimbo exterior was a smart girl whose whip-sharp observations regularly caught Sharon off-guard. At the same time Chelsea had a sweet and helpless side, reminding Sharon of a little wide-eyed kitten. Chelsea had "help me" written all over her, her good heart being her biggest weakness and making her target for the users in the world. She brought out Sharon's protective instincts. “Oh. I don’t know. Okay. One drink. One. Then I’m out of here.”

“Goody-goody-goody!” Chelsea said, bopping up and down and bringing her hands together to patter them quickly against each other in a mini-clap.

“Okay, don’t get too excited. I’m not that much fun.”

“Oh, yes you are! You are the coolest. All right. Now we have to get a drink. I’m buying. Well, unless we can find some gentlemen here who want to buy them for us,” Chelsea said, straightening up and trying to put on the cool act again unsuccessfully, one eyebrow arched as she peered at crowd around the bar.

“No way. I’ll buy my own drink, thank you. I just had a very unpleasant experience I’d like not to repeat.”

“What? What happened!”

“Please. I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just go to that end of the bar,” Sharon said, pointing at the opposite end of the bar from where Dean was sitting.

“Really? You don’t want to talk about it?”

“Trust me.”

“Okay?” Chelsea said in a doubtful voice and shrugged. “I want a strawberry daiquiri. I wonder if they make those here? And you’re letting me buy you a drink. I dragged you out here. It’s the least I can do.”

“Fine. Just no men.”

“You’re funny,” Chelsea said, shaking her head wonderingly while starting to move ahead through the crowd, staring at particularly handsome men and turning her head quickly when they glanced her way.

“I’m a regular laugh-riot,” Sharon said wryly, following.

Once they had their drinks, Sharon at last holding her anticipated martini and Chelsea holding a raspberry-flavored cocktail that was the closest thing to a strawberry daiquiri that the bar offered, Chelsea raised hers in a toast. “To finally getting together for drinks! At last!”

“Here’s mud in your eye,” Sharon said, raising her glass up and then pouring half of her drink down her throat.

“Whoa! You can really drink that thing,” Chelsea said, her already-large blue eyes growing huge.

“Only when a nail is being pounded right through my forehead,” Sharon said and sighed, feeling the pleasant burning sensation of the vodka hitting her stomach and then spreading like a warm fog through her body.

Chelsea took a tiny sip of her bright-red candied-looking drink that was also in a martini glass. “Mmmm, this is good! Not a strawberry daiquiri, but close. Wait. What? You have a headache?”

“Not anymore. Or I won’t in a few minutes. Nothing like a libation to smooth out the wrinkles of life,” Sharon said and took another sip. She knew she should probably slow down, but it just felt so good, especially after the afternoon she’d had. She would just have this one – she still had to drive home.

Just then it was as if a breeze had passed through the room, a whispering wave of movement. Sharon looked up from her glass to see a striver nearby curling his upper lip with lust and staring at the entrance. She turned to look. A drop-dead gorgeous woman with long flowing dark hair wearing a fire-engine-red dress that hugged enviable curves was poised with her hand on her hip just inside the door. The group of women clustered at the door had all drawn back, as if not wanting to have their attractiveness compared to the woman’s – which was understandable as they would all fall pathetically short.

“Oh! Good!” Chelsea trilled. “It’s Bianca! Now the party’s really starting.”

Sharon turned to look at Chelsea. Chelsea was friends with this arresting and somewhat haughty-looking woman? It seemed an unlikely pairing. “You know her?”

“Sure! We went to Stamford High together. We’ve been friends for…ever?”

The woman had spotted them and was crossing through the packed room toward them, her walk smooth and slinking like a cat’s. The crowd continued to peel back for her, the striver-sea parting. Sharon wanted to shake her head. She’d never seen anything like it: this universal visceral reaction to a person.