Another Saturday night and The Imp's Bottle was deserted. A trickling parade of patrons had come and gone, unimpressed with our decrepit noir ambience. Most were of the wander-in-first-timer variety, with the exception of the Johnny Depp lookalike. He'd ordered his habitual Jack and Coke, sat in brooding silence, and left half an hour later. Like always. Ali Cat described him as "hot but weird." I got the impression that he was waiting for something.

Over the speakers, Cat Stevens was singing the theme of our evening with his 1974 cover of "Another Saturday Night." I paused in my scrubbing to listen to a few bars without distraction.

Another Saturday night and I ain't got nobody /
I've got some money cause I just got paid /
Now how I wish I had someone to talk to /
I'm in an awful way

The original composer Sam Cooke may have written the song back in the '60s, but I swore he somehow had me, on this particular night, in mind when he penned the famous lyrics all those decades ago. That thought brought me a weird kind of solace.

The song didn't seem to have quite the same profound effect on Ali. She was perched on the last stool at the bar, playing on her phone, pointedly ignoring Cat Stevens and me.

I sighed and pushed my hair off my forehead. It was actually preferable when Ali Cat ignored me (silence beat harassment any day of the week), but I wished she could do it without ignoring the pub at large. Her obvious disinterest in her job looked incredibly unprofessional, even sans patrons.

The Imp's Bottle was definitely sans patrons tonight. Apart from the blonde striving for the title of World's Worst Waitress, the only people in the pub were the pair of middle-aged managers who worked at the video rental place down the street. They always came in around this time on Saturday evenings. Their faces looked wane and their suits were perpetually wrinkled, but that didn't stop Ali from shamelessly flirting some undeserved tips out of them. Seriously, how much did she think carrying two bottles of Heineken to their table was worth?

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ali Cat tear her face away from her phone screen and scowl at the clock. "Fuck my life, is it Sunday yet?" she demanded to no one in particular.

I followed her line of sight, noting that the time was 11:34. "Not quite," I offered.

I received a glare for my input.

At that moment, the front door squeaked open, and a figure walked in. A woman. For a few bars of music, time seemed to halt, as even the managers from Anytime Video paused their conversation to stare at her as she walked past their table. She was gorgeous. Tall, long legs, round hips, smooth dark skin, a mane of waist-length black and blonde braids sashaying around her as she moved — she looked like an Alicia Keys poster come to life. There was an elegance and poise about her, accompanied by the unmistakable air of street-smarts.

She didn't belong here, in this dingy hole-in-the-wall. Her presence was strange. The kind of strange that caused a disturbance in the equilibrium of the universe. Almost as big a disturbance as K's presence had caused. But maybe strangest of all was the fact that I'd seen her before. Twice. The first time was here, a couple months ago. The second time was at The Blue Note, a lounge bar downtown, last Monday. She worked there as the singer. They called her Nightingale.

Weird that I knew that. Extra weird that I'd gone in there. But since meeting K, I'd been doing some things I wouldn't have done before. I figured if she could cross an ocean for grad school, I could pop into a lounge bar on my night off. Baby steps, right?

Nightingale slid onto the bar stool right in front of me. Her eyes were heavily made-up, like she'd just finished a performance, and I noticed a tiny diamond stud ornamenting her pert little nose. With a slight smile on her full lips, she said, "Hey. Double shot of tequila and a glass of water, please."

"We only have Jose Cuervo," I said with an apologetic shrug. "It's crap."

She smirked, laughter in her eyes. "Yeah, it is," she agreed. "But it's also cheap, and cheap is the name of the game. You feel me?"

"Definitely," I said. Needing no further explanation, I began filling her order.

In my peripheral, I could see Ali Cat staring at the singer, her expression hungry but guarded.

Please don't be rude, I silently willed the waitress.

"I like your boots," Ali said. Her voice sounded strained, as if it caused her physical pain to compliment another human being. Eh, it probably did.

Nightingale crossed one long leg over the other, allowing Ali a better view of her black knee-high boots. I didn't know much about women's fashion (or fashion in general), but they were cool. Chunky heel, row of silver buckles up the sides, kind of a Joan Jett vibe.

"Thanks," Nightingale said. "Gift from my pimp."

I almost dropped the glass I was holding, and Ali Cat made a choking noise.

Nightingale laughed. It was a melodic sound. "Relax. That was a joke. I don't have one of those."

"Uh, cool," Ali hemmed. She turned away on her stool and went back to texting.

Suppressing a chuckle, I set the glass of ice water and double shot of tequila on the bartop in front of my unique patron.

"Thanks," Nightingale said. She picked up the tall skinny shot glass and raised it to me. "Cheers."

"Cheers," I repeated.

She downed the tequila in one go, slamming the shot glass to the bartop in finality. Then she pulled a face and sputtered a little cough. "Ugh..." she moaned.

"I told you it was crap," I said, offering her a smile that I hoped looked empathetic.

"Not your fault, or José's," she said, indicating the liquor bottle. She took a swig of the ice water, then exhaled slowly. "I've never met a tequila that I actually liked. I don't drink it for the taste. It's a post-set ritual."

"Post-set?" I asked. "As in, after you sing?"

Her face lit up by a fraction. "You know that I sing?"

"Yeah," I said with a grin. "You're fantastic. I heard you last Monday. Couldn't believe you were performing on a Monday night."

She nodded in recognition. "I usually don't. The owner had a band come in over the weekend as kind of a special event, so I did some extra performances on Monday and Tuesday."

"Lucky for me," I said. "I always work on the weekends."

She studied me with an open expression, her dark eyes roaming over my face and plaid shirt. Normally this would have made me uncomfortable, but for some reason I didn't feel the need to fidget or turn away. I waited in silence while she assembled her appraisal.

"You're not the type I'd expect to see at The Blue Note," she said. It wasn't a criticism, just an observation. "Doesn't really seem like your scene."

"And you're absolutely right," I said. A sheepish chuckle escaped me as I thought about how anxious and out of place I'd felt that night. "It's not. I almost left, but then you started your set. Your first song was 'I'd Rather Go Blind,' and you sounded so much like Etta James, I had to stick around. You really do her justice. Billie Holiday, too."

She looked impressed. "Wow, you like Etta James and Billie Holiday?"

"Sure," I said with an amicable shrug. I motioned to the speakers above us which were currently playing "Stuck With You" by Huey Lewis and the News. "Retro rock is my undisputed favorite genre, but I love pretty much all old music."

Nightingale smiled at me. "That's the best news I've heard all night," she said. "My favorites are classic doo-wop tunes and '60s R&B. I looove me some old-school Motown."

I nodded in concurrence. "Ditto. Nothing like it," I said. "Think I have some of that. One sec." Stepping to the back room, I glanced through my MP3 song collections and selected a different playlist.

As I reemerged, the jovial opening chords of "I Can't Help Myself" by the Four Tops began to play over the speakers.

"Yasss!" Nightingale cried, raising her hands toward the ceiling. "This shit is my jam!"

"This shit is old," Ali Cat accused, glancing up from her phone and wrinkling her nose. "I think my grandparents liked this song."

"Then your grandparents have good taste, sugar-pie honey-bunch!" Nightingale declared. She thrust out her finger and wagged it at Ali in time to the music. "I can't help myself," she sang. "I love this song like nobody else."

I chuckled at her lyrical amendment, but Ali Cat seemed less than enthused.

"Ew," Ali said. "Those lyrics are dumb." With a disgruntled hair flip (which looked only slightly different than her more commonly utilized dramatic hair flip) she slid off her stool and flounced over to the table that hosted the Anytime Video managers. The three of them exchanged a handful of words, then burst into peals of laughter. Ali touched the arm of the taller man, holding on and squeezing his elbow for a couple beats longer than necessary.

I felt the corners of my mouth dip in a frown of distaste. Did she ever get tired of being phony?

Ha. Ha. Nope. She thrived on phony.

Nightingale was watching the display over her shoulder as she shimmied to the music. "Kids these days," she teased. "They just don't know what's good."

This woman's energy was infectious. I felt myself smiling as I said, "You know you're way too young to like this kind of music, too, right?"

"That makes two of us!" she replied, giving me a comical look of significance. Still bobbing her head to the beat, she said, "I'm glad I came here for this." She motioned to the empty shot glass from her ritual. "I wasn't feeling The Blue Note tonight."

Clearing away the shot glass and topping off her water, I asked, "Why did you come in here?"

She sighed, a wistful sound. "I'm looking for a guy."

I grimaced at our dismal little pub. She was definitely in the wrong place for quality match-making and/or hook-ups. "Hate to break it to you, but The Imp's Bottle isn't really known for its myriad of eligible bachelors. You'd do better up town."

She sniffed in amusement. "Sorry, I should have been more specific. I'm looking for a certain guy."

"Ah, gotcha," I said. "Someone you already know."

"Yeah. Been looking for him since I got back to town. Couple months now." Her face fell a bit, and she glanced down at the bartop, absently taking a sip of water.

"And you thought he might be here?" I asked, unable to keep the surprise out of my voice.

"Figured it couldn't hurt to check," she replied. She traced the rim of her water glass with the tip of her forefinger. "Dive bars were kind of our thing. We met at one. Got talking about music... Just hit it off. Like nothing I'd ever felt before. I fell for him hard and fast. Sounds stupid, I know. Stupid and naïve."

The similarities between what Nightingale had just described and what had happened to me with K struck me like a punch to the gut. "No, it doesn't," I murmured, as much to myself as to her. "It doesn't sound stupid or naïve. It sounds like you knew you'd found your person. I recently met a girl. Here, believe it or not. We only knew each other for one night. But I've thought about her every night since."

She smiled at me, something that resembled gratitude in her eyes. "So, you get it. I'm glad someone does. Anyway, I left town to help my cousin promote his new club in New York. Sing, draw in crowds, create a buzz, you know. It happened really suddenly and was only supposed to be for a couple weeks. Three tops. I left my guy texts, voicemails... Even wrote him a damn letter and stopped by his apartment to leave it there for him before I left. He wasn't in, so his roommate took it to pass along. But he never got back to me. No calls. Nothing. So...I stayed in New York."

My heart hurt for her. "I'm really sorry to hear that," I said. "Did you try calling him again?"

"Yeah..." she said, her fingertips tapping the bartop. "I called a few days after I got to New York, but his phone had been disconnected. I've tried several times since then, even after I got back to town, but the number doesn't ring through. I just get that piercing error message. He had a thing about smart phones. Didn't trust them. Something about the government monitoring the GPS." She pulled a face and shrugged. "So, he used this chintzy old-ass flip phone from like 2003. I used to give him so much shit about that. Asked him what museum he stole it from, that kind of crap." She laughed weakly at the memory, but there was no mirth in her eyes. "His service provider was a pay-as-you-go type thing. No contract."

With my palms pressed to the counter, I considered the implications. "No contract...no cloud, no way to transfer data. Which means, no way to recover stored information if the phone is damaged."

"Yeah, exactly," Nightingale said. She jabbed her finger in my direction like I was now up to speed on a great conspiracy. "We weren't acquainted for all that long, but I knew him. You know what I mean? He felt about me the same way I felt about him. He wouldn't have ghosted me like that. Something happened. I know it. I feel it in my gut. That's why I'm still looking for him."

The idea that a woman would choose to give a guy who never called her back the benefit of the doubt rather than writing him off as "some asshole" caused a foreign warmth to spread through my chest. Maybe K really would come back. Maybe we would have that drink. Maybe she was thinking about me right now, like I was thinking about her. I knew if she came back to the States, I'd go to great lengths to see her again. Including a dive bar scavenger hunt.

"Did you go to his apartment?" I asked Nightingale. "Since coming back to town?"

"I did, yeah," she replied. "He doesn't live there anymore."

"Geez..." I mumbled. That sucked. She couldn't call him, couldn't visit him at home...what else could she do? I rubbed the back of my neck as an awkward idea dawned on me. "I hate myself for even asking this, but what about Facebook? Or those..." I waved my hand, at a loss, "...other things that are like Facebook?"

She gave me a rueful smile and shook her head. "That was one of the things I liked best about him: he didn't do social media. Same as me. I thought I was the only one."

"I thought I was the only one!" I cried. I extended my hand out toward her, palm flat. "Up top!"

She laughed and smacked my hand in an amiable high-five. "Nope, there's a whole club of us," she told me. "A small club, but still."

"That's awesome," I declared. "Don't know why, but I just can't get into it. Social media, I mean."

"Because most of it is designed to cater to millennials like your waitress?" she supplied in a stage whisper. With a playful jerk of her thumb over her shoulder, she indicated Ali Cat (who was still flirting with the Anytime Video guys like her life depended on it). "I may go by Nightingale, but I refuse to tweet."

I chuckled softly, my hands in my pockets. "I see what you did there."

At that moment, the front door burst open, and a pretty dark-skinned collegiate girl I recognized as one of Ali's vapid friends sauntered in, a huge shopping bag draped over her arm. Ali squealed and embraced the girl, then they both dashed into the ladies' restroom.

I sighed. Welp, Ali was officially off the clock. Nothing short of the Second Coming (or her father walking in) would convince her to serve another patron tonight.

I glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was midnight. That meant it was Sunday. And as Ali reminded me every weekend without fail, she didn't work on Sundays.

Well played, Ali Cat. Well played.

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