Bernie took a sip of her drink. “Nope. We’re going to sit here and visit a while unless it gets so busy that I need to come help out.”
“Just holler if you need a refill,” Clara threw over her shoulder and made her way through the new customers who had arrived.
“Looks like it might be a steady night for a Thursday,” she told Nash as she made half a dozen piña coladas for the three couples.
“Yep,” he agreed. “If things are like they were at the place I worked when I was in college, then Wednesdays are slow because of church night most usually. Then Thursday picks up a little, but not as much as the weekend crowd.”
She lined the drinks up on the bar and tucked a bar rag into her hip pocket. “That’s the way it was in the place I worked at in Amarillo, too.”
“I tended bar at a country club on nights and weekends in Austin for a few months, and then worked downtown at a place like this a while,” Nash said. “Do you think Bernie will really retire, or will she back out?”
“I wouldn’t bet on anything this early in the game,but she sure seems serious,” Clara answered, and quickly mopped up a beer spill. “What do you think?”
Nash started unloading the dishwasher. “I’m trying not to, but I’m sure hoping a lot. What’s this about smoking cigars after work?”
“She says that sometimes helps her sort things out.”
Clara brushed against his arm as she walked past him to get to the far end of the bar. The vibes were still here. Someone out there should develop a relationship calamine lotion that would stop the romantic itch when a woman couldn’t have what was standing right beside her.
Chapter 8
Bernie’s ability to crook her forefinger around a lit cigar and hold a highball glass with a triple shot of Jameson in the same hand completely mesmerized Clara. Her great-aunt could even sip the whiskey without setting her red hair on fire and take a drag from the cigar without spilling the liquor down into her bra. She could make a mint if she went on the road with that trick and told bar stories starting with the night a man walked into the bar with a dead goldfish and a Chihuahua. She wouldn’t even have to embellish or exaggerate all that much.
Clara pictured her tiny little aunt wearing her July Fourth getup on the stage in Las Vegas. Or maybe teaching a class on using one hand to drink and smoke, and keep the other one free to wave around while she told stories about what had happened in the Chicken Coop. She wouldn’t get in trouble or get sued for talking about the past. After all, what grown, self-respecting person would admit that they’d been drunk at a bar with such a strange name? There wasn’t a policeman or a judge in the whole world who wouldn’t laugh that right out thecourt doors.
“Are y’all ever going to light your cigars?” Bernie asked.
“Of course,” Nash bit off the end of the cigar and lit it, took a puff, and blew the smoke out. “Tell me again why we are out here.”
Clara followed his lead and coughed when she tried to inhale the smoke from the first puff.
“Darlin’ girl, you don’t inhale.” Bernie chuckled. “You just want the sweet taste in your mouth. It goes right well with whiskey, and when you are young, the kisses from a sexy man afterwards is downright intoxicating. And Nash, this is like a therapy session only you don’t have to write a check to pay for it when we are finished.”
“Kind of like a group thing?” Clara asked.
“That’s right, and it don’t cost a dime,” Bernie agreed. “The cigars were a gift from a friend who snuck them out of Cuba, and the whiskey is right off the top shelf from the bar, so sit back and relax with the finest therapy tools on the market. Your whiskey will be gone when we finish here, but you should save what’s left of your cigar for next time. I do not believe in wasting anything, especially imported, illegal cigars. I’ll go first this time, but next week, one of you will have to do it.”
“Fair enough,” Nash said. “Please show us how it’s done. I’ve never been to a therapy session. How about you, Clara?”
“Nope, but my mother and grandmother wanted tosend me away to a church rehab-type thing for someone to preach Aunt Bernie out of me,” she admitted. “Does almost being committed count?”
“Comes pretty close,” Bernie said and picked up Pepper. “But here goes on my story. My name is Mary Bernadette Marsh. My twin sister is Vernie Sue. My folks thought it was cute to give us rhyming names. To say that we are as different as fire and ice would be a major understatement. I jumped from job to job until I was well into my twenties, and for the most part lived out of my ten-year-old car. I was sitting in a game of Texas Hold’em one night. Right here in this very bar. I was down to my last twenty bucks, and the owner of this place hadn’t had much better luck all night. He didn’t want to be put to shame by a sassy red-haired woman, so he bet his bar against me. Told me that I was bluffing, and that he would take my crumpled-up twenty-dollar bill and buy himself a new fishing rod with it. You could get a fairly decent one back in those days for that amount.”
“Are you serious?” Nash asked.
“I am,” Bernie took a puff on the cigar and blew out smoke rings. “And soda fountain soft drinks were a dime, and an ice cream cone sold for the same.”
Clara’s smoke came out in a fog, not in perfect little circles.
“Evidently he lost, but what kind of hand did you have?” Nash asked.
“He had a straight flush and reached for my money,but I laid down a royal and took the Chicken Coop from him,” Bernie answered with a chuckle.
“That was lucky,” Nash said. “Have you played much since then?”
“Oh, yeah,” Bernie replied, “If I won, I banked the profit for a rainy day, and that amount has grown into a goodly sum. But I never, not once, put my bar up for collateral.”
Clara had been listening to the whole story, but she had also been staring up at millions of stars. Weird things were supposed to happen on the nights when a full moon was out, and it was big and beautiful that morning.
