Two In A Row

Look! Look what a good writer girl I am, I have now written two days in a row. My, this is turning into a habit (in 19 more days). I'm at work listening to the ribbits and croaks of one of my favorite Christmas tapes--A Froggy Christmas. It makes me giggle. I couldn't fall asleep last night so this is what I wrote:

December 16--"I walked into the Maverick Bar in Farmington, New Mexico." There was a red neon sign of a cowboy on a bucking horse perched on the roof. Not my usual kind of place. Inside it was black dark and the air was thick with the smell of sweat, stale beer, and even staler cigarette smoke. My eyes slowly adjusted and saw a few beer signs crouched in the window frames as if they were embarrassed to be seen in such a dive. I was embarrassed to be there too, and nervous. Some crying country and western song whined out of the jukebox and a man who looked ten years older than God sat at the bar. "Can I help you?" a woman's voice said. I looked closer and saw a woman, in her middle fifties by the look of her in the dim light, wiping the bar. "I'll have a..." I tried to think of the safest thing to order. "I'll have a bottle of beer, no glass," I said and perched one butt cheek on a torn and taped bar stool. I nearly put my purse on the bar but stopped before the leather hit the surface and slung it over my shoulder. The woman put a cardboard coaster in front of me and set a bottle of Sterling on it. "That'll be three bucks," she said. "And d'you want a napkin to wipe the top with? We rarely get prissy women in here so I'm not sure what's right." Her words brought a wheezy laugh out of the old guy on the end stool that quickly turned into a phlegmy cough. The bartender walked down, poured a shot, and set it on the bar in front of him. She patted his hand then held it while he drank. "Okay now, Ed?" she asked and, when he nodded, she came back my way. I decided I must look like my father.

While I was writing it, I didn't know why the "I" was in there, what she had gone for. It was only after I closed my notebook and turned off the light that the last line came. Despite all my complaining about it I do like this writing thing. See you tomorrow night.

--Barbara