|
David arrived at the uni bar an
hour early at eight. He went straight into the men’s room to check his
reflection – he scrubbed up okay, especially considering this was the first
time in a week that he’d had a shower. Unless he was going out, he couldn’t
be bothered. He slicked back his hair a little more with water from the tap,
then ventured back out into the smoke filled bar-room to wait for Lucy. He sat
at the bar and ordered a beer, then watched everyone around him to pass the
time. Some music played on a speaker system, but it was all that independent
rock stuff that he wasn’t into. He wasn’t particularly keen on passing an
hour listening to this stuff, but if that’s what he had to do, he’d do it.
He had checked his watch ten
times before it was finally nine o’clock. He ordered another beer then got off
his perch at the bar and started milling around, looking for Lucy.
He had the description she had
given him engraved in his brain. He felt he could picture her perfectly. His
eyes – although usually bloodshot and tired – were on the ball tonight,
scanning every inch of the room for her.
“Black hair, cut in a bob with a fringe, brown eyes, milky complexion,
about five foot six, thin, long fingers and a scar on my chin …”
Those words kept going around
and around in his head. There were plenty of girls with black hair, but some of
them had streaks with funny colors and others had their hair done in the wrong
style. He kept his eye level at the height she would be at, and concentrated
only on the women that seemed that tall. But as the room filled with more and
more people, it was getting harder to try to pinpoint her. He wished he had
managed to coax a picture out of her before they met up to have made this
initial meeting easier, but it had happened fast, as he had wanted it to, and he
had been lucky so didn’t want to push it with any other requests. But finding
her without a picture was much harder than it seemed. He’d never had to do it
like this, he had never been quite this impatient before. But needed her now, he
couldn’t fight it. His hands ached and the blood pumped through his veins with
so much pressure he could barely take it.
After a long while, when he
could no longer keep count of how many laps he’d done of the room or how many
beers he’d had, David leaned against the bar and checked his watch. It was a
little after eleven. He swore under his breath. One part of his mind wanted to
make up excuses for her and wait longer. But the rest of him knew that he’d
been stood up. If he hadn’t been so busy searching and drinking, he would have
known that an hour ago. But that small, optimistic part of his mind held out and
begged for one more beer and a little more time. David relented.
His legs refused to hold him up
for another useless circuit of the room, so David sat at the bar and nursed his
beer, his eyes moving over everyone in sight. None of them was Lucy, he knew
that. The more he looked, the more he realized he had to give up. He’d go mad
if he stayed here a moment longer without her.
As he strained the last of his
beer through his stained teeth, he became aware of eyes on him. Sure, people had
glanced at him during the night, but these eyes speared him. He turned and saw a
petite blonde eyeing him from a corner near the pool tables. She looked away
when she saw him looking back, sipping at her drink as if she never noticed him.
He looked her up and down – she wasn’t bad from this angle. But it wasn’t
right. It wasn’t the way he was comfortable doing things. Any moron could walk
up to a girl in a bar and start small talk. David was above that. He was
special.
He pulled his eyes from her, slammed his empty glass on
the bar and stood on unsteady legs. As he walked towards the door to leave, he
felt her eyes stabbing into his back. She could stare all she wanted, he
thought. He wasn’t looking back and he wasn’t staying. He’d taken all he
could stand of humanity for tonight.
© Cynthia M. Piromalli
©2003 StoriesByEmail.com
|
