It was mid-January of 1980 and I was sitting in a bar in Tampa, Florida. I had come down to spend a few days with my college roommate and his family to celebrate his thirty-fifth birthday, but since his two brothers as well as friends had been invited, his spare bedrooms had been maxed out so I had opted to stay at the Tampa Marriott a couple of miles away.
The bar I was sitting in was half a block from the hotel and it seemed that it couldn't decide whether it was an Irish Pub or a Sports Bar since the decor was the former, but the plethora of TV screens screamed the latter. I had arrived a little before eight p.m. and had ordered a cheeseburger and a beer. The NFL playoffs were in full swing so I had some spirited conversations with my bar mates about what was going on. The previous weekend the Philadelphia Eagles had blown out the Dallas Cowboys 20-7, and the Oakland Raiders had beaten the San Diego Chargers in a shootout 34-27. The Super Bowl between the Eagles and Raiders was a week away in the Superdome in New Orleans, and the game was a hot topic at the bar. In my opinion, there's nothing like a spirited bar debate particularly when plentiful alcohol is fueling the conversation and I was in the middle of it.
A little after nine o'clock, I noticed a couple sitting at one of the high tables not far from where I was sitting. They weren't engaging with the rest of us, but it seemed that they were paying attention. Perhaps thirty minutes later most of the debate group had gone their separate ways and I was left with just my half-drunk beer and the satisfaction that I'd more than held my own concerning the probable outcome of the week's upcoming game. It was at that point that the bartender brought me another beer and I looked at her with some confusion since I hadn't ordered one. She said that it was on the couple at the table that I'd noticed earlier.
When I turned around to thank my surprising benefactors, they raised their glasses and I felt compelled to walk over and find out what was behind their unexpected generosity.
"Do I know you?" were the first words out of my mouth, but I already had determined that I did not. The man spoke first and introduced himself as Dan and nodded to his companion, who he said was his wife, Denise. "We were watching your arguments with the others, and we want to tell you how much you impressed us. For every point, you came back with fact after fact and it was obvious that you were much better informed than those other guys. Did you play the game?"
I answered, "Yeah, I was a quarterback for a Division II school and I've coached a little too." Denise cocked her head like she was impressed, but it was Dan who spoke. "Were you any good?" I thought it was a pretty rude question and I was tempted to come back with a flip response, but since they'd been kind enough to buy me a beer, I decided to play it straight. "Well," I said, "I was good enough that they paid for my college education." Denise smiled, and Dan just lifted his glass in response.
I was wondering where this conversation was headed when Denise asked if I wanted to join them. I looked around the bar and noted that a lot of the patrons had left, so I shrugged my shoulders and pulled up a chair.
I guessed that both Dan and Denise were in their early forties and if so they were about five to seven years older than me. Dan appeared to be a little overweight but not grossly so. His hands looked soft and if I were to guess, I pegged him as an accountant or something similar. He was close to my six-foot height, but the most striking thing about him was a certain sadness in his eyes behind his brown horned-rimmed glasses.
Denise, on the other hand, looked great. Her skin exhibited the perpetual tan that some Florida residents seemed to have and from what I could see, she seemed to be in good shape. I guessed that she was probably around five feet four and a curvy one hundred and thirty pounds. Her raven hair was piled on top of her head and secured in place with a hair clip and her oval face was dominated by her bright brown eyes that gave her a decided doe-eyed look. A small nose and lush red lips completed the picture. Oh, I forgot to mention her cute dimples that appeared every time she smiled. She was wearing a white sleeveless blouse that showcased her slim arms and hinted rather than revealed her breasts, but the promise was certainly there. I didn't have much of a view of her body below the table, but it appeared that she was wearing a short green skirt and her bare legs looked smooth and well-toned. All in all, I thought that she was a pretty, if not a beautiful woman.
As I slid onto the high stool, Dan looked strangely at Denise and I could see a silent message pass between them. Denise nodded, and she was the one who spoke. "You might be wondering why we wanted to talk to you?" I thought to myself that had to be one of the most understated questions in the history of mankind, but I chose to just nod and wait to hear what Denise had to say.
Denise seemed to be at a loss of exactly where to begin and I was tempted to fill the silence gap when she took a deep breath, reached over and took Dan's hand, and looked directly into my eyes. "Dan and I have been married for twelve years and we've built a good life together, but lately we've been dealing with an issue that's come up in our marriage and that's why we wanted to talk with you."
Confused, would be a good description of my condition when I heard this. I wasn't prepared to get into a discussion of marital problems because as a lifelong bachelor, I knew that I was ill-equipped to offer any advice on the topic, and by nature, I'm not one to get involved with other people's private affairs, but I looked at Denise and waited to see where this was going.
Dan and Denise kept looking back and forth and I could see the knuckles on Denise's hand whiten as she squeezed Dan's. When she resumed speaking, I noticed that Dan just looked down at the table and seemed content to let Denise continue without any comment from him.
