Boys from work, some friends I was supposed to meet, they hadn’t shown up. I had a table to myself because it was more comfortable than a stool. A basketball game was on, with the sound off, lots of guys jumping around, other people like me watching it. I looked at the bar and tried to see the woman’s face in the mirror behind the bottles. She didn’t look old. Sometimes at first glance the bodies look young, but the faces, on closer examination, are not. This one didn’t look old.

I sat there without watching what was going on on the television screen. I didn’t know why I didn’t just get up and go home. I could see them all in the living room, sitting in front of the television without me. My wife would be in the bed asleep when I went in, probably, if she wasn’t sitting up waiting on me. There were times when I couldn’t stand to stay there. Leaving the house like I did made it hard on everybody. I knew the kids asked her where I went and why I went. I didn’t know what she told them. I didn’t want to think about what she told them. I knew if I kept it up they would stop asking after a while. I knew that would be as bad as anything.

She kept sitting there, looking around a little, smoking a cigarette. After a while she got down off her bar stool and went to the jukebox and dug some change out of her pocket. Her jeans were so tight she had trouble getting the money out, like she’d been melted and poured into them. I watched her. She leaned over the panel of bright lights and set her beer down and held the cigarette between the fingers of her left hand, moving her head a little to what was already playing. And she turned around and looked straight at me and asked me what I liked. I smiled, told her to play E19.

“What’s that?” she said, through the music. I picked up my beer and went over to her. That was the start of it.