prompt: hug, title: muddling through in misc. flash fiction

“You may be able to hold your liquor,” the bartender said, “but your liquor isn’t ever gonna hold you. Might hold you back, I don’t know, that might be me undercutting my own business model, but it’s the truth.” The man at the bar looked up from his drink, toward her but not at her, unable to commit to eye-contact. “Do you get those clichés with the four-week bartending course where you learn to call the little club a muddler or do you collect them yourself?” She just smiled. “Oh, I work weird shifts, end up eating a lot of fortune cookies. That or I’m just that good.” He didn’t respond in any way to her feigned arrogance, neither laughed nor scoffed, not a good sign at all.

“It’s probably a love thing or anyway at least a sex thing,” she tossed off as almost an aside, “am I right?” That, the man did look up for. “I mean, it’s the worst when it’s both, isn’t it,” he paused, “how could you tell? Fortune cookies?” She laughed, he was at least listening. “You’re the only man here who hasn’t tried to flirt with me and you don’t dress well enough to be a homosexual.”

There’d be no shame in flirting with her, if you were respectable about it and weren’t deluded in your assumption about any outcomes, she was a good-looking woman. A few years deeper into her thirties than most of the crowd she served, deep dark eyes framed by just a hint of under-lid bags from those odd shifts, a crease or three at the edges from those years. The cut of her blouse reflecting the grim practicality of a woman tending bar, trying to show enough to maximize tips, not enough to give someone the idea it’d go further, a line far finer than those framing her eyes.

“You’re right,” he said, motioning for another beer, “but it’s nothing you can fix tonight.” “I’m not trying to be your shrink,” she smiled and poured him another, “just trying to make a human connection so you’re more likely to tip. They teach that right after the lessons about muddlers.”

“Tonight,” he told her, “tonight is for coping. Tomorrow, I’ll wake up with a headache and if I’m in here moping and coping still again weeks down the line, you’ll be right to spit your well-worn tavern-keep psychobabble at me, but tonight’s for coping. I’ll moderate my immoderation when I have the perspective and time. No teary confession, no stark realizations” he raised his beer, “for Christ’s sakes tonight, it’s mugs and not hugs.” She repeated after him. “Mugs and not hugs.”

Who knows, she thought, maybe he won’t be there doing the same thing in a few weeks, maybe he will. In the long run, it’d be him or someone else pretending to not be crying in his beer. The faces will change, she admitted in resignation, I’ll still be right here. At least this one tips well.