Флетчер Флора - Park Avenue Tramp

She had been somewhere with someone, but she couldn’t quite remember the place or the person. As a matter of fact she had a feeling that she had been a number of places with a number of persons, but she couldn’t quite remember that for certain either. Anyhow, wherever she had been and with whomever, it was now certain that she was alone and walking down a narrow street that was dark and dirty and probably not a street that a woman should walk down alone at this hour, which was either very late or very early, depending on which way it happened to be from midnight, but none of this seemed particularly important. What seemed important was to find a place to sit down and have a drink and think calmly about where she had been and where she probably ought to go. Where she had been was surely not far, after all, for she was walking in sandals that were practically nothing but very high heels, and it would be a simple matter, if she could sit down and have a drink and think calmly, to work back to it in her mind.

A place where you could sit down and have a drink and think calmly was a bar, and a bar always had the added advantage of having a bartender, and bartenders were almost always informed, intelligent persons who were just exactly the persons to ask for advice or information on such matters as where you’d been and come from and ought to go. She had had a great deal of experience with bartenders, and on the whole, with very few exceptions, she had found them much superior to psychiatrists, and much less expensive. Perhaps that wasn’t fair, however, for she hadn’t actually been to a psychiatrist that she could remember at the moment, although it was entirely possible that a person who had forgotten where she had been could also forget having gone to a psychiatrist some time or other. But it didn’t make any difference, really, whether she had personally been to a psychiatrist or not, for she was sure that she must have friends who had gone and told her about it, just for the experience if nothing else, and this was also something that she would probably remember after a while, if only she could find a bar with a bartender. And there between two shops, if she was not mistaken, one was.

Yes. Yes, it was. It was certainly a bar. It wasn’t very big or very bright, although there was a small neon identification that she couldn’t quite make out for some odd reason, and it didn’t seem to be a bar that was trying to impose itself on anyone, but just a bar that was only trying in a quiet way to get along and earn a living. She liked that about it. Already she was feeling very compatible with this particular bar. It was extremely refreshing after so many places that were always trying to be impressive, and her compatibility achieved a quality of tenderness that prompted her to stroke its brick face gently with one hand and make a soft crooning sound in her throat that was like a little impromptu lullaby. Opening the door, she went inside and got onto a stool and started to tell the bartender what she wanted, but she couldn’t think what she wanted was, which ought to be whatever she had been having, and she felt rather embarrassed about it.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I’ve forgotten what I’ve been drinking. Isn’t that silly?”

“Lots of people forget,” the bartender said.

“It’s nice of you to say that,” she said. “It’s very comforting.”

“That’s all right, lady,” he said. “It’s my pleasure.”

She looked at him gravely and decided that he was undoubtedly a superior bartender, which would make him very superior indeed. It might seem unlikely on first thought that a superior bartender would be working in a little unassuming bar that was only trying to get along, but on second thought it didn’t seem unlikely at all, for it was often the little unassuming places that had genuine quality and character and were perfectly what they were supposed to be, which was rare, and it was exactly such a place in which a superior bartender would want to work, even at some material sacrifice. She felt a great deal of respect for this honest and dedicated bartender. She was certain that she could rely on him implicitly.

“Perhaps you can help me,” she said. “In your opinion, what have I been drinking?”

“You look like a Martini to me,” he said.

“Really? A Martini?”

“That’s right. The second you came in I said to myself that you were a Martini.”

“Is that possible? To look at a person and tell that she’s a Martini or a Manhattan or something or other?”

“Just with the specialists. Some people are slobs who’ll drink anything. You can’t tell with them.”

“Can you tell just by looking whether a person’s a specialist or not?”

“Oh, sure. Sure. Almost always.”

“That’s remarkable. How can you tell?”

“A specialist’s got distinction. Something about him. Once you learn to recognize it, you can’t miss.”

“Never?”

“Well, almost never. If you can’t tell by looking, you can tell by smelling.”

“Oh, now That’s too much.”

“It’s a fact. I can tell you’re a Martini just by looking, but if I were blind I could tell by smelling.”

“How does a Martini smell?”

“Like a Martini,” he said.

She laughed with pleasure at this clever and delightful bartender. Pushing at her pale blonde hair, which had a low part and a tendency to fall forward over her eye on the heavy side, she watched him mix her Martini and tried to guess how old he was. She had made quite a study of the ages of bartenders, and she had discovered that the mean age of all the bartenders she had studied was about forty, but the median age was quite a bit lower, and she thought that the age of this one was about the median, but she couldn’t be sure. That was another thing she had discovered. It was almost impossible to tell the age of a bartender by looking, contrary to what was possible to bartenders with regard to specialists, and she had a theory that this was because they were compelled by their profession to assume certain expressions and attitudes that neutralized the effects of falling hair and dental plates and things of that sort.

She wondered if bartenders away from their bars did the same kinds of things that lawyers and doctors and stock brokers and executives and men in general were inclined to do. She wondered if they were vulnerable to the compelling drives and appetites and incredible caprices that were always complicating things and making them difficult and getting one into trouble that was sometimes serious. She wondered, for instance, if they made love. It was only natural to assume that they did, but somehow what was natural seemed in this instance unnatural. Bartenders were so invariably detached and almost clinical, although attentive and compassionate, that it was as impossible to imagine their being glandular as it was to guess accurately their ages. This one, for example, this clever and delightful bartender who was probably below the mean and about the median and really much better-looking than quite a few men she had made love with willingly — did he ever take off his starched white jacket and do interesting and exciting physical things? She thought it would he amusing to find out, but it was only something that she thought incidentally, and not something that she thought deliberately, or with intention.

“One Martini,” the bartender said. “Very dry.”

“How did you know very dry?” she said. “I distinctly remember not saying anything about very dry. It’s one of the few things I remember.”

“You look very dry,” he said. “Do I smell very dry also?”

“Naturally You naturally smell like you look.”