“Pete’s going to be modest so I’m going to boast for him. He’s only going to be a bartender here for about five more minutes until he gets poached by some high-end hotel bar, so I do recommend you try a cocktail.”
“What are you having?”
“I’m having a mai tai, but it’s so much better than anything you’ve ever had that’s been called a mai tai before.”
After I finished my beer, I ordered one too, and Pam was right. It was the best drink I’d ever had in a Chinese restaurant. She was also pretty good company. We talked food and drink, and it wasn’t until we’d decided to split an order of shrimp toast that she got around to asking me what I did.
“I’m a writer,” I said.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Aspiring, I guess. I write poetry, mostly, and I teach classes here and there.”
“Is that enough to make a living?” she said.
“I live in a cheap apartment, and I don’t have health insurance. So, no, it’s not really a living, but it’s all I’ve got.”
“What are you doing out here?”
I’d been prepared for that question and I told her I’d come out to walk around Walden Pond, then took a drive to look for a place to have a drink and just stumbled upon the Taste of Hong Kong. “How about you?” I said.
“How about me what?”
“What do you do?”
She took a breath that raised her shoulders a little then said, “I’m an office manager at a real estate company.”
“You like it?”
“I don’t dislike it, and I’m good at it. It’s just that . . .” Her phone had buzzed and she apologized and took a look at it. I was halfway through my cocktail and beginning to feel it. Before I had too many drinks I decided I needed a plan. Or maybe my plan should be to get drunk with Pam O’Neil and then get her to confess she’d been having an affair with her boss. Case closed. I hadn’t decided yet.
“Sorry about that,” she said, putting her phone facedown on the bar. “My friend Janey who was originally supposed to meet me here an hour ago is now saying she’ll be here in an hour. I don’t know if I believe her or not. Hey, are you looking for a girlfriend?”
“Not particularly,” I said, maybe a little too fast.
“Don’t panic,” she said, laughing. “I just thought that Janey, my friend, who may or may not show up here in about an hour, is free. And she’s a very successful real estate agent.”
“Well . . . ,” I said.
“I won’t embarrass you, and I don’t even know why I’m trying to set you up with my friend. I don’t know you.”
“How about you?” I said, hoping to change the subject.
“What about me?”
“Are you in a relationship?”
She pressed her index finger to the bar, rubbing at an invisible stain. “I’m in a complicated and stupid relationship that I need to get out of.”
“That sounds interesting.”
“Oh, God no,” she said, and turned to me. “It’s many things, but I don’t think interesting is one of them. For one thing it’s much more of a threesome than a twosome.”
“Well, actually,” I said. “That does sound interesting.”
She whacked at my arm with the back of her hand. “No, not like that. Not like you’re thinking. I’m done talking about it, anyways, because it’s depressing.” She smiled sadly, and I got my first real look at her teeth, gray in the light of the cocktail lounge. She quickly closed her mouth, and I wondered if she was self-conscious about it. Up close I thought she was less pretty, but more interesting looking, maybe even beautiful, than I’d thought she was when I’d seen her earlier in the coffee shop. She had a face that constantly changed, all her emotions passing across her features. Her chin was a little pointed and she had a short upper lip, but her pale blue eyes were bright and intense. I decided not to push her about her complicated relationship, hoping the subject would naturally return.
“How’s the real estate market out here?” I said.
“Competitive,” she said, as the shrimp toast arrived.
Pete the bartender asked me if I wanted another drink. “Another beer,” I said, deciding to nurse it for a while, maybe order more food. Pam took a sip of her mai tai, tipping the glass back so that the ice rapped against her teeth. “Can I get you another of those?” I said.
“On your poet’s salary?” she said, then her face fell, and she immediately said, “God, that was so rude. I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t be. I’ll show you up when I sell a sonnet to Hollywood for a million dollars.”
She laughed. “Okay, one drink, but the shrimp toast is on me.”
“Okay,” I said.
By the time our drinks were in front of us, and we’d ordered more appetizers, I noticed that the bar was starting to fill up. One stool had been taken up by a grubby-looking guy who kept his parka on and ordered a Budweiser, but the rest of the new patrons looked more like swank couples arriving for a big night out. The high-tops in the bar area were all occupied, and Pete was putting cocktails together at a very fast pace.
“He’s kind of a cult figure,” Pam said. “I’m surprised you just wandered in here.”
“I had no idea.”
When Pam’s friend Janey finally arrived, the lounge was borderline crowded, and Pete had help behind the bar, a young woman with pink hair wearing a gingham dress. I was introduced to Pam’s friend, and we both had to lean in in order to talk to one another; she was enveloped in a cloud of perfume, and it took all my willpower to not sneeze. After introductions she arranged herself on the stool on the other side of Pam. She was wearing a light gray suit over a silk blouse. Her hair was stiff from some sort of product, and she had a lot of makeup on. If I’d truly wandered into the Taste of Hong Kong as I’d said I had, and randomly met Pam, then I would most certainly be settling up my bill and leaving. I didn’t have a lot of interest in getting to know Pam’s friend, and we couldn’t hear each other anyway, not with all three of us sitting at the bar. I excused myself to go to the bathroom, trying to figure out what to do next. Pam was getting drunk and talkative. If I stuck around there was a good chance she would eventually tell me the whole story of her affair with Joan’s husband. Or else I might find out she wasn’t having an affair with Richard Whalen. Or maybe she’d simply talk with her friend Janey the rest of the night, and I would learn nothing.
Walking back across the lounge I decided to stay for at least twenty minutes more, just to see what might happen. When I reached the two women, Pam slid from her stool to the one next to it, and insisted I sit in the middle, so we’d all be able to talk to one another.
“I feel like I’m invading your night,” I said, and both women shook their heads.
“All we’re doing is gossiping about work,” Janey said. “We can do that anytime. Besides, I’m here for one drink, tops, and then I’m going home. It’s a Tuesday.”
“Where do you both live?” I said.