Looking down into his glass mug, threw the beer that had gone flat, and his eyes finally focusing on the ground, he wondered, “What’s god like drunk?”
The sound of pool balls clicks, a girls voice says, “Damn”, followed by “shit” and “I suck.” A sign outside the building says Tumble Weeds. A block away is the pacific coast highway, beyond that, the ocean and the rest of the world.
“Charles, do you want to play against Joseph and Travis?” He said no thanks, but they had already began to play before he could answer. Charles mostly kept his eyes busy looking for things he normally wouldn’t pay attention to; like the cowboy hats decorated with Christmas lights (it was may), the color of liquid in the other people’s cups, how many empty bottles were on their table.
For once, he felt comfortable at this bar, even though most of the men and woman there were ten or twenty years older. Charles visited a few bars with hybrid combination of club for the younger crowd and it wasn’t the same. The difference was that at these places women were there to tease and the men hoping to get lucky. At tumble weeds, everyone came to get drunk.
Charles emptied the rest of the beer in his mouth. After watching his friends finish playing pool, they all went outside to smoke a cigarette.
They stood next to the main entrance, and sat on a ledge while they made small talk. A blonde woman in a black and white dotted dress came out, thru the front door fanning with her hands, the sweat off her face. “It’s really hot inside.”
They all nodded, she kept fanning, trying to catch her breath. “ I just danced through three songs without stopping.” Charles heard what she said, but was too distracted by her cleavage to reply. Joseph introduced himself as well as the others. Everyone shook hands, followed by silence, which was the band playing in the bar along with voices of everyone chatting inside.
“I need to find my keys, I think I left them in the car.” The blonde girl’ her name was Janice. She was still fanning her face.
Joseph replied, “My friend Travis here can help you find them. He’s good at that sort of thing.” Her face looked like, there was on her mind but how hot it was. “No thanks. I’m too old for you kids.”
Smirking, Joseph had a confident giggle. “Kids? How are we kids? Are you having some kind of mid life crisis?”
Charles finally broke free from the cleavage trance and noticed a girl, sitting on the curb by herself, smoking a cigarette. After the guys held nothing in between their fingers but filters, they returned to the bar for more drinks. Charles had another pint of the same beer. He looked at it like the last, questioning it in his head. “Should I drink you? Am I drunk yet?
His friends were on the other side of the bar while he sat and watched everyone else, as if everything was a sitcom. Charles sat and looked and looked at things until he saw her again, the girl loner, aimlessly walking around pushing buttons on the arcade games, but wasn’t really playing. Charles finally took his first sip.
Kat was her name, but he didn’t know that yet. She finally spent the fifty cents to play shuffle board, the arcade game. Standing behind her, he was holding his beer, a sip short of being full. “Are you any good at this?” He was referring to the arcade. “I’m better at the real thing.” Charles made a few suggestions on how to play even though he never played shuffled board; he was an experienced aracade golf player.
The two games had the same controllers; one pearl white ball that sticks half-way out of the arcade dashboard. The player is supposed to rub his or her hand across it so the object on the screen will move in that direction.
“Are you here with your buddies?” A few of his roommates, and one of their friend’s with benefits. “ He asked if she could donate a cigarette. She handed him one, and held it with his lip, unlit, until they finally walked out the bar.
They chatted for a while, standing on the edge of the curb. Charles couldn’t stop staring at her marbles for eyes that were green, but only reflected the dim yellow fluorescent from the street lights above. He stared the way people look into crystal balls, waiting for something to happen.
Without him noticing, (or caring) she began to pile her history in implicit detail, the same way people pour some beer into the cement for a dead friend. Kat told him stories that could soften any mans erection. Suicidal friends, neglective parents, back seat of cars, knives, rape, jails in mexico. It was none of his business, but he paid attention anyway.
A few feet away from where they were standing, was a girl collapsed on the sidewalk, drowning her cell phone receiver with words of affection. Kat was watching her, listening to the chorus of “I miss you.” And “I love you.”
Charles watched Kat. “Do you, in some way, see yourself when you look at her?” Kat nodded.
It may have been an act of desperation, or perhaps an overdose of confidence, Charles wanted to sound deep. “So this is it.” He said. When Kat turned away from the drunk love victim, she said. “What is?” He flicked his cigarette’s butt onto the pavement. “ A part of everything you’ll ever know or forget.”
He chased her fluorescent eyes when she threw her head back with laughter. “what’s so funny?” Just as he did she flicked her cigarette filter into the invisible field goal in the parking lot bushes. “You’re the second guy that’s told me tonight.” Kat continued laughing when Charles walked back inside in search for another drink.

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