"Dives tend to attract the stupid." Who: Remy and Abby What: First meetings When: March 6 Where: JoeyRay’s, Irvine Rating: Low Status: Complete!
These days, Remy spent more time in bars than she did in her own apartment. But she tried not to visit the same place twice in a row. It would paint an unflattering image. This place was new. A first visit, fresh prospects, everything she could have hoped for except an available woman she could pick out across the room. She wasn’t committed enough to her self-destruction to actually work at it. Looked like tonight was going to be about the alcohol.
It was early in the evening still for a Los Angeles dive-bar. Few patrons other than the regulars congregated at this hour; when traffic was heaviest and some establishments still considered the day to be within normal business hours. Give it a few more, at least until the sun sank beneath the hazy horizon before the masses would start trickling in, people looking for a comfort that could not be found in their wives' crockpots back at home.
For a Masters holder, a bartending gig was nothing more than a means to an end. There wasn't enough money in research at the moment to make a living in what Abby really wanted to be doing so like every other mopey-faced piss head in the joint, she had her fair share of issues whose answers could be found at the bottom of a bottle.
'What are you having?' Abby asked, eyeing the only unfamiliar face in the bar.
Remy was still glancing around the bar, looking back at her only briefly as she answered distractedly. “Whatever’s on tap. You choose.”
Eyeing the woman with steely blues, Abby waited for a punchline or poorly delivered pickup that clearly wasn't coming. So rarely did a patron - particularly one wandering into the bar early on in her shift when only the true alcoholics populated her tabs - give an unfamiliar barkeep the freedom to select their drink. Typically when people poisoned their livers they preferred to pick their own flavour of self-destruction.
Needless to say it caught Abby a little off guard but she wasn't about to throw back Stout, lager or pale ale? The customer was always right and this particular patron had ordered barkeep's choice.
Be it her own downfall.
Slinging a glass beneath the nearest logo - Sierra Nevada - Abby pulled open a line and let the beer flow, tapping it off at long last as the foamy head rested the rim. ‘Three fifty,’ she said, sliding the beer down the bar, its ridged bottom scraping along the grain with a gritty scritch. ‘Will that be all or do you want to open a tab?'
They were all unfamiliar. She didn’t like repeat visits. Sure, she had her preferences, but at the end of the day, alcohol was alcohol and whatever she chose would serve her purposes for the evening. And she still had dim hopes that she might find someone to give her what she really wanted.
Collecting her beer and dropping the money onto the bar, she finally turned her full attention to the woman across from her. “I’m fine, thanks. Don’t worry. I’m not here to cry on your shoulder.”
'Nobody is,' Abby replied with a shrug, taking the notes and coins from the bar top and dropping them into the till. She knew the type. Anonymous, emotionless patrons searching for more than they admitted to seeking. And that was just fine with her so long as the orders kept coming and the money made it into her pocket.
'People just come for the booze.'
Another shrug, Abby returned to her duties, drying off a few more pint glasses from the dishwasher in preparation for the rush later. The benefit of finding the human race boring was if they didn't wish to talk, Abby was perfectly grateful. And if they did, several pints down, they were suddenly a lot more interesting.
“You mean no one’s ever mistaken it for Cheers.” It was a joke. Mostly. But it was a little too sarcastic. She wasn’t in the best of moods.
'This place?' Abby's eyes blew wide and her mouth knit tightly on the return. While not grungy, JoeyRay's was a dive-bar, make no mistake.
Aside from a hand full of clattered tables occupied most evenings by leather daddies and street vets, the only other notable real estates were the pool table and jukebox, vintage in their own right. In parts, the velvety green of the billiard table had been worn thin to the slate, the K-66 bumper a distant memory even for Frank whose white-topped skull was a much a feature as the cracks in the linoleum floor. Half the time Abby worked the jukebox did not, though when it did she prayed for its endless loop of Durand, Durand to cease lest she snap and chuck a Molotov cocktail in its general direction, duck and hide beneath the bar and leave all the patrons to fend for themselves.
Despite its shabbiness, however, JoeyRay’s was clean and tidy. Smoke-free, which many dive-bars could not boast, and Abby liked the regulars few that they were.
It was, however, without dispute most certainly not the location of an Eastern sit-com.
'Never. We don't even serve food.'
She shrugged, turning back to survey the rest of the bar. “Hey, people see what they wanna see. And it set a terrible stereotype.”
Tonight was definitely a loss. She’d finish her beer and go home alone. A tiny part of her was relieved. Mostly she was frustrated.
“Busy place?”
Trading her bar towel for a fresh one, Abby continued to mop up bits of dishwater the dryer had failed to steam off while there was still a moment to do so. 'It gets to be. Either as a place for the young and the brainless to pre-game for clubbing or after the clubs have all shut down and there's nowhere else to puke and get arrested.'
The college kids. How Abby loathed that particular niche of human society.
Personally, her days at UCLA had been the happiest of her lifetime. Out of reach of her parents, reading everything she could get her hands on. Challenging theories, open debates, bettering herself with each effort alongside other like minded students and distinguished professors. The mass of knowledge had been overwhelming and many days Abby wished she were still there, pulling long hours in the lab and scrutinizing atoms beneath the tip of her pointed nose.
Instead, she was pulling pints for the other half of the college crowd - the party goers and slack offs. But if their money could pay her bills then poetic justice had reigned in her favor.
'Times like this though it's nice. With just the regulars. I take it this is your first time with us?'
"It is. I'm getting the impression you don't like it here much."
She couldn't say she blamed her. Tending bar wasn't exactly an ideal career choice for most people. Not in a place like this.
Abby's nose scrunched.
'I like the establishment. My boss is a lovely lady and it pays the bills. But I loath stupidity,' she explained without pause. It was a conversation had many times over and she felt no shame in sharing the opinion. Whomever did not agree that lower IQs were nails on the chalkboard of society was in all likelihood exactly the type of person Abby had no patience for.
'Dives tend to attract the stupid.'
Who didn’t loathe stupidity? But after awhile, you got used to it. On occasion, it even had its advantages. She’d come here looking for something else, though.
“Or the desperate.”
'And which category do you fall into?' Abby asked, blonde eyebrow popping up to a pixi cut. 'You don't exactly strike me as stupid or desperate.'
Desperate, Abby guessed secretly, but a good barkeep never insulted their patrons. Not even when they were ten under and falling off their stools like drunk lemurs over cliff edges. Then about all she could do was call a taxi and let the bouncer bundle them up against the cold night.
Oh, and mop the floor.
Definitely desperate. Not that she necessarily wanted that known. But she answered without hesitation, the smile coming easily. “A little bit of both.”