A One-Shot from the world of
Imp's Bottle

Imp's Bottle was a dive, hole-in-the-wall of a bar that looked like it was one bad weekend away from closing down altogether. It was situated between an adult bookstore and a psychic hotline callcenter, down the block from a strip club, and kiddy-corner to (get this) a cemetery. It was probably this location along with the lack of visible authority in the neighborhood that brought in a steady stream of teenagers thinking their basement-manufactured fake IDs would be sufficient to score them a cheap beer.

I'd been the bartender at Imp's Bottle for three years, and I had zero tolerance for that BS.

Teenagers were stupid. I knew that. I used to be one. And I was stupid. There were a lot of good reasons why they couldn't legally drink. In fact, in my opinion, most twenty-one year olds couldn't hold their liquor for shit, and needed to be cut off after one beer. Two max. I always turned the kids away, directing them to the arcade around the corner. I took what was probably an inappropriate amount of pride in my ability to spot a teenager a mile away, and a fake ID at a second's glance. I had a keen eye and lots of practice.

So, I wasn't the least bit surprised when a sprite of a girl walked into the bar on Saturday evening. Her white-blonde hair was in a high cheerleader's ponytail, and a monstrous pink purse hung from one petite shoulder, threatening to topple her small frame to the floor. Both ponytail and purse were working against her. She looked like an underage anime character.

Wiping a wine glass far past the point of it being spotless, I watched as she plopped down on the bar stool in front of me. My eyebrows elevated high enough to get lost in the hopelessly unkempt mop of dark curls that liked to flop across my forehead. She was humming a little tune, no doubt something straight out of a Disney movie.

She grinned at me. Even her teeth were tiny.

"Hey, cutie," she said. Her voice was every bit as high-pitched and childlike as I had imagined it would be. "I'd like a Slow, Comfortable Screw. Can you help me out?"

Boy. Like I hadn't heard that one before.

I smirked. "I would like one of those, too. But alas, I'm working. C'est la vie."

She giggled. "It's a drink."

"I know what it is."

She was something else. Ordering a drink with such a provocative name while exuding unabashed confidence. Most teens would have dissolved into nervous giggles by now. Did her mother know what she got up to on the weekends?

Setting the glass down on the bartop, I spread my arms wide, palms flat against the weathered wood, doing my best to shield her from all the naughty liquor bottles shelved behind me.

"So. A Slow, Comfortable Screw, huh?" I repeated with an amused smile. "Is that what they're drinking on Hannah Montana these days? I'm gonna need to see some ID, please. And sorry, but your library card won't cut it."

"Sure, cutie. No prob."

She smiled at me. Her arm disappeared into the bottomless void that was her purse, and a few seconds later she was successful in pulling a comically large pink wallet from its depths. She set her driver's license on the bartop in front of me.

"I appreciate anyone who is thorough in their work."

I picked up her license, askance. "It's Tate," I said.

"Hmmm?"

"My name. It's Tate. Not 'cutie'."

"Ah! Well, nice to meet you, Tate! I'm Bree."

She gave me the thousand watt smile again, and this time, I smiled back. Teenager or not, this girl's energy was infectious.

I scanned her ID with a well-trained eye, expecting to see the usual shoddy workmanship. Weird. It looked...real. I squinted, checking for all the typical telltale signs of a fake.

There was nothing.

Just to be sure, I passed her license through the ID scanner beneath the counter.

It was real. Holy shit.

I glanced over at her, and she seemed to be stifling another giggle.

"Is everything...okay?" she asked, laughter bubbling in her voice.

"Uh, yeah," I said, scratching my head. "Fine. Great."

Baffled, I slid her license back across the bar with two fingers.

Without another word, I began mixing the list of liquid ingredients required to make a textbook Slow, Comfortable Screw. It had been at least six months since I'd last made one of these. At least a year since I'd drank one. The ending concoction looked and smelled like liver poison. Delicious, citrusy liver poison.

Adding a cherry, I placed the drink on the bar in front of her and folded my arms loosely across my chest.

She looked at me in expectation. "Straw?"

"Right. A straw for your liquor. Of course."

Grabbing one from the bunch with a cocktail napkin, I speared it through the frothy peach-colored liquid in her glass.

"Thank you!"

She took a long pull from the straw, a satisfied smile on her glossy lips.

"Good?" I asked.

"Soooooo good!" she squealed. "Can I start a tab?"

"A tab?" I repeated, dumbfounded. "Here? At Imp's Bottle? I mean, sure. If you want. No worries, I've got the paramedics on speed dial."

She laughed in between sips. Her laughter was a mixture of birds chirping and bells tingling. "You're funny, Tate."

"Why, thank you, Bree. I'll be here all week."

I dipped into a mock bow, making her laugh again. Geez. Either I was more charming than I thought, or she was way too easy to please.

I wrung out a clean white cloth and began wiping down the bar. I couldn't stand sticky spots or fingerprints, so the worn wood of the bartop met my rag at regular intervals all night - even sans patrons.

We were definitely sans patrons tonight. Apart from the pint-sized elf before me, the only people in the bar were a couple of middle aged guys who worked at the video rental place down the street. I figured they were management. 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 (our only waitress) 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?

I shook my head.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Bree watching me as I scrubbed at a stubborn splash of dried cranberry juice.

I glanced at her, my eyebrows raised in silent query.

"You know, you can ask," she said. "I know you want to."

At first I didn't understand to what she was referring, but she held her ID aloft between two doll-like fingers, and I realized my shock at finding it wasn't bogus must have been all over my face.

Tossing the rag into the sink, I took my place at the bar opposite her. Yeah, I wanted to ask.

"Okay," I said, "at the risk of sounding like a dick, what's up with your face? Or the rest of you, for that matter? How can you be twenty-two years old, but..?"

"Look like I'm twelve?" she finished when I trailed off.

"Well...yeah!"

She opened her mouth and the joyful cacophony of birds and bells rang out again. "Theories?"

I rubbed the back of my neck. "Honestly? Yep. Plenty. You're either a mutant, a vampire, or a cyborg, or some as-of-yet unheard of hybrid of all three."

"Oh!" She clapped her hands together, seeming delighted. "I haven't heard the cyborg one before! How fun!"

"Am I close?"

"Awwww, I'm afraid not," she said, pouting at me as if to say I'd made a valiant effort, but no dice. "The truth is a lot less exciting. It's genetic. My mom is exactly the same way. She's forty-seven and looks thirty. My dad looks young for his age, too. And none of the women in my family are taller than 5'2". I'm gonna love it when I'm older, but for now, it causes problems."

I gestured to myself. "Like some suspicious bartender treating you like a kid."

"Hey, you were just making sure you weren't serving alcohol to a minor. I appreciate that," she told me. "Every bartender should be an ID stickler."

I dipped my head. "I'm glad you weren't too offended. Is it tough to get a job?"

"Well..." she glanced up at the ceiling, the end of the straw still held in her puckered lips. "It's hard to be taken seriously sometimes. But they love me in retail! I'm a wiz in the kids' section! And I do a lot of theatre. It doesn't pay very well, but getting paid any amount to playact is amazing! I just wrapped a production of Peter Pan; twenty performances total, most of them sold out! How cool is that?"

"Peter Pan? Wow. Did you get to fly?"

"Yep! I had wings and everything! I was Tinker Bell!"

"Of course you were."

I smiled, thoroughly amused. It took no stretch of the imagination to see this girl in her element on stage.

At that moment, Ali passed by the bar to check on her pair of patrons, flipping her flat-ironed hair over her narrow shoulder. The three of them exchanged a few words, then burst into peels of laughter. She touched the arm of the taller man, holding on and squeezing his elbow for a couple beats longer than necessary.

I felt my nose wrinkle in distaste. Did she ever get tired of being phony?

Ha. Ha. Nope. She thrived on phony.

That was Ali. Or "Ali-Cat," as I called her (only behind her back - I didn't want to get punched), in lieu of her eternally irascible and aggressive demeanor. Ali: the worst excuse for a solitary waitress a bar had ever known. Even a shitty bar, like Imp's Bottle. But she was the owner's daughter. Nothing to be done about that. So, she came in on Friday and Saturday nights to learn the "value of responsibility," griped about being here, whined about her douche bag boyfriend, and yelled at me for having no opinion on the subject.

"What about you?" Bree asked, rescuing me from my disdainful thoughts. "Do you like being a bartender?"

That was a question I got asked a lot. Though, unlike most of the semi-drunk patrons who inquired, I knew Bree was after a little something more than whether or not I got free booze.

"I like bartending, sure," I told her. "There's precision to it. A recipe for everything. A formula. Plus, it's interesting. At times. People come in here from all walks of life. To mourn and to celebrate. I see humanity at its lowest and its most elated. Working here is a good lesson on the human spirit: what breaks it, and what lifts it. I guess I like to keep the balance. I feed off of the energy of those who are happy, then I let those who are sad feed off of my energy. We all end up helping each other, by closing time. Sort of a 'pay it forward' type thing."

I shrugged, suddenly a little embarrassed that I was prattling on so much with a stranger. She had asked a simple question. My philosophical speech of an answer was probably more of an earful than she'd wanted.

Much to my surprise, she didn't seem to mind. She was listening attentively, her mouth taking turns between her straw and murmuring affirmations.

Over her shoulder, I could see the two video rental place guys packing up to leave. They shrugged into their coats, checked their pockets for wallets and keys, and migrated towards the door, their gaits noticeably less steady than when they'd come in.

As they pushed open the door, the row of yellow streetlights outside reflected in the glass, illuminating the decrepit neighborhood.

I scoffed.

"If I had a bar, I'd put it closer to uptown and further away from any and all cemeteries. I mean..." I leaned to the right and looked out the large front picture window, "...I can see headstones from here. That's not my idea of a good view while enjoying a beer, you know?"

I shifted my gaze back to Bree, and she nodded in agreement.

"It can be a real bummer," I said, more to myself than to her. "We're always toasting the dead in here."

"You're really soulful, aren't you?"

"Huh?" I stared at her, the softly spoken question taking me aback. "I don't know about that..."

I thrust my fingers through my disheveled mop of curls. Soulful? Me?

"Sure," Bree went on. "You're a collector of stories. I bet you have some great ones!"

"Well, I-"

Ali-Cat burst from the backroom, coat and knockoff Gucci bag in hand.

"I'm out," she announced. "No one's here."

Bree pointed to herself. "I'm here."

"And you should mind your business," Ali snapped, shoving her arms through the sleeves of her coat.

"Ali, be polite to customers," I hissed. I glanced at the clock on the wall. "And your shift isn't over for another two hours."

"Bite me."

She marched to the front door, yanked it open, and slammed it shut behind her.

Bree stared after Ali, mouth ajar.

"Does she...work here?"

"So I've been told," I sighed, shaking my head. "I have yet to see the 'working' part."

"Geez, she is salty!!"

I smirked, a knowing gleam in my eye. "She sure is. More so than usual."

"Who dropped the scorpion down her panties?"

I grinned, raising one hand in confession. "That would be me."

Bree's mouth fell open in a silent laugh. "Oh, Tate... What did you do?"

"Last night I got a little payback for a torment that has been going on for months."

Bree propped her chin on her palm, her eyes dancing with as much mischief as I felt in my own.

"So, you do have stories!" she said, wiggling her eyebrows. "Tell me. Spare no detail."

"With pleasure."

Leaning against the counter, I launched into my short but loaded tale.

• • •

There were always kisses on the mirror.

Every weekend, I found them.

The ladies' restroom was littered with them. Puckered lip prints and waxy scarlet messages defaced the glass, tacky and cheap, like temporary tattoos. Ugh, and those colors. Noxious. Flamboyant. Fugly. "Siren Song Red," "BubbleYum Pink," even "Katy Perry Mauve." Who came up with those names? Somebody got paid for that. Probably the equivalent of what I made in a month.

These girls - these perpetrators - must have been putting on multiple layers of these obnoxious lipsticks and kissing the mirror. Then, in the same collection of blinding hues, scribbling things like:
"Girl Power"
"XOXO"
"I Want Candy"
"For a Good Time Call ____" (insert the name and phone number of some chick who was prettier than them in high school).

All that lipstick graffiti. On purpose. Because...why? They thought it was cute? It wasn't cute. Lipstick must be oil-based, because it took a lot of Windex and elbow grease to clean the kisses and messages off the dated glass. Who were those kisses for? It was the ladies' restroom! Only girls went in there. Well, and me. To clean the mirror. I liked a clean mirror.

Through some covert investigating, and a fairly simplistic process of elimination, I figured out that it was mostly Ali and her friends doing the kissing.

Ali-Cat and her band of vapid lemmings were the Lipstick Graffiti Artists.

Weekend after weekend, they left evidence of their sordid misdeeds on the restroom mirror.

But I had a plan. The crimes against my sanity were going to stop.

Friday night, about an hour before Ali's shift was over, a bunch of her friends began wandering in, decked out in their "weekend finest" of faux-leather miniskirts and see-through halter tops.

Translation: they looked like jailbait.

The group of them were hanging out in the ladies' restroom like it was their own private lounge. The bar was empty of paying customers, so I strode in - rubber gloves and a rag in hand.

"Oh, my god, Tate! You pervert!" Ali shrieked at me. "You can't be in here!"

There were four new lipstick kisses on the mirror.

Shaking my head, I ignored Ali's outburst, and said: "Look, if you girls want to leave your lip prints all over the mirror, fine. But you're going to have to clean it afterward. Here, I'll show you how I do it every day."

I donned the rubber gloves. Then, making a show of it, I took the rag into one of the stalls, dunked it in the toilet, wrung it out, and started wiping the mirror with it.

"It's important to really scrub," I lectured them. "Like so."

The stunned silence erupted into a torrent of disgusted shrieks, gagging noises, and "Oh my gawd!"s. The girls ran from the restroom and left the bar, herd of cattle style: all platform boots and jingling jewelry.

Triumphant, I removed the gloves, got the Windex from the supply closet, and cleaned the mirror properly, a huge smile on my face.

Tate: one.
Lipstick Graffiti Artists: zero.

• • •

Bree was laughing so hard, I expected to see Slow, Comfortable Screw coming out her nose.

"That! Is! Hilarious!" she gasped, trying to catch her breath. "No wonder she's pissed!"

I grinned, not feeling the least bit sorry. "I'm pretty sure she'll never forgive me."

"And?" Bree prompted, her hand pressed to her mouth. Her shoulders still shook with laughter. "How do you feel about that?"

"Two words: worth it."

She teetered back and forth on her stool, long ponytail swinging. "That settles it. You need to let me buy you a drink. We'll toast the death of the mirror kisses."

I grinned and said, "I'll have what you're having."

*