RUSSELL PUT THE SHOTGUN BEHIND THE TRUCK SEAT AND HE DROVE downtown to the café. He sat at the counter and drank coffee as the Saturday evening crowd grew with each jingle of the bell on the door. The waitress kept topping off his coffee and he tore a napkin into tiny pieces and formed a tiny white hill.
At the table behind him a young girl knocked over her glass of tea and it caused her sister to jump and she knocked her glass and both fell to the floor and broke. The mother frowned at the guilty girl and the girl said it was an accident. Sims came over with a towel but it wasn’t enough so he hurried back to the kitchen and then a woman returned with him. She held a busing tray and her hair was in a ragged ponytail. The family stood back as she knelt and picked up the broken glass and then she cleared away the plates that had been covered in the spilled tea. Sims helped the family move to another table and the woman took the tray and set it on the counter and then she went into the kitchen and returned with a mop and bucket and cleaned the spill underneath the table and chairs.
Russell paid for the coffee and went outside. Lit a cigarette and looked up at the early moon and then he walked to the Armadillo and sat down at the bar. Two young men with greasy shirts and black under their fingernails sat at the other end. The bartender leaned on the bar and talked with them. No one else was in the bar and the music was off. Russell called out for a beer and the bartender took one from the cooler and brought it down and left it without a word and returned to his friends.
A group of women came in and sat at a table and two boys came in and left when the bartender asked for their IDs but other than that the place remained tranquil. Russell watched the clock over the bar move past eight and close to nine and he couldn’t figure out why the place jumped on Thursday night but not Saturday. The group of women laughed big about something and Russell turned to look at them and then he noticed another woman standing in the doorway. She stepped inside and looked around with timidity. Scraped knees and bony shoulders. The group of women scanned her up and down and whispered as she walked over to the bar and sat down three stools away and she held a twenty-dollar bill tightly in her hand. She turned toward Russell and caught him looking and he recognized her from mopping the floor in the café. She asked how much a beer costs and the bartender said a dollar fifty and she thought about it a second and then said she’d take one. The back of her shirt was wet with sweat from the evening’s work. The bartender gave her the beer and when she lifted it to her lips her hand shook slightly.
The place was different without the band and without the crowd and he wished now that he would have gotten a phone number from Caroline the night before last. That he wouldn’t have snuck away in the middle of the night. He imagined how good it would feel to crawl into the bed with her now with the air conditioner turned low and the covers around his neck. He looked at the skinny woman and he noticed her squeezing the change the bartender had given her as if the bills were capable of taking flight. She no longer sat on the bar stool but stood next to it. When she finished the bottle she wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. Cut her eyes around the room and then walked out.
Russell motioned to the bartender and said one more.