I sat at the bar watching him in operation. Stud Muffin was working his charm on a blonde with legs up to here, tits out to there and a brain you couldn't trip over on a dark night blindfolded. He whispered something in her ear that must have, going by her reaction, been the most stupendously funny comment ever made. While he was entertaining her with his witty repartee he was entertaining himself by 'accidentally' brushing one of her double D's with his hand, she didn't mind it at all.
He was tall, with a gym hewn body, a salon tan, fashionably tinted hair, and impossibly white teeth that he exposed to the world at every opportunity. His hands were the epitome of the manicurist's art and his left pinkie finger sported a huge gold ring surrounding a diamond big enough to choke on. To look at him you could be forgiven for believing that this man had the world at his feet fighting over the crumbs from his table.
There were cogs in his head that, even as I watched him, were turning with increasing speed, telling him that this airhead was no longer a challenge for him. All he would have to do to get into her pants was to ask and she would have dropped them there and then. Time for Plan B. He looked at his watch, yes it was due about, he counted off the seconds, his cell rang. "Hi you've reached Winston Jones, speak to me." He concentrated on the voice coming at him over the phone, "Can't Jackson take care of that? Alright, I'll be there in half an hour." He clicked it off. "Listen Honey, there's a major drama at work and it appears that I'm the only one that can fix it. What say I drop you home and if I fix it quickly enough we can continue this back at yours?"
It took a while for this to penetrate the vacuum between her ears but she reluctantly complied.
They left. I wasn't the only one to watch them leave, there were at least two others. In the far corner of the room was the man who, on seeing the signal had placed the call, and the bar attendant, an attractive brunette of thirty something.
"He'll be back in ten." Her voice was like honey from the fridge, slow and smooth.
"What do you mean?" I asked, intrigued.
"He's just implemented Plan B in which he takes her home and drops her, and then he's straight back here looking for another score."
"You make it sound so callous and calculating."
"It is. Night after night I stand here serving drinks and watching him in action, and night after night it's either one or the other. If he's not bored, or the challenge is worth the effort, then there's no signal, that's Plan A. If he's bored, he looks at his watch, that's the signal for his mate to make the call so that he can bail, That's Plan B. Tonight's a Plan B night, and looking at the talent here, he's going to miss out."
"Thanks a lot."
"You don't honestly mean to say that you're interested in him?"
"No, but I don't like being written of as being someone that he might not be interested in."
"Sorry. Time was that if he bombed out on Plan A and had to resort to Plan B, he'd even consider me worth the effort."
"And he doesn't any more?"
"Not since the bastard got me pregnant and coerced me into having an abortion. I made it very obvious that I wasn't about to go through that again, I wasn't going to be yet another scalp in his trophy cabinet. Look out, he's back."
Sure enough, he walked back through the door and quickly scoped the room. He hesitated for a second when his eyes met mine and, seeing that there wasn't the slightest interest from me, walked toward me. "Sandy, could I have a Bourbon straight up and something for the lovely lady, what would you have?"
I looked at him close up for the first time and to my surprise he looked, under the fake tan and coloured hair, to be around my age, forty. "The lovely lady is fine."
"No, I insist, let me buy you a drink."
"So that, in some way, I would owe you something. Listen Mister whatever your name is, I don't want another drink, and even if I did, I most certainly wouldn't touch one that you bought me. If you are so intent on wasting your money, by all means buy a drink, but I'll just let it sit on the bar, I won't touch it."
"Now I'm offended, here I am trying to be sociable and you spit in my eye. The name's Kingsley Martin."
My arched eyebrow was an indication that I didn't believe him. "How nice for you." I turned away from him and smiled at Sandy. She looked past me at his face and a quick smile passed over her face. Score one to me.
"Why the hostility? What have I done to you?"
"You've done nothing to me and it's going to stay that way. Why don't you just fuck off and leave me alone, better yet, piss off back to the blonde bimbo that you left here with a few minutes ago, or have you fucked her already, talk about a quickie, it must have been a stand up start."
He glared daggers at me before storming off to sit with his friend. By the way that he glared at me while they spoke I could only assume that he was making up some excuse for his failure to score.
"You'd better be careful doing something like that, he doesn't take rejection lightly. As you already know, I'm Sandy."
"Oooh I'm shaking in my boots. I'm Crystal, by the way."
"Pleased to meet you, but tell me do you have you got a death wish or something?"
"No, just enjoying myself, is all."
"Don't say that I didn't warn you. Can I get you another drink, or are you going to drink the one he bought you?"
"Is he looking?"
"Yes."
"Then give me another."
"Sure thing, this one's on the house." She put the drink on the bar in front of me, never taking her eyes off him. "I tell you what, he's really ticked now."
"Good, I'm off to the little girl's room." I swallowed the drink and got up and walked through the door at the rear of the bar that led into the passageway to the rest rooms, hoping he'd follow, he did.
"Listen bitch, what's your problem?"
"Problem? I don't have a problem. I think that you might have one, but I'm fine, never better in fact."
He stood in front of me, pressing me back against the wall with his body, his hand around my throat. "You listen to me bitch, no-one treats me like this and gets away with it!"
"Really? If you take a look to your right you'll see a CCTV camera pointed directly at us, it has captured everything that has happened here, including a full facial of you, and it's even going to capture this, for posterity." I kneed him in the nuts and he went down like a pole-axed steer, gasping for breath as he writhed on the floor clutching the family jewels. I used the toilet and, when I emerged from the ladies there was no sign of him, there was also no sign of him in the bar as I sat back on my stool.
"What ever did you do to him?"