When Charlie woke up in the morning, he felt like he had been hit repeatedly over the head with a wooden mallet, and the inside of his mouth tasted as though some small furry rodent had crawled in and died weeks ago. As he shuffled into the bathroom off the hallway, he paused. How had he gotten home from the bar he had gone to after work? Usually he did his best to avoid drinking during the week, but the truly awful day at work had driven him to the comfort of his local bar. Had he walked home, or did the bartender call a cab for him?
He peeled back the curtains from the front window, and was met by his green truck, parked in its usual spot. It appeared that while he had been out, it had dumped snow, burying his truck in a foot of it. The road was smooth, indicating that he had been home for quite some time, and that he'd had no visitors since. Stumped, Charlie turned away to get ready for work, the headache from the hangover melding with the one from a hard day at the office melding into one.
It wasn't until after work when he walked into the bar again, this time to thank the bartender for getting him home safely, that he realized his mistake.
"What do you mean, you didn't drive me home," he asked, staring stupidly down at the petit redhead.
"I mean, I am not the one who drove you home," she repeated, slightly mystified. "I told you, I do that three times for customers, no more and no less. You used up your last time two Fridays ago."
Charlie blinked at her.
"I thought you left with that pretty little brunette you met last night? I figured you two were going back to her place for the rest of the night, so I wasn't too worried," she continued.
"What brunette?" Now it was his turn to be mystified. "I don't remember meeting anyone last night."
She snorted. "I doubt you remember much of anything from last night Charlie, you were pretty drunk. She kept buying drinks, and you kept drinking 'em down. You two seemed to know each other pretty well, though, for two people who supposedly just met."
"Did you happen to catch her name?" He shoved his hands in his pockets, distinctly uncomfortable by the appearance of a familiar brunette stranger.
She shook her head, placing a newly polished glass on the rack behind her. "No, she never said when you asked. You made up a name, and she just went with it."
"Oh," he said, disappointed.
"I think you called her Clare, if that helps at all," she said, picking up a new glass. She looked down at her hands, frowning to remember the evening more clearly and by the time she looked up again, Charlie was already gone, out the door and halfway across the parking lot, stomping through the snow. She shook her head, and wondered why she chose to be a bartender instead of a shrink.
"Shit, shitshitshitshit," Clare muttered angrily, revving her car and finally hitting the steering wheel in defeat. The car, after forcing Clare to unbury it from the foot of snow, was now refusing to start. After half an hour of pleading and begging, swearing and cursing, Clare was forced to look for alternatives. The plane she held her ticket home for was leaving in less than an hour, and she was at least an hour and a half walk from her friend's apartment to the airport. Kelly was on a vacation home for the Christmas season, and had offered her house to Clare while she was in town for her conference. The snow was impossible to walk in, and she hadn't brought any of the appropriate clothing for a trek through the snow. She reluctantly climbed out of the car, grabbed her bags, and trudged back into the house and grudgingly opened it back up. She picked up her cell phone and dialed.
"Hi... Mom! It's Clare. Look, I have some bad news...."
She found herself back in the same bar as the night before, and the sense of deja vu was overwhelming. The redhead behind the bar eyed her more suspiciously tonight than the night before, but Clare paid it no mind. That is, until she approached Clare.
