“It’s a hit or miss,” he says as we approach the bar, hand in hand. “Most of them will card you, but every now and then you get lucky and they don’t bother if you look twenty-one enough.”
“Well, I’ll be twenty-one in five months,” I say, gripping his hand as we cross a busy intersection.
“I was worried you were seventeen when I met you on the bus.”
“Seventeen?!” I hope like hell I don’t actually look that young.
“Hey,” he says glancing over once, “I’ve seen fifteen-year-olds that look twenty—hard to tell anymore.”
“So you think I look seventeen?”
“No, you look about twenty,” he admits, “I’m just sayin’.”
That’s a relief.
This bar is slightly smaller than the last and the people in it are a mixture of fresh-out-of-college and early thirty-somethings. A few pool tables are set side by side near the back and the lighting is dim in the place, mostly localized over the pool tables and in the hallway to my right, leading into the restrooms. The cigarette smoke is thick unlike the last place where it was non-existent, but it doesn’t bother me much. I’m not fond of cigarettes, but there’s something natural about cigarette smoke in a bar. It would almost seem naked without it.
Some kind of familiar rock music is playing from the speakers in the ceiling. There’s a small stage to the left where bands usually play, but no one’s playing tonight. That doesn’t diminish the party-like mood in the atmosphere though, because I can barely hear Andrew talking to me over the music and the shouting voices all around me.
“Can you play pool?” he leans in, shouting near my ear.
I shout back, “I have a few times! But I suck at it!”
He tugs my hand and we walk toward the pool tables and the brighter light, pushing our way carefully through people standing around in just about every available walkable space.
“Sit here,” he says, able to lower his voice a little with the speakers in front of us. “This’ll be our table.”
I sit down at a small round table pressed against a wall where just over my head and to my left there is a staircase leading up to a second floor on the other side of me. I nudge the cigarette-laden ashtray across the table and away from me with the tip of my finger as a waitress walks up.
Andrew is talking to a guy a few feet away next to the pool tables, probably about joining a game.
“Sorry about that,” the waitress says, taking the ashtray and replacing it with a clean one, setting it upside-down upon the table. She washes the top of the table off afterwards with a wet rag, lifting the ashtray to get the spot under it.
I smile up at her. She’s a pretty black-haired girl, probably just turned twenty-one herself and she’s holding a serving tray on one hand.
“Can I get yah anything?”
I only have one chance to act like I’m asked that question a lot without being carded, so I say almost immediately, “I’ll have a Heineken.”
“Make that two,” Andrew says stepping back up with a pool stick in his hand.
The waitress does a double-take when she notices him, and like Andrew in the elevator with me, I’m eating the hell out of it. She nods and glances back down at me with that you-are-one-lucky-bitch look before walking away.
“That guy’s got one more game and then we’ve got the table,” he says, sitting down on the empty chair.
The waitress comes back with two Heinekens and sets them in front of us.
“Just wave if yah need anything,” she says before leaving again.
“She didn’t card you,” he says, leaning across the table so no one will hear.
“No, but that doesn’t mean I won’t eventually get carded—that happened once in a bar in Charlotte; Natalie and me were almost drunk by the time we were carded and sent packing.”
“Well, then just enjoy it while you can.” He smiles, bringing his beer to his lips and taking a quick drink.
I do the same.
I’m starting to wish I hadn’t brought my purse so I wouldn’t have to keep up with it, but when it’s our turn to play a game of pool, I set it on the floor under our table. We’re kind of off in a cubby-hole so I’m not too worried about it.
Andrew takes me over to the stick rack.
“What’s your pleasure?” he asks, waving his hands across the space in front of the rack. “You have to pick one that feels right.”
Oh, this is going to be fun; he actually thinks he’s teaching me something.
I play coy and clueless, scanning the pool sticks like one might books on a shelf and then take one down. I run my hands along the length of it and hold it out like I would to hit a ball, as if to get the feel of it. I know I look totally dumb-blonde right about now, but that’s exactly how I want to look.
“This one’s as good as any,” I say with a shrug.
Andrew racks the balls in the triangular rack, switching solid for stripe all around until he gets the sequence right and then slides them across the table and into position. Carefully, he removes the rack and shoves it in a slot underneath the table.
He nods. “Want to break ’em?”
“Nah, you can.”
I just want to see him lookin’ all sexy, concentrating and leaning over the table.
“Alright,” he says and positions the cue ball. He spends a few seconds twisting the head of his stick into a square of chalk and then sets the chalk on the side of the table.
“If you’ve played before,” he says, moving back around in position with the cue ball, “then I’m sure you know the basics.” He points the end of the stick at the cue ball. “Obviously, you only hit the white ball.”
This is funny, but he’s got this one comin’.
I nod.
“If you’re stripes, the only balls you want to sink in any pockets are the striped balls—hit one of the solids and you’re only helping me beat you.”
“What about that black ball?” I point at the 8 ball near the center.
“If you sink that one before all of your stripes,” he says with a grim face, “you lose. And if you sink the white ball, you lose your turn.”
“Is that all?” I ask, twisting the head of my stick in a square of chalk now.
“For now, yeah,” he says; I guess he’s letting me slide about the few other basic rules.
Andrew takes a couple steps back and leans over the table, arching his fingers on the blue felt and resting the stick strategically within the curl of his index finger. He slides the stick back and forth a couple of times to steady his aim before pausing and then slamming the head of it into the cue ball, scattering the others all over the table.
Good break, baby, I say to myself.
He sinks two—one stripe, one solid.
“What’ll it be?” he asks.
“What’ll what be?” I continue to play dumb.
“Solids or stripes? I’ll let you choose.”
“Oh,” I say as if I’m just getting it, “doesn’t matter; I’ll take the ones with stripes, I guess.”
We’re