I’m fairly intelligent. I don’t like Shakespeare and Walt Whitman scares me to death and no I’m not confusing him with some hacker, slasher, novelist of the 21st century. No, old Walt was a poet (definition wide open there) and epitomizes for me the entire east coast of the good old US of A. They all scare me to death.

It’s okay for fairly intelligent people not to like Shakespeare. Sure you’ve got to respect the body of work, but you don’t have to like it–sort of like taxes. Sort of.

At any rate, I’m just a regular guy who finished high school and then finished college in all of four years and started a job in the city and thought about getting married twice. I let those two ideas slip right by and now I have the odd and end girlfriend divorcee. I know it sounds like I’m a bit of a user and maybe I am.

I frequent this bar (remember, I’m fairly intelligent) after the job about three days a week. Definitely on a Monday, then on Wednesday and Thursday. The weekend is just shoulder-to-shoulder and I don’t go in. I usually have dinner with friends or take the occasional depressed middle-aged woman out for some dancing and conversation.  No, it doesn’t always end in bed.

So anyway, I frequent this bar three days a week, not because I couldn’t use a drink on the other four but because I’d like to retire someday. What bars charge for a simple beer these days takes the breath away.

She sat there on a Monday and I could tell she did not want to talk. I didn’t either, it had been a tough day. On Wednesday she was on the same bar stool and in the same clothes and she looked at me, I swear for a solid five minutes without blinking. I asked the bartender what’s up with her and he says ‘who?’

“The lady at the end of the bar,” I wanted to add “wise ass” but the guy looks at me all innocent like and whispers to me–“do you see someone at the end of the bar?”
“Yeah.”

I’m thinking this bartender is like high on something because it’s obvious this chic is sitting there. The bartender looks like he is about to cry and says that he sees her once in a while too but when he walks in her direction, something distracts him and when he looks back, she’s gone.

So I get up and walk around the bar to ask this lady who is doing a good job of ruining my Wednesday, what her problem might be and why the cold stare. There is a loud crash behind me and I turn to see someone had stood up and let their chair fall over behind them. I turn back to the bar and the lady is gone.

I turn around and walk back to my seat at the bar and take a nice long pull and look again. The lady is staring right at me.

“So how many customers do you lose because of this woman at the end of the bar?”

“I don’t know, I’m kinda new here.”

That was true, but I had been going to this bar for years and I had never seen this woman. I sit and study her for a while and wonder why she looks gray and mad and old-fashioned. Her hair is high on her head and looks teased and lacquered with hairspray. She isn’t looking at me anymore but looking straight ahead. I shrug and take another sip of my beer, then glance her way, like I can’t help it. There she sat looking straight ahead so I slide off my chair quiet like and move in her direction. I turn the corner of the bar and move forward just a little more and she doesn’t move. I think for a moment that I might just make it up to her when she turns full on me and smiles.

It was one of those smiles that turn your blood cold, like someone had taken a corpse and pulled their mouth up in a smile and left it stuck there. I swear I heard her say my name kinda low and gurgling in the back of her throat.

I felt this pain radiate down my left arm and a sharp pain in my chest. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move. And before I passed out and woke up here with beeps and whistles and concerned faced people I swear I heard her tell me to change my ways.

If it was a joke it was a bad one. If it was a ghost, well then I guess I’m the bad one.