The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [27]
Even if you look at us together and see that our eyes are identical: large, cow-brown, slightly too close together; our noses the same straight, strong, broad-bridged lines; our mouths identically thin-lipped but broad, you might still say Bianca is the beautiful one. We are all our father’s daughters—Your father’s image is so hit in you—but it is Bianca who turns that face into beauty.
She pulled the car into the parking lot of a bar a few towns over, spritzing a sample bottle of perfume into her hair to blur the smoke. The door gave its aching groan when she opened it and she tilted across the gravel in her heels until she hit the sidewalk. She felt better already. A little male attention, a few shots, she’d be as good as new. She could be Mother Teresa tomorrow. As long as she wasn’t too hungover.
There were bars closer, but one had boasted that it was karaoke night (um, no) and the parking lots at the others had been sadly empty. She could hear the noise from outside, classic rock on the jukebox, the smell of beer seeping over the doorsill. Bean took a breath and stepped inside.
No one turned to watch her as she walked through the door. She did a quick survey of the layout and headed to a seat toward the side of the bar where she could accurately eye her prospects. The bartender eased toward her slowly, took the towel off his shoulder, and gave a cursory wipe to the sticky wood in front of Bean. “What can I get ya?” he asked. Bean let her eyelashes flutter as she considered the meager selection.
“A double shot of Jack and a bottle of whatever light you’ve got,” Bean said. She looked up at him from under spider legs of mascara, but he had already turned back to the refrigerator. He wouldn’t even do in a pinch anyway, she decided, eyeing his back. A little old, his belly gone soft, his eyes rheumy and red from alcohol. She could do better.
“Five-fifty,” he said, sliding the bottle and the glass onto the counter in front of her.
She began to reach for the cash in her bag, then stopped herself and pulled out her cigarettes instead. “I’ll run a tab,” she said. He shrugged and walked away.
The jukebox howled out a tinny guitar solo as Bean drained the shot, letting the alcohol burn down her throat until it became too much to bear, and she gulped at the watery beer to cool the fire. The room blurred pleasantly, and she smiled as she turned slightly on her stool, resting a bare elbow on the sticky bar.
A group of women huddled in a booth near the back; Bean could just see the tops of their heads bobbing as they shrieked with laughter. A post-work happy hour. She knew the feeling—the giddy relief of being furloughed from the office for the night, the flush of adolescent excitement as the talk turned to sex, the camaraderie forged in the trenches and celebrated over drinks, the feeling that, as a group, you have achieved something momentous simply by surviving the workday.
By the jukebox, a few couples had formed a makeshift dance floor in between some of the tables. Bean watched them sway for a moment, and then skipped her eyes over them.
The pool table looked promising. A group of men, early thirtysomething, playing a (poor, by the looks of it) game of pool for beer money. One of them was in a suit, his tie loosened, sleeves rolled up, but the rest were in T-shirts and jeans. Thick-bodied ex-athletes with once-handsome faces, now gone swollen and sad from alcohol and disappointment. Trapped in these one-horse towns, their best days behind them, the way she’d sworn she’d never be. The