It was one of those nights when I was too tired to sleep and I knew why I was that way. Five hours on the road is bad enough anytime, but starting that five hours at six in the evening made it eleven when I rolled into the hotel parking lot, except because I'd crossed into an earlier time zone, it was midnight local time.
My day hadn't been all that great to start with, and when my boss said the plant in Knoxville was having problems it got a lot worse. I like Knoxville. I just don't like the Knoxville plant, and I especially don't like driving there at night. He said I needed to leave as soon as possible.
It took half an hour to get a rental car and reserve a room, and another half hour to go home and pack enough for a week. As I pulled out of my drive, I was cursing the Knoxville plant for doing what they always did -- trying to fix their problem until it got bad enough they would stop shipping if it wasn't fixed, and then waiting until four in the afternoon to make the call for help. At least it was a Wednesday and not Friday like the last time.
Dinner was in Nashville -- a burger and fries, to go - and as the setting sun painted the clouds in my rear view mirror orange and purple, I drove past Lebanon. By the time I drove into the Holiday Inn in Knoxville, I'd been up for nineteen hours and I was pissed. I dropped my stuff in the room, and decided to find a little liquid mood changer.
The "Red Piano Lounge" didn't look like much from the outside, and there weren't many cars in the parking lot. Ordinarily, I'd have steered clear of a place with few patrons, but that night, I didn't really want to be around a lot of people. I just wanted to sip away my mood with some really old scotch. The sign on the door said "The Knox Five" were playing until three. The music I heard coming through the door was jazz, and I like jazz. I figured with the jazz and a little scotch, I'd be ready for bed in about an hour.
It appeared most of the cars in the lot belonged to the band, because other than the five older men on the tiny stage, the only other people in the place were the bartender, myself, and an older woman sitting at the bar. I took a stool a ways from her because she looked like she was thinking about something and wouldn't want to be disturbed. The bartender brought my scotch, and I was soon lost in the music and the smoky taste of Glenfiddich.
The band was pretty good. The scotch was excellent. In about fifteen minutes, I was well on the way to relaxing because I wasn't thinking about why I was there. The band finished that number, and were talking amongst themselves about the next. With nothing else to do, I looked around the bar, and my gaze fell on the woman.
She was maybe fifty, though I always find it hard to guess a woman's age. I didn't need to guess that she was well worth looking at. She had that quiet beauty that comes only with age, and she had the body to match. Her black dress covered a lot of her curves, but the slit up the side showed me a slender, graceful leg cased in black nylon stockings. Her ass was also great. The way she was sitting, her hips flared out on the barstool and led upwards to a nice, but not skinny, waist. From there up, she was wonderfully large breasts that formed a delicious cleavage in the low cut neckline. Her shoulder length brown hair framed a pretty face that had the soft lines that told me she liked to laugh.
Jack, the bartender came back and asked if he could get me another scotch. I said yes, and then on an impulse, asked him to get another of whatever the woman was drinking and to tell her I'd paid for it. He grinned and brought my scotch, then mixed her drink, carried it down the bar, and sat it down. When she said something, he pointed in my direction.
The woman turned and smiled, then slid off her stool, picked up her purse and the drink, and walked over to where I sat. She was still smiling when she climbed up on the barstool and then turned to face me.
"Hi. I'm Sharon, and who is this nice man who bought me another drink?
"I'm Tom, Tom Spencer."
"Well, Tom Spencer, thank you for the drink, but I don't know you. Do you buy drinks for every woman you see in a bar?"
"No, not usually. You just looked kind of lonely sitting there by yourself."
"And you thought I'd join you if you bought me a drink? You're a real optimist aren't you?"
"I just bought you a drink. You did sort of join me, though."
She smiled.
"I suppose I did, didn't I? I wasn't really lonely, though. I was just remembering."
"Remembering?"
"Yes, I used to come here every Friday and Saturday night with my husband. They had a guy who played the piano and sang then. Dave would always ask him to play "Where Is Your Heart", and he would. It's a song from a movie that's kind of sad, but it was my favorite song back then. It's kind of like me, or so Dave said, so maybe that's why I like it.
I smiled.
"I know the movie. I've seen it. It is sad at the end. Why is the song like you?"
Sharon frowned.
"In the song, the singer keeps asking 'where is your heart' and I'm kind of like that. I have trouble saying how I feel sometimes."
"Is that why you're alone tonight -- Dave isn't your husband anymore?"
"Dave was still my husband until he passed away three years ago. I just come here to have a drink and remember what we had. Silly, huh?"
"No, not silly. Pretty romantic actually. You must have loved him a lot."
"I did. I just couldn't tell him that."
"How long were you married?"
"Twenty nine years. We got married right out of high school."
I chuckled.
"Well, if you were married for that long, I'm pretty sure he knew. He wouldn't have stuck around that long if he didn't."
Sharon sipped her drink like nothing was wrong, but I saw a tear stream down her cheek. She fished in her purse for a tissue, dabbed her eye, and then looked at me.
"Sorry. It just bothers me to talk about it. Dave knew I loved him, but he always needed me to tell him that, and I just couldn't. I don't know why, but I couldn't."
I tried to cheer her up.
"Well, let's talk about something else then. What do you do so you can afford to hang out here on the weekends?"
"When our kids were on their own, we bought an apartment complex. It's only twelve units and the rent's not that high because it's not fancy, but it took in enough that with Dave's pension, we lived pretty well. I manage it by myself now."
"Sounds like a lot of work."
Sharon sighed.
"It wouldn't have to be, but you're right, it is. You'd think people would take care of things, but they don't. This morning I had to buy a new stove for one of the units. The people who rent that unit left a plastic container in the oven and then forgot about it. When they went to preheat the oven, the plastic melted and caught the oven on fire.
"My insurance says I have to have a fire extinguisher in every kitchen and thank God, they had sense enough to use it so there wasn't much of a fire. The stove was ruined though. I guess they don't realize it'll take me three months rent from them to pay for the new one and getting it installed and the old one hauled away."
I chuckled.
