the bartender

It was a spur-of-the-moment decision to meet The Bartender in Nogales on Thanksgiving. I craved chicken in a hazelnut mole sauce. She was due to leave the next week for Laughlin so it was unclear when we would see each other again.

I decided to bus it which was an interesting experience. The only glitch was getting out of this little village. I arrived on a street corner before dawn and waited almost two hours for the bus. I had company. The fat pigeon of a dog followed me (she is so stubborn!) and sat with me while I waited. It is fortunate that she has such short stubby legs as she was unable to board the bus and sat looking forlorn as the door closed behind me. (If a dog could have a 'what the fuck' look on her face, she did.)

Even though I had to taxi between bus stations in the big city, and I had no bus schedules, I arrived at all the other buses (coming and going) just a few minutes before their departures. The buses from the big city to Nogales (and back again) were nice and round-trip I ended up watching four movies, trying to pick out a familiar word here and there but getting the gist of the movies just fine.

The Bartender and I arrived at the restaurant at the exact same moment and my favorite waiter waited on us and the mole was excellent, not to mention the free shot of tequila.

Since moving to southern Arizona from New Orleans, The Bartender has not had good luck when it comes to work. She is a bartender people either like a lot or not at all. I can't quite sort it out. There are things she does well, remembering customers' drinks, introducing people at the bar, especially if they're sitting alone, asking "what will you have babe?" in that cute New Orleans' accent. But if you piss her off, she doesn't hide it. If a co-worker is a slacker, or giving away too many drinks, she lets her displeasure be known. She is a stickler for rules. I don't think I ever got a free drink from her.

She got fired from her first bartending job and was on the brink of losing her second when she decided to make her move. She thought about going back to New Orleans. A while back we had talked about Laughlin. With all those casinos, there must be lots of bartending jobs there. So here's what she did: She held a garage sale to get rid of most of her belongings. She gave her landlord notice. On a day off from work she loaded as much stuff as she could into her Mustang and drove up to Laughlin, a place she had never been to. There she met with real estate agents and looked at rentals either too expensive or too funky. She spent the night in a motel feeling very discouraged. Now what? On her way out of town in the morning she followed a for rent sign to a cute little bungalow and called the agent who showed her the house which was also too expensive. But the agent had just bought another place, a trailer on a good-sized fenced lot. They went to see it and The Bartender rented it on the spot. The realtor let her stash her boxes in the storage shed.

The Bartender went back south, worked on getting her house squared away so she could get her deposit back, sold or gave away more things, lugged more household items up to Laughlin, gave notice at work and yesterday loaded her remaining possessions and her two big dogs into the Mustang and headed to her new home. She has very little money with which to start her new life, no credit cards, no safety net. She gives herself a week to find a job.

Because of the way the rental fell into her life, she believes this move is meant to be. I have to agree. I think it took great courage on her part to make this move, as it did when Katrina rousted her from the city she had lived in all her life and landed her in Arizona. I can't wait to see how this story unfolds. I think she'll find her perfect bar and maybe even her perfect love.

I wish I had stayed another night in Arizona but I was at The Bartender's house and she has the most ill-behaved dogs I have ever met - way too big to be jumping up on people. And The Bartender smokes. And for breakfast we had instant coffee (which is okay here but in a town where you can buy good ground coffee? sinful). I didn't get to see my fellow barflies or to stop by The Home of Dashed Hopes. I did run into O, an old lover. And while I was away another old lover stopped by my trailer looking for me. These two had entered my life at the same time two Novembers ago. Interesting that they should reappear, albeit very briefly, at the same time same month two years later. That probably means something but my head is too cloudy from flu medicine to come up with even a guess.

As I sit here wondering where to go next, I look at The Bartender for inspiration. My advantages are many. After all, my home is with me; no need to look at rentals or to dig for security deposits. I have credit cards as my safety net. My work skills are robust.

Just pick a place, I tell myself. And so I pull out the map of the Southwest. Eeny meeny miney moe.