Harry hated Halloween, it was just one of those times of year that reminded him he was different. For someone trying to blend back into society, fitting in was very important and Harry's refusal to have anything to do with Halloween hampered him from fitting in. So while throughout his office people were wearing costumes and getting ready for the Halloween party in the afternoon, Harry simply wore blue jeans and a nice shirt. When someone asked him about his costume he simply told them he was wearing it, he was dressed up as Harry Hanscomb, Account Assistant.
Besides the costumes, the conversations during the day primarily involved everyone's plans for the evening. Those with kids planned to head home and prepare for trick or treating in the neighborhoods. Others talked of the parties they planned to attend, a few talked of the decorations they set up at the house as they planned to inject a little terror into the kids who dared come to their scary door. Harry hoped to skip the party and find a bar that wasn't celebrating where he could get a few quick drinks before heading home.
He wanted to be sure he got home before sunset so he could watch after his house. With it all closed up and dark, lacking any Halloween decorations it had been the target of vandalism last year. In spite of some advice he'd received, this year he'd remain home while the trick or treaters terrorized the neighborhood.
Confining himself to his cubicle, Harry worked through lunch and at two o'clock as everyone else began setting up for the party he slipped past the wicked witch receptionist and headed out to his car. By two-thirty he was sitting in Flan's, a no frills bar dedicated to good, hard drinking. There was no Halloween shot specials, no frothing drinks and no skeleton at the door, hell the TV wasn't even on.
It was early so there were only a few other patrons, all drinking their alcohol on the rocks or straight in the glass. No margaritas, no sloe gin fizzes and no frozen cherry daiquiris, just plan glasses with straight booze. Harry sipped his Black Jack on the rocks listening in on a conversation the bartender was having with another customer. Apparently the customer was trying to get the bartender to mix up something special.
"But that would mean I'd have to crush the ice," Harry heard the bartender say.
"You have a blender right there," the customer argued.
"And then salt on the glass, I tell you, I don't salt the rim of a glass for nobody."
"Come on, it's easy, you just set up a plate, cover it with..."
"Look, you want tequila, I'll give you tequila, you want sodie pop, I'll get you a sodie pop, but I ain't mixing it together."
"But Sonny will do it," the customer replied.
"I'm looking at the calendar and it says today is Wednesday and Sonny don't work on Wednesday. So what'll it be, Tequila Solo or on the rocks?"
"On the rocks," the customer said, giving up.
"And, here's a salt shaker, in case you want to salt up the glass, just don't make a mess," the bartender said setting down the salt. He quickly filled a glass with ice and poured in a shot of tequila. "Suppose you want a lime with it too?" he growled, placing the glass on the bar and tossing a wedge of lime on the side.
Harry noticed the bartender looking his way so he held up his glass and nodded. The bartender grabbed the Jack Daniels and walked over, pouring the dark amber liquid into Harry's glass.
"They just don't get it do they?" Harry said, nodding at the customer drinking the tequila on the rocks.
"Yeah, it's Sonny, he spoils them with all his fun drinks on the weekend. It seems to take me until Wednesday or Thursday to settle them down again. Course then it's the weekend again."
The door to the bar swung open and a small girl stepped inside. Without hesitation she walked up to the bar, nimbly climbed up on one of the barstools and set her purse in the stool next to her. She turned her head and stared directly at the bartender.
"Excuse me," he said to me. As he was about to move down the bar he lightly touched my arm and said with a smile, "Watch this." He then moved down the bar to the young girl and said, "Little girl you can't be coming in a bar like this."
The girl tilted her head and said, "Okay Flan, I know you're doing this just for the customers, so lets go though this one more time. Here's my ID, see it says I am, yes let me help you with the math, it says I am twenty two, that is twenty plus two, that means I am a full year older than twenty one. No this is not a fake ID, just like it wasn't a fake ID the last five times we played this game.
"What I want you to do now Flan is grab me a glass, fill it with bourbon, make it a double, then add two, not one, not three, just two ice cubes and bring it back to me. And so help me if one more person asks me if I am going trick or treating tonight I'm gonna shove my hand up their ass and pull their tongue out so they can get a taste of the shit they've been slinging at me. Okay?"
Looking at Harry and smiling, the bartender shrugged his shoulders and prepared her drink. Afraid to do much more, Harry stared into the mirror behind the glass shelves of bottles. After a few minutes, while sipping at his drink he took a closer look at the girl, no woman, just several barstools down.
She was incredible, by just looking at her Harry would swear she was no older than fifteen at the most and the way some girls were developing these days, he'd seen twelve year olds who looked more mature that this woman. From what he could see looking at her blouse she had no breasts to speak of and while he couldn't tell much with her sitting there, he remembered her hips were nothing much either. The only thing that might belie her age was her eyes, they seemed to have a dark and wizened intensity about them.
Her hair was dark, long enough to just touch her shoulders, and though Harry might have preferred a pixie cut, her hair did have a nice, healthy glow to it. Her eyebrows were dark but her skin was fairly light, darker than Harry's complexion, but when contrasted with her hair it seemed almost pale. Here face was pretty, but set on her body it would have been hard to tell if she was a very pretty thin boy if he didn't know any better.
He suddenly realized she was watching him stare at her. "What?" she asked. "I showed him my ID, it says..."
"No, no, I'm sorry," Harry said, "it's just that, uh, your hair, it's really beautiful... the color I mean, an almost mahogany color."
She winced and said, "I'm sorry, it's been a bad day and I just get so much shit about my age. Now that today's Halloween it's even worse."
"Yeah, I hate Halloween," Harry replied.
"You mind if I move down there with you?" she asked reaching for her purse.
"Sure, come on down," Harry said, smiling at her, "Let me buy you another drink," he said waving toward the bartender. Once he caught his eye, Harry moved his hand in a circling motion an then pointed to the woman and himself. The bartender nodded.
"So you hate Halloween, have you always hated it?"
"No," Harry replied, pausing a moment, "there was a time I really enjoyed it, when I was younger, but now I can't participate."
"You can't participate? A religious thing?"
"Yeah, something like that," he replied and then to change the subject, "And here are the drinks, the best thing about Halloween these days."
The bartender set down two drinks for each of them and when Harry looked up at him he replied, "It's happy hour now, my one concession to Sonny's frills."
"Well I commend you on your forward thinking," Harry said.