THE BARTENDER MOPS what looks like a puddle of blood on the cracked tile floor. She's wearing a bright yellow bikini and her long legs look good in the clear platform heels.
"Oh, hi there," she says to me as I walk in. "Someone dropped a glass of wine." She smiled. I've never seen anyone drink wine in this dive, and there isn't any glass on the floor.
I take a stool at the bar, and when she finishes mopping, I order a beer and a hot dog. The Port 41 Bikini Bar is a few steps from Port Authority in Times Square, and it does not attract tourists. Mostly just derelicts, drug dealers and New Jersey commuters wearing steel-toed boots. The hot dogs are free until five.
I've never seen this bartender before. She's skinny, small tits under her string bikini. She has a tramp stamp. (Of course.)
I doubt the floors had ever been swept or mopped until now. Filthy, like the air in here. The red leather booths are patched with duct tape, and a stuffed hippo head hangs on the wall over them. I always sit at the bar, and I never see the same patrons twice.
"Deez broads in the Olympic volleyball and the shit they wear," says an old man watching the TV over the bar. His hairy belly has outgrown his ratty old black T-shirt, and the fat hangs below the hem like a low crescent moon, his navel a dark crater.
"Yeah, my girlfriend complains that they should wear T-shirts and shorts," a younger man next to me says. "She's so fucking jealous. Heh." He sips his beer and gives the bartender the one-two with his eyes. He has a stack of small bills next to his beat-up cell phone.
The bartender sets a beer and a hot dog in front of me and chimes in: "They wear those outfits because they're more aerodynamic under water." She waits for us to be impressed. She keeps waiting. We're the only people in the place.
I stare at the stuffed hippo head in the reflection of the mirror behind the bar. I wonder if it's real as I take a bite of my free hot dog. Popcorn is free all day and night, but I don't trust it. Too many dirty hands dig into it.
"How old are you, honey?" the old man says to the bartender.
The younger guy gives her the one-two again. He's got a prison tattoo on his forearm. It looks like a drunk scrawled on his skin with a ballpoint that was running out of ink. Abstract art. It could hang in the MoMA.
"Old enough," she says to the old man, but she's barely old enough to drink. She pulls back her long peroxide-streaked hair and snaps a scrunchy around it so a ponytail hangs down to the middle of her back.
"I bet," the old man says. "I know things, ya know. I have a gift. Want a reading?"
"Oh, really?" she says. She leans on the bar. "So tell me something."
The old man rubs his belly, stares at her for a minute, then, like he was reading it out of the newspaper, says, "You're from Brooklyn and your boyfriend is a bass player in a band."
She arches her eyebrows. "Alllll-righty." She spins 180 degrees on a clear heel. She grabs her cell phone, which was sitting between a couple bottles of whiskey, and hits speed dial. She turns her back but we can hear her talking to her boyfriend.
It's just past noon on a Saturday. Some much-needed air is circulating. The door of the bar is open and it's the only light other than the TV. The volleyball match is over and some tiny girls are bouncing around on a mat, spinning in the air, doing amazing things with their arms and legs and abs.
"Don't you fucking lie to me again!" she yells into the phone. She holds the phone to her shoulder. "Are you married?" she says to the old man.
"Yeah, to a Chinese broad I met while I was overseas."
"No way! You need to cut this shit out right now." She pushes his shoulder and he looks at her like what the fuck. "Are you my boyfriend's dad? Seriously. You need to tell me."
He shakes his head. "Sorry, honey." He smiles. He's missing a couple teeth in back. It's a window to his tongue. He lifts his bottle of beer and finishes it off.
"My boyfriend's dad is married to an Asian woman. You have got to be shitting me," the bartender says. "How did you know my boyfriend played bass in a band?"
"I have a sixth sense!" the old man says. "I can read people."
"Bullshit," the younger guy says.
"Oh, really?" the older man says. "Construction worker. Lives in Jersey. Waiting for the two o'clock bus."
Everyone freezes and waits for the answer.
"That's pretty fucking good," the younger guy finally says. "But you're wrong."
"Ha!" the bartender says, pointing a long finger at the old man.
"I'm taking the two-fifteen bus," the younger man says.
"Fuck you guys," the bartender says. "You're putting me on."
She flips her cell phone closed, sets it between the whiskey bottles, and stares at the old man. He smiles again. Through the hole of his missing teeth I see his thick pink tongue roll in his mouth like a humpback.
"I've been texting my boyfriend all day," the bartender says, "accusing him of sending his dad to spy on me and he's like, 'I'm at the airport! My dad is in the back seat!' I know he's lying to me. I know he's fucking lying."
She twists the cap off another bottle of beer and sets it in front of the old man.
The younger guy leans back in his chair. "It's like I told my girlfriend after she caught me a couple times. People make mistakes. Yeah, maybe he's screwing around, spying on you, whatever, but you have to forgive." He almost sounded serious.
"So," I say to him, "is it okay to use that as an excuse to cheat more?"
"Whoa," he says. He massages his two-day stubble with his fingers, and turns toward me. He has a pinky ring and a fake diamond stud in his ear.
"You just fucked my head up," he says. "Nobody ever said that to me. I don't know what to say to that."
He stares at me while he chugs the last of his beer.
The old man says, "He ain't cheating on you, sweetie. I'm sure of it." He almost sounds serious, too.
She smiles, and I notice her snaggletooth for the first time.
"We were in a play together," she says. "We played a divorced couple. After the play was over, I boldly text-messaged him and said, 'I know you like me.'" She shifts her head from side to side and puckers her purple lipstick like she's hot shit. "The director had to be like, 'Deryke, what the fuck!'"
She laughs and her big brown eyes become slits. Her crazy tooth is actually kinda cute. She sets another bottle of beer in front of the younger guy and plucks a few bills from his stack.
"I was in the same car with him and we were texting," she says as she turns to ring up the beer. "He was in the back seat with headphones on. I was afraid he'd show the text to everyone."
A constellation of bruises runs from her thigh to her calf. Her skin is milky white. When her knee is bent a little, the five brown spots align in a flattened W like Cassiopeia.
I usually drink Maker's, but what's in the Maker's bottle here isn't Maker's. I finish off my beer and ask for another draft.
She pours it, sets it in front of me. She leans in and says, "My boyfriend's roommate likes to piss on his girls." She pauses then arches her eyebrows again. "And they like it!"
She steps back from the bar, puts her hands on her hips, and taps her toe. I think maybe she likes to get pissed on, too. I think maybe she wants to screw her boyfriend's roommate.
"Hey, I just baked some cupcakes," she says. "Want some?"
She pulls out a white baker's box with a dozen cupcakes, all different colors, some with sprinkles. The other two guys crowd around the box, evaluate the options, and grab one.
"Why does a straight man need a cat?" she says. She scratches her head with a long, fake fingernail.
She's coked out of her mind. I pick up a red cupcake with green icing and silver specks.
"These girls like being pissed on!" she says. She laughs like she said the funniest thing ever. And it's pretty funny. We all laugh.
She jumps back from the bar and holds the imaginary cock of her boyfriend's roommate. She's using both hands, giving him quite the length and girth. She starts moving from side to side like she's putting out a fire with it.
"I texted my boyfriend," she says as she sprays the imaginary flames, "well he wasn't my boyfriend yet, but I texted him: I know you have a crush on me, but if you show anyone this, I'll beat the shit out of you!"
She tucks her imaginary cock into her imaginary pants, and pretends to zip them up. Her clear high heels remind me of Cinderella. She walks toward me, leans on the bar with both elbows, and arches her back. She has a flat stomach and a flat ass.
"Tyrell's his roommate. I ignore him." She closes her eyes for a second, just a little longer than a blink. A little too long, like she's thinking about Tyrell. She wants to fuck him. But she keeps with the romance about how she met her boyfriend.
"So after I texted my boyfriend, he texts back and says, like, 'Let's go out next week.' Next week? Next week!" She throws her hands up, and raises her eyebrows again. "That's so he could have his big orgy and screw all his old girlfriends, right? That's what you guys do, right?"
"People make mistakes," the younger guy says slowly as he peels the label off his beer.
I laugh out loud, from the gut, and say, "I wish I could make mistakes like that." I drink the last of my beer.
"I bet you do," she says, and shakes her head.
I order a Faker's Mark, neat. She spins around on a heel, grabs a bottle and pours into a hefty glass.
"This is on me, sweetie." She winks. "I dunno. My boyfriend's a good guy but I'm just with him for his money."
I doubt he has much money. I watch her walk the length of the bar looking for something, her Cinderella heels clicking the whole way. She slips a finger into her bikini bottom and slides it down to cover her butt a little better, then grabs a rag and starts wiping the bar down.
"My boyfriend has been cheated on by all his exes," she says. "Oh, his friend who pisses on people? He told me that." She smirks.
The old man laughs and scratches his hairy belly.
"He's a smart guy," she says. "Some of the shit his roommate is into, though ... it's just not right. He's making porn. Those poor girls."
I bet she gets a tit job soon. Too bad. I bet she goes too big, too, like two balloons with thick scars underneath because she couldn't afford through-the-nipple. Her breasts are the shape of cupped hands, and her nipples are hard. They're beautiful the way they are.
"Those poor girls," she says again.
She frowns and rests her elbows on the bar, her chin in her hands. She looks out the door into the bright light of the afternoon. A yellow cab rolls by.
I go to the bathroom. I've been dreading this all day because my anal fissure is acting up. It hurts even when the crap is soft, and there's always lots of blood. I squat. It's painful. Quickly, the water is red and brown. I'm not done, but I wipe with a fist full of toilet paper, give it a courtesy flush, and wait.
A drop of blood plops in the water. I wait a while longer, but there's nothing else. I stand, zip my pants. I look in the toilet bowl and see a few brown streaks. They look like a stem and two leaves underneath a rippled circle of blood that has blossomed like the bud of a rose.
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