One Eye In The Mirror
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One Eye in the Mirror
By Brittany Adams
Okay, so, it was last Friday, you know, that night the weathermen called “Monsoon
Midtown”, or was it “Typhoon Tribeca”? Well, whatever it was called, it was raining. So, despite
the downpour, I left home in that Belvedere suit I got downtown and went into this little bar off
Broadway, ‘cause you know ladies can’t stand getting their hair wet and will pretty much go
anywhere that’s dry. The place was packed, but boy was it a sight to see! Half-soaked women
everywhere, and me, the only guy in the place with a towel, which I had brought to help my
friends of the fairer sex. So, I’m at this bar, one of those Irish pubs, something with a “Mc” or a
“Mac” or an “O” or some shit like that. Why do they always have to have Irish pub names that
start with that? Why not “Cornelius’s” or “Shahan’s”, something real Irish, you know?
Anyway, as I was saying, I was at this bar completely surrounded by these foxy
businesswomen, all hips and tits, and I see this hot piece of ass sitting at the bar. Now, she’s not
dressed to the nines like the other women, but she was easy to pick out of the crowd in spite of it.
I mean, I hadn’t seen a woman like her since that trip to Hawaii, the one where we met that
gorgeous surfer chick with the killer piña coladas and broke into that fishing hut by the beach.
Mm, those islanders know how to have a good time! Where was I? Oh, right, hot chick at the bar.
Okay, so I see this girl at the bar, and she’s not wearing any getup like the rest of ‘em.
Like, she was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, which I noticed mostly because her shirt was white and
her bra was not! I was like, “Hell yeah!” So I walk over to her, and I’m holding this cup of water,
‘cause it’s totally a party foul to spill your beer on someone, and I bump into her. I’m all like,
“Oh, I’m sorry! Good thing I had this towel to wipe off with ‘cause of the rain”, and she’s totally
eyeing me. So, she takes the towel, wipes her shirt off, kisses the towel, and hands it back to me
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with this perfect lipstick imprint of her lips. It was on like Donkey Kong. Now, as you know, I’m
not one to kiss and tell, but needless to say, I totally got some.
“Like I told the rest of them, you’re not getting any.” Nicole barely glanced at the man
before returning her gaze to the notebook in front of her. She had only ducked into the
mahogany-clad bar to escape the rain and save her waterlogged notebook from further
destruction, but every half-conscious man in the bar seemed interested in her. The current idiot
behind her was the best dressed of the lot, but his suit didn’t stop him from being a jackass and
spilling his drink on her. He tapped her shoulder and she glared at him.
“Relax. I’m just trying to apologize for bumping into you.” He outstretched a hand towel
stitched with a golden J, but Nicole just stared at it.
“Are you serious?” She met his eyes. “Who brings a towel to a bar?”
“I do.” The man smiled with the smug, self-satisfaction Nicole had encountered with the
previous four men that had approached her. “I’m Jason, by the way,” he cooed, laying the towel
on the barstool next to Nicole before extending a manicured hand. “And you are?”
“Not interested.” She heard him exaggeratedly sighing as she angled the barstool to its
original position.
“Come on, with a body as hot as yours, you couldn’t possibly be that cold. What do I
have to do to get you to come home with me?” He placed a hand on her shoulder, which was
dripping with tap water from his attempt at a smooth come-on. She sighed and eyed his face. He
was moderately attractive, with smiling blue eyes, shaggy brown hair, and a set of teeth just shy
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of perfect; in short, he was the type of person she might be interested in -- if he wasn’t such a
dick.
“I’m not going anywhere. I am staying on this barstool until the rain lets up, then I’m
going to go back to the park to finish with this stupid thing.” She gestured at the notebook in
front of her. It was one of those black moleskin journals they sell in art supplies stores, carved
with a number of swirls and inked in an obscenely bright fuchsia. Nicole hated it, but she felt the
few pieces of copy paper scattered around her desk were inappropriate for the occasion, and this
was the only thing she could find within a few blocks of her apartment. The man reached for the
book, but she grabbed it before he could. “Don’t you dare lay a finger on that.”
He raised his hands in a sign of penitence and took a step back. “So be it. I’m sure I can
find something else to touch, if you cooperate with me…” Nicole hoarsely snorted at the man,
and turned to face him directly.
“Your name was, what, Jason?”
“And still is!” She pressed the tips of her three longest fingers to her temple before
crossly continuing.
“Look, Jason, I’m not at this bar to be hit on, okay? I’m a little too busy with personal
shit to deal with you or any of the other men that have tried to hit on me in the past thirty minutes.
Do I really look like I’m in the mood to get with an asshole like you?” Nicole’s ponytail was
plastered to her neck, and her pink bra was the envy of every wet t-shirt contest across America.
Needless to say, this man was not the first to offer his “laundry facilities” to dry her off, and she
was beginning to be irritated.
“No, you look like you’re in need of a dry towel and a hot shower. I happen to have the
first here,” he said, gesturing with his monogramed towel, “and the other back at my place.”
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Nicole leaned against an elbow, finding her bare arm in the same piece of gum she’d
grazed three times since sitting down. She wasn’t sure which she found more disgusting: the
partially masticated Chiclet, or Jason. “How’s this: if for some reason I get the urge to have
meaningless sex with a man I’ve just met, I will come to you before any other man in this bar,
alright?”
“Oh, you’ll certainly ‘come,’” he ventured, before pausing and passing his gaze lightly
over her face. The boldness in his features receded slightly as her eyes silently pleaded for mercy.
“Alright, alright. I’ll be sitting in the corner booth if, or rather, when you need me.” He backed
away with a smirk, and Nicole experienced a brief respite from the futile advances of the men in
the bar.
Over the past half hour, the notebook had lost interest as a focal point, so Nicole scanned
the bar she sat in. Most Irish dive bars in New York City echoed the others without being
completely identical, and McLaren’s was no different. The majority of the walls were covered
with wood paneling, which was in turn covered by framed pictures of Dublin, rusting scotch
advertisements, and a smattering of odd souvenirs that both excited and disgusted passersby; a
particular mounted bass eyed Nicole with suspicion, and she turned away from it hastily. A
jukebox set to random glowed mournfully in the corner, moaning some song about vanity from
Carly Simon, but it was the bar that really caught Nicole’s attention.
There were two things about it that Nicole noticed immediately: one, the bar had been
worn smooth by at least a century of age; and two, its details had been carved by hand. An
artistic interpretation of the Irish countryside rolled across its front, where dripping coats hung
and tired feet rested. Her fingers traced the etchings as her chest seized up; someone had spent
days, weeks even, working on the façade of the bar, and yet it was assaulted night after night by
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high heels and drunken knees. She scanned the bar sadly, until she noticed an embroidered J
sitting on the barstool next to her. “Shit…”
As if on cue, the man walked up to her and plucked the hand towel from its all too
convenient resting place. “I must have forgotten this on the way to the booth.” His inflection was
phony, and his smile forced. “Change your mind yet?”
“No, actually, I haven’t. I told you I would come to you. Now, leave me alone.”
“You can’t exactly blame a guy for being proactive, now can you?” He placed a hand on
the middle of her back, casually feigning a familiarity that made Nicole sick. The past couple
days had been too hard on her, and she didn’t feel like dealing with the persistent asshole any
longer. It was time to turn the tables and literally get him off her back.
Nicole turned slowly towards him, taking the hand that had violated her personal space in
hers, and smiled sensually. “Jason…” His eyes bulged, caught off guard by her change in
sentiment.
“Uh, yeah?”
“There’s something that I’ve been dying to tell you since the moment you walked up to
me. Jason, I think it’s something you’ll want to hear.” Feeling assured by her body language, the
man smiled and leaned in.
“What?” She moved towards his ear, feeling his breath against her cheek as she broke
character.
“I think you’re a sad, lonely man who’s too afraid of commitment to put any real effort
into a relationship. You hide behind silk ties and Italian suits, but not even the plastered bimbos
you meet can fill the loneliness that’s eating away at you. One day, when you’re so emotionally
fragmented that your only solace comes from building furniture and birdhouses, you’ll realize
that you have nothing but wood to show for your time on Earth, and honestly, I feel sorry for you.
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In fact, I pity you and your miserable existence, and really don’t want to take part in any of it.
Does that definitively answer whether or not I’m going to sleep with you?” She returned her gaze
to the pink swirls in front of her; she didn’t need to look at him to know what was happening.
He would continue smiling; make a slight, uncertain bow; and walk away laughing at the
crazy woman who had criticized his invigorating and unattached lifestyle. He would chalk her
comments up to menstrual problems or a messy break-up, but he wouldn’t actually take into
consideration the things she had said. They would pass through him like the other thousands of
rejections he would encounter as he aged and dried up, and leave no trace but a small, inert seed
of doubt buried deep in his subconscious, waiting to sprout into the realization that would
salvage his soul for love. It would probably come too late, and the potential intimacy he could
feel with a woman would go the way of the dinosaurs, with each fossilized remain of his possible
life crushed by years of cynicism. Only then, when his body was finally shutting down, would he
realize how right she actually was, and how foolish he had been for bragging that “the woman
with the swirled notebook and the matching bra” was easy, as he would assuredly tell his
chauvinist friends. It really wouldn’t matter though; he would die, old and alone, with nothing
but the company of idle hands and an idler heart.
Nicole sighed. It wasn’t like she wanted it to happen, this drifting existence he was bound
to, but she had seen it in others before. She had seen it in her father before he had abandoned her
and her heartbroken mother, before he had been hollowed out by a thousand sessions of
chemotherapy, and before he had finally passed away, working on a jewelry box inscribed with
her name, Nicole. She wondered whose name Jason would think of as he was dying alone.
It had finally stopped raining, so Nicole picked up her scarf, a little black jacket, and the
water-stained, pink-swirled notebook she had been writing her father’s eulogy in. That was hard
enough without the smell of stale beer and long-expired pick-up lines.