NYPD RIM --
By Nellskitchen
There is no explaining these things. Either appetite isβor it is not. That day, it was.
The happening happened at Mulligan's Pub on Madison Avenue, the place where the unlikely couple stopped for a drink after the game.
Sitting at their usual place near the front window, the sultry Noreen Turk, diligently sipping her straight-up martini, permitted her eyes to do what women's eyes do. And despite the busy place's busyness and the myriad of faces and bodies falling within her highly-skilled viewfinders, her inspection of him endured, returning time and again to the stupefying if out-of-place character standing at the bar.
Noreen wondered at his presence, at its unlikeliness. What, she asked herself, is a cowboy doing in Manhattan? Glancing out the window, she half-expected to see his get-away stallion champing at the bit out on the sidewalk, but alas, nothing but the usual midtown traffic filled the street.
He was blue-jeaned, mustached, booted. Leaning the way lean men lean, with their butts daringly if only slightly pouting, he looked neither left nor right, yet somehow projected a hint of arrogance directed at watchers, women like Noreen.
Scrutinizing him, she was careful not to give herself away, a tactic giving her a rush, and she searched his blank eyes, just then staring straight into the mirror that acted as a backstop behind the array of whiskey bottles positioned above the cash register.
Unlike her, the sandy-haired man was, as far as Noreen could tell, alone. He appeared to be killing time, and with Budweiser in hand, he nonchalantly sucked at the bottle's long neck, right then nodding to the bartender to bring him another.
Wondering the one-thing a girl wonders when observing a handsome man who happens to be unaccompanied in a busy place, she wondered one thing: was he waiting for someone? With no way to be sure, she kept her eyes peeled.
Complete with an off-white cowboy hat, he was as close to the classic Marlboro Man as she had ever come upon, and returning to her original inquiry, she asked herself what the dazzling creature was doing here at the epicenter of New York's wimpy girly men. The question intrigued her and cried out for scrutiny.
The clueless Eddie Haskell, Noreen's off-and-on again, boyfriend, if he even noticed the stranger, did not say anything. Of course, he did not. Regular guys are not mindful of other men; only gay guys are. Eddie, experience taught her, was altogether straight. So was Marlboro Man, a feature telecast by the fog of testosterone surrounding him.
Noreen stayed quiet, even as Eddie, obsessing over popping popcorn into his mouth between sips of pink sangria, bored her with the day's market's fluctuations. "At the close of trading," he absent-mindedly said, "the fucking NASDAQ was down six fucking points! Can you fucking believe it?"
Nodding, but otherwise detached, Noreen kept her eyes glued to the mystery man, surveilling him as he nudged his just emptied bottle in the direction of the bartender and pulled a roll of bills from his pant pocket. Dropping onto the bar what appeared to be a fifty, he turned on his heel, a few strides later, making his way to the recesses of the place, to the back steps, the ones leading downstairs to the restrooms.
"Could be a sign of a market correction," Eddie continued, even as Noreen, without taking her sharp eyes from the cowboy's butt, hastily pulled her hair into a double ponytail. "If the Facebook strike doesn't end soon, the DOW will..."
"...I need to pee," Noreen interrupted. Standing up, she slung her purse over her shoulder and marched toward the stairs.
Eddie called to her as she walked off, asking, "Hey, Hun? Want another dirty martini?"
"With an olive," she ordered.