Room 721

Back from the cemetery, I loosened my tie and sank into the recliner. My daughter gently draped a blanket over me, tucking it from knees to neck.

“It’s been a long day, Dad. I’ll wake you when dinner’s ready.”

My eyes are closed, but I’m not asleep. Aromas of roasting ham and freshly baked bread drift from the kitchen. I hear tender laughter, jumbles of shared recollections, and the hush of sorrow. The fridge and the cabinet doors open and close; tableware clatters. Familiar feminine voices confer about how to arrange the buffet. When someone mentions how beautiful Susan was, I have to swallow hard and dab my eyes. It’s been sixty-one years since that night we met.

To help pay my way through grad school at the University of San Francisco, I spent nights tending bar at Varni’s Roaring Twenties, a classy, energetic nightclub on Montgomery Street in the Jackson Square District.

Varni’s took up the ground floor of a Barbary Coast-era brick building that was transformed to capture the ambiance of a 1920s speakeasy. We had a trad jazz band that played prohibition-era music. The clientele danced solo or as couples, to classic moves: The Charleston, The Black Bottom, The Shimmy, The Texas Tommy, or whatever they impulsively ad-libbed.

The décor and music channeled the Roaring Twenties, but the cocktail waitresses belonged to the Swinging Sixties—fishnet stockings, miniskirts, plunging necklines, and towering beehive hairdos.

There were two bars. At the long Main Bar, patrons could choose to sit on stools, stand holding their drinks, settle at tables, or dance. They shouted their drink orders directly across the bar.

The “service bar” was smaller and tucked away. There were only two stools, and they were hardly ever occupied.

Cocktail waitresses placed orders and delivered them to customers who were away from the main bar. One-dollar-per-hour salaries barely paid for their hairdos and manicures, Tips paid the bills and they were hard-earned.

I was on a salary, and I got two fifteen-minute breaks during the eight-hour shift. During my break on that particular night, my life swerved in a marvelously new direction.

Around 9:30, a guy wearing a Brioni suit and a girl in a V-neckline little black cocktail dress showed up and slid onto the barstools. She wore pearl earrings with a silver choker. I noticed a Patek Phillipe, white gold, timepiece on her thin bronze wrist as she settled onto the barstool and set her classy J. Leiber clutch on the bar.

The guy said, “Two cognacs”. I smiled, setting snifters in front of them and poured an ounce each of Courvoisier, while listening to the shout of an impatient waitress: “Two Rusty Nails, Sidecar, and Manhattan. The guy handed me a five. I rang up $2.10, set his change on the bar, and turned toward the mirrored back bar to grab a bottle of Drambuie for the Rusty Nails.

That’s when I caught a reflection of loveliness with blue eyes, honey-colored skin, and an elegant light brown updo hairstyle. The room was filled with stunning women, but the one sitting at my service bar made all the others disappear.

Waitresses were eager to get their orders filled and tips earned, so I had to stop enjoying the sneaky view and do my job. As I mixed and poured I heard an engaging female voice, “Ya’ll need a good mem‘ry and speedy hands for doin’ your job.”

I always acknowledged the not-from-here accents as a friendly way to relate to customers, and hers was pure South. So as I poured gin and vermouth into an iced martini shaker, I said, “So, tell me where you got that twang.”

She drew her head back, mock-startled. “Yer the one talkin’ with a funny accent.”

The guy she was with burst out laughing. I laughed too…and felt a connection.

As I filled another tray with drinks and turned to ring up the tab, I said, “So what are you two doing for a good time in this foggy city?”

“You mean, besides talkin’ with you?” she asked.

I answered, “Hey, that’s my good time. I’m asking about your good time.”

“Well, we just saw a songster at the Hungry i and she was amazing.”

A waitress interrupted, “Four marties; two over, one twisted, one dirty. All down on ten.” Reaching for the gin and vermouth, I heard the guy in the suit.

“Her name’s Barbra Streisand. Forty years from now, she’ll be considered the best female pop singer of the 20th Century.”

The girl said, “You’ll have to excuse my brother. He has a hard ol’ time makin’ up his mind about things. He’s Travis, and I’m Susan, by the way.”

She could have added, “…and I’m the most amazing woman you’re gonna meet in your lifetime,” and I would have agreed like a bobble head - her brother?!

When my fifteen-minute break relief showed up, I came around and continued our conversation from their side of the bar. The music and the human hum were thunderous, so I stood more closely than I would have in quieter circumstances ─ so close I could feel Susan’s warmth. Streisand was the hottest ticket in the city. I imagined being in the audience with Susan as my date. Dream on.

Travis said they stopped by Varni’s because they liked to dance, but the floor was jammed, so they decided to see the Miles Davis Quartet. Unfortunately, Travis had forgotten the name of the club.

I said, “They’re at Basin Street West. Just a two-block, very steep walk up Montgomery to Broadway. No need for a cab.”

We talked about post-bop jazz, and I thought I was holding my own while sniffing whiffs of intoxicating perfume and feeling puffs of Susan’s laughter against my cheek. She filled my eyes, my ears, and my imagination. What did she think I was thinking? Or did she even wonder, or care?

As the conversation continued, it became clear that Travis and their father planned to attend a business/dinner meeting the next night, and Susan was not invited. (“No women, you know”).

It was obvious that she was bitter about being excluded from a discussion that affected family investments, but it was a man’s world. She was relegated to a hotel room, alone ─ a thousand miles from home.

I impulsively said, "I'm off tomorrow. Would you spend the time with me over dinner and conversation at your hotel?"

Their startled expressions reminded me that this proposal was not suitable. Yikes. I wished I could push a reset button. It was 1963. Nice girls didn’t accept dates with strangers in strange cities, much less bartenders in dance halls.

Travis’ eyebrows went up. I was sure my presumption was about to be rebuffed - hopefully in a polite way.

But that's not what happened. Susan looked at her brother with her chin raised. Then she looked back at me and said, “I'm staying at the St. Francis Hotel - Room 721. Call me from the desk, okay? What time?”

***

I’m startled by a hand on my shoulder and a soft voice. “Dad, Dad. It’s time for dinner. Are you okay?”

I relax back into the comforting chair. “I’m fine, Suzy - just having a nice daydream.”

“Dad, everyone’s wondering how you and Mom met. Uncle Travis says he was there. Mom was in one of her moods because he and Granddad were going to business meeting and she had to stay at the hotel all by herself because the meeting was just men.

“He remembers her saying, ‘You go to your all-boys get-together. I’ll just run off with this handsome bartender.”

“Were you a bartender? Did mom really say that?”

I answered, “Whoa! Oh yeah, I was a bartender and Travis was there the night we met. But his memory is incomplete. He’s never really known the whole story or what happened next.

“Will you tell us the whole story and what happened next?”

“Let me put it this way, Suzie. You, your sisters, and two more generations of the beautiful, loving people here today owe their laughter, their love, their very existence to what happened next.”