WyzWmn's World©

The sound: Big Brother & The Holding Company Feat. Janis Joplin – Piece of My Heart, Deep Purple – Lazy, Cream – Badge, Queen – All that I Want, The Eagles – Witchy Woman, Donovan – Hurdy Gurdy Man, Marianne Faithfull – Why’d Ya Do It?, Colin James – Why’d you Lie?

By 1 AM and the closure of the bar I was exhausted. So were the rest of the crew…but hard as we tried we couldn’t get all those drunks out of the bar in a timely fashion so it was close to 2 AM before we got everyone out.

At one point I remember looking up from behind the bar to see two of the bouncers dragging drunk Allie offa the door jamb where he was holding on for dear life in a last ditch attempt to get him some drink…just so they could close and lock the doors

Eventually we found ourselves alone with the doors locked and most of the lights off. I poured us all drinks and then we gathered at the first table below the mezzanine to put our tired, sore feet up for a bit prior to the Herculean task of cleaning that barn so we could all go home.

Me…I wanted me 2 beers, to cash out and to head off to spark a spliff and lay in a hot tub….I was pretty sure that the cashing out was gonna take me some time because we’d just had the best night ever in the bar. I didn’t think I’d seen that many twenty dollar bills in one till before in my life….there’d been so many of them that I’d had to pull wads of them out of the bill slot and hide them in both the 2nd and 3rd drawers over the course of the evening.

Just as I got comfortable in my chair with my feet up and began to raise my first ice cold beer to my lips there was a crash from behind me and two masked men armed with rifles roared into the room from the front lobby of the hotel, pushing the pregnant night clerk ahead of them.

Both of them started screaming at us to get on the floor while waving their guns around. One of them dashed down the 4 stairs from the mezzanine turning to face us and training his gun on us waving it back and forth at shoulder level to take us all in. The 2nd walked the length of the mezzanine with the pregnant clerk in tow and when he got to the second set of stairs down to the main floor he shoved her down to land on her belly.

Two things crossed my mind at once. The first being “you can’t do that she’s pregnant” and the second being…”it’s those fucking idiots Frankie and Bennie and this is the worst fucking joke I’ve seen in a while” so again, almost at once, I started to get outta my chair to give them a well deserved piece of my mind.

I had finally had enough of those two.

Two things happened at once, Penny, the waitress sitting beside me grabbed my sleeve as I started to rise and pulled me off my feet to land on top of her on the floor as Frankie (the moron who was on our level and training his gun on me) let go a round that went into the wall where I’d been sitting.

Had I stood, I’d have been gut shot, and had I remained sitting I’d have been hit in the throat. Either way it was a lose/lose for me…cos I knew he was using a large caliber hunting rifle…something big enough to make that kind of noise and that kind of hole in the wall was something one usually used to bring down moose.

the sound – Harlequin – Thinking of You, Rod Stewart – Do You Think I’m Sexy, Van Halen – Feel Your Love Tonight, Nick Gilder – Hot Child in the City, The Doors – Love Me Two Times, MeatLoaf – Paradise by the Dashboard Light, Lynyrd Skynard – Sweet Home Alabama, Dire Straits – Brothers in Arms

The plan unfolded on a phenomenally busy Saturday night in the bar.

We’d been rocking and rolling all night long and by the end of the shift the 13 members of the wait staff, the 8 bouncers & doormen, both other bartenders and myself had worked and sweated together in the summer heat in that non air conditioned bar to a really large crowd of very serious partiers – we were burnt toast tired, but the kind of good tired that comes from working hard and laughing our asses off.

We’d served more booze in one shift than we had collectively for several nights and I chalked that up to the fact that the band was currently ‘hot’ across the country. Harlequin had played with us on an average of once a month for a year, but now that their record had hit they were attracting the looky loo’s as well as the groupies and the rockers. And with the looky loo’s, groupies and rockers came booze sales plain and simple.

Frankie and Bennie had spent the night holding court in the bar. They sat at a large table just below the mezzanine and they treated the wait staff like their own personal slaves.

Everyone hated it when they ended up in their section because they wouldn’t tip anyone if it were to save their souls. But those two hoods, by the very breath of their existence expected, even demanded to be treated like landed gentry and were always throwing their weight around, showing off like. In the end most of the girls put up with it because the rest of the bar could be a big tip place to work and big tip jobs were hard come by and pissing off one of those thugs could chase you right out the door…cos sure as god made little green apples those two tough guys would run to their daddy Do-all and that would be the end of that.

Around midnight I turned around from the beer coolers back to face the bar with my hands full of bottles of stubby beers to find Frankie standing between me and the bar itself. I tried to step around him but he kept in my way. He was acting funny and had one hand behind his back.

What do you want Frankie? I asked just barely disguising my distrust.

He brought his hand out from behind his back with not one, but one dozen roses and offered them to me. My first thought was that they musta cost a mint cos those ‘Rose Ladies’ that traveled from bar to bar selling roses and teddy bears to drunks charged huge amounts for their wares…my second thought was that Frankie was definitely up to something.

What do you want Frankie? I asked again, this time my disgust dripping from my voice.

“I just want to give the pretty Baby some flowers” Frankie simpered as he leaned towards me and shoved the roses into my beer filled hands forcing me to catch them with my arms. “and to say…..a friend is a friend and family is family….right Baby?”

“uhhhhm

ya….

Whatever!” was my reply as I stepped around him to drop all the beer and roses on the bar.

“well good then” he said from behind me as I bent towards snapping the lids off of the 8 beers the waitress in front of me had been waiting for. “that’s it then.” He said as he wiped his hands down the front of his suede vest and walked away.

I scooped up the roses and threw them in a draught jug and smacked them between the bottles on the lower shelf of the bar. “That prick is up to something I just know it” ran thru my head before the next waitress in line started to bawl out her order and I immediately moved on to the matter at hand….making money.