Eleanor Brown - The Weird Sisters

There were bars closer, but one had boasted that it was karaoke night (um, no) and the parking lots at the others had been sadly empty. She could hear the noise from outside, classic rock on the jukebox, the smell of beer seeping over the doorsill. Bean took a breath and stepped inside.

No one turned to watch her as she walked through the door. She did a quick survey of the layout and headed to a seat toward the side of the bar where she could accurately eye her prospects. The bartender eased toward her slowly, took the towel off his shoulder, and gave a cursory wipe to the sticky wood in front of Bean. ‘What can I get ya?’ he asked. Bean let her eyelashes flutter as she considered the meager selection.

‘A double shot of Jack and a bottle of whatever light you’ve got,’ Bean said. She looked up at him from under spider legs of mascara, but he had already turned back to the refrigerator. He wouldn’t even do in a pinch anyway, she decided, eyeing his back. A little old, his belly gone soft, his eyes rheumy and red from alcohol. She could do better.

‘Five-fifty,’ he said, sliding the bottle and the glass onto the counter in front of her.

She began to reach for the cash in her bag, then stopped herself and pulled out her cigarettes instead. ‘I’ll run a tab,’ she said. He shrugged and walked away.

The jukebox howled out a tinny guitar solo as Bean drained the shot, letting the alcohol burn down her throat until it became too much to bear, and she gulped at the watery beer to cool the fire. The room blurred pleasantly, and she smiled as she turned slightly on her stool, resting a bare elbow on the sticky bar.

A group of women huddled in a booth near the back; Bean could just see the tops of their heads bobbing as they shrieked with laughter. A post-work happy hour. She knew the feeling – the giddy relief of being furloughed from the office for the night, the flush of adolescent excitement as the talk turned to sex, the camaraderie forged in the trenches and celebrated over drinks, the feeling that, as a group, you have achieved something momentous simply by surviving the workday.

By the jukebox, a few couples had formed a makeshift dance floor in between some of the tables. Bean watched them sway for a moment, and then skipped her eyes over them.

The pool table looked promising. A group of men, early thirty- something, playing a (poor, by the looks of it) game of pool for beer money. One of them was in a suit, his tie loosened, sleeves rolled up, but the rest were in T-shirts and jeans. Thick-bodied ex-athletes with once-handsome faces, now gone swollen and sad from alcohol and disappointment. Trapped in these one-horse towns, their best days behind them, the way she’d sworn she’d never be. The way she now was.

Bean had always had a way with men. There were women prettier, and smarter, and thinner, and funnier, but Bean had something special. When she was only twelve or thirteen, she had gone to performances at Barney and had drawn the gazes of the college boys who might have been – hopefully would have been – appalled if they had known her age. And when she discovered how to sneak out of the house on Friday and Saturday nights and follow the sounds of hysteria and beer, she had learned to flirt through the haze of smoke and noise, how to kiss without making any promises, and how to reel a man across the room with only a look.

She lifted her beer to her mouth, the neck hanging between two fingers, and shook back her hair. The one in the suit. He’d do. She signaled for another shot and tossed it back before taking her beer and her cigarettes and moving to a high table nearer to the pool players.

‘Nice shot,’ she observed when one of the T-shirts overshot, sending the cue ball hopping over the edge, where it rolled under her chair.

‘Sorry,’ he said, kneeling to recover it.

‘Not at all. I like a man on his knees.’ His head snapped up and he looked at her, startled, then smiled.

‘That could be arranged.’

Bean didn’t reply, only smiled and took a sip of her beer, wrapping her lips around the opening just so. He tossed the ball in the air, nearly missed catching it, and backed toward the table.

‘As you were,’ she nodded, dismissing him. The others were looking now, running their eyes over her. She crossed her legs, flipped her high heel so it hung from her toes, and lit a cigarette with a sigh. Like shooting fish in a barrel. This is a gift that I have; simple, simple.

A game later, the man headed to the bar and brought back another beer and shot for her. ‘You up for a game?’ he asked.

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘As long as you don’t mind losing.’ He laughed as she hopped off the stool with a practiced toss of her hair and took the stick from him.

Bean was drunk enough that it was deliciously easy to play her part without thinking – to brush up against the guy in the suit, to lean just right against the table, to get one of them to settle that pesky tab and keep her supplied with drinks.

But then there was a rush of heat coming in the door, and a gaggle of girls piled in. Maybe they were over twenty-one, but they were definitely girls. Their hair dyed too brassy, sprayed too high, their shorts too short, their makeup too thick. But they, unlike Bean, were on the right side of thirty. And they, unlike Bean, were willing to play dumb, and giggle their helpless way from the bar to the pool tables, preening and posing. The air in the room seemed thinner and the lights dimmer as Bean watched the men’s heads swivel, one by one, turning away from her, showing her that they’d only been using her to pass the time until something better came along. Exactly what she’d been doing to them. A lump formed in her throat and she swallowed hard. Was she going to have to fight for this? She’d never had to fight for attention before, and now she was going to have to do it for these men who hardly seemed worth having in the first place?

‘Ladies,’ the man who had first approached Bean said, and his voice was a throaty purr. ‘Join us?’ The men around the table had gone slack-jawed and simian, beer bottles held limply in their hands, pool cues leaning against the wall and the tables as they admired the display of raw young flesh in front of them. Bean felt as though she were folding in on herself like an origami crane.

The girls looked at one another, consulting, in the way that girls of that age do, as though they are constantly arriving at a telepathic agreement before making even the slightest move. ‘We don’t even know how to play!’ one of them squealed, and the rest burst into giggles again.

‘Give me a break,’ Bean said. She walked to the wall and chalked her cue, running her hand with firm, practiced strokes along the wood, and then blowing gently, her lips puckered just so. The men ignored her. One of the girls gave her a pitying glance, and Bean caught her breath as she recognized the look – she’d been cocky enough to give it herself once or twice – of a woman so confident in the unearned beauty of youth that she could afford to feel sorry for someone like Bean. And instead of feeling superior, Bean felt as though she were in the wrong, as though she had tried too hard, was overdressed and overage and just plain over. Any fight that had been brewing in her burst into steam, like water thrown on a fire.

‘We’ll teach you,’ one of the men said, and Bean watched the way their chests puffed out, peacock-proud, at the thought that they could rescue these helpless women from the dangers of the vicious pool table.

There was a rustle of activity as the girls shimmied their way around, pretending that they didn’t know which end of the pool cue to use, and the men sidled into place beside them, swapping partners like they were all in some complicated square dance with an absent caller until everything settled down. One of the girls bumped into Bean, pushing her up against the edge of the table. ‘Should we just start over?’ one of the guys asked.