The Nice Guy

Bryan Adams’ Summer of ‘Sixty-Nine pulsed quietly in the background of the pub. The dance floor was empty. The bar stools, vacant. The only resident at The Lion’s Keep was Richard, the new bartender. In South Edmonton, there wasn’t much action. The elderly gentlemen and hobby farmers from the outskirts of town had long-left with much eye-rolling about the demands of their wives and promises to meet up for another pint tomorrow. Now, it was just Richard, polishing wine glasses that he suspected had not touched the lipsticked mouth of a woman in a very long time. Sweat created darkened patches beneath his armpits and his hair stuck to the sides of his head. Richard muted Bryan Adams and turned up the nightly news to hear about the heat wave sweeping the East coast of Australia. The newsreader was saying something about bush fires in Middleton, floods in Sydney and a small earthquake in the Timor Sea that might cause tsunami off the coast of Cairns, but was unlikely. Climate change was all anybody wanted to talk about these days.

Richard muted the television, sighed and went back to his wine glass polishing. The silence of the pub enveloped him and made him feel uncomfortable. He turned the music back up. Brittany Spears thrummed out of the speakers just as the bell above the door tinkled and thirteen women poured in the pub. As soon as they heard Brittany’s cutesy, bubble-gum voice, all thirteen screamed and cheered and ran onto the dance floor. They threw themselves around, shimmying and thrusting at each other, hugging and kissing cheeks. Someone yelled at Richard to turn it up. Richard obliged the request and suddenly the bar was filled with music, raucous babbling and cackling laughter.

Brittany sang her last, “Oh baby, baby.” Four women strode up to the bar, eyes jabbing the air looking for cocktail menus.

“You do a Naughty Rudolph?” asked Mia. Mia was wearing a stick-on name badge that was peeling off of her bulging cleavage. Claire, the very thin blonde one, declared herself in need of some Sex on the Beach whilst Amanda rolled her eyes at their trashiness and requested a Cosmopolitan.

“Um, are those cocktails?” Richard stammered, a bit taken aback.

The cackling resumed. “What’s your name, gorgeous?” asked Claire. She was only slightly slurring her words but her even more crossed-eye pronounced her fairly drunk.

“Ah, Dick,” Richard said.

The four women screamed in hysterical fits on inebriated laughter. They turned to the dancefloor and screamed out, “His name is Dick. The bartenders name is Dick.” Long, dagger-like acrylic nails stabbed in Richard’s direction. He sheepishly smiled and let out a goofy little laugh. He scrambled about in the back cupboards of the bar looking for a cocktail book. Not only did he have no idea what these cocktails were, he had no clue what muddling was. He knew something about being shaken or stirred, but thought that could also just be a line from a Bond film. The sweat was pouring fast down his neck and into his collar. He grabbed his phone and googled Sex on the Beach first. Vodka he found easily. Peach schnapps was nowhere to be seen so he doubled up on apple schnapps instead. He had no cranberry juice so tippled in extra orange juice. Richard hesitantly handed over the glass, waiting for Claire’s reaction. She moseyed over to the other girls, sucking up a gulpful through the straw and promptly spat it back in the glass. Claire’s eyes darkened as she stared at Richard from the dancefloor and whispered into Amanda’s ear. Richard could lip-read the words disgusting and throw-up. Dread prickled the back of his neck as he busied himself googling the ingredients for a Naughty Rudolph. Amanda swayed up to the bar. He hid his phone behind some bottles and tried to look every bit the nonchalant, somewhat reasonably good-looking bartender. It didn’t work.

“You know what you’re doing, love?” asked Amanda, her overstuffed boobs threatening to pop out of her lace up corset. “Cos my friend’s drink tasted like horse’s piss.” Amanda slammed the highball onto the bar and leered at him with a lopsided squint.

“Ah, no. That’s terrible. I seem to be out of a few ingredients for that particular cocktail.”

“Ah well, you better make her something you do have the ingredients for then,” Amanda leaned over the bar, her face inches from his.

The bell tinkled again, heard incredibly over the booming music. Amanda and all the other women turned, squealing in unison. “Kathy, you made it.” “Get over here.” Claire called out, “Cocktails are shit but at least we are all here together.”

Kathy laughed, “You bunch of dickheads,” she said and stone-cold sober, started dancing with the other women. Claire’s comment stung Richard and he ducked his head into the cupboards trying to find the blender and cursing Ken, the publican, for only teaching him to pour a beer with the perfect head. He smashed his head on an open door as he came up with an ancient blender. It was full of mouse shit. Richard’s heart sank while he rubbed the egg on his head. There was no way he could blend a cocktail in that. A subtle cough for his attention brought him back to the moment.

“You ok, mate? Asked Kathy.

“Nah, not really aye,” Richard shook his head.

“C’mon, this is not your night for a pity party.” Kathy put her hair up in a high ponytail, shed her dangly earrings and cracked her knuckles. “We’re gonna give these bitches three cocktails to choose from; something creamy, something tart and something sweet. That’ll keep them off your back. What have we got back here?” Kathy came around the back of the bar and started rifling through bottles of spirits in a cardboard box. “Maybe, we will just stick to tart and sweet. Your boss didn’t leave you with much. You got a bucket?” she asked, somewhat unplucked eyebrows raised in question.

Richard thought she meant to throw up in. He quickly reached behind him and passed a stale smelling mop bucket towards her. Kathy shook her head, laughing. She shrugged when she realised he was serious. “Better pass the Pine-O-Clean then.”

After a ten minute disinfectant bath, Kathy was pouring lime cordial, sugar syrup and vodka straight into the bucket along with a dozen handfuls of ice. “Mojitos bitches,” she called out over the music. All the dancing women cheered and raced over to the bar. Kathy kept her back to them, scooping drinks out of the bucket and passing them to Richard to line up on the bar.

“Thanks Richard. This round is on me,” called out Amanda. “Sorry for being an arsehole before.”

“Don’t mention it,” smiled Richard, still feeling rather stressed. He smiled at Kathy, wondering what she had in store next.

“Let’s keep it simple, Dick,” Kathy smiled. She lined up fifteen shot glasses on the bar and began pouring tequila down the line. She flicked her own credit card at Richard’s chest and downed two shots in quick succession. She poured another two, kept one for herself and handed one to Richard. “Think you deserve this after dealing with this lot,” she jerked her chin towards the shotting, gagging, laughing army of sweating women.

A huge flash of lightning followed immediately by an ear-splitting clap of thunder made everyone in the pub duck and scream, even Richard. The power promptly went out, the fridge fans whirred down to a stop and Fleetwood Mac finished on an abrupt silence. After a moment of bewildering quiet, another clap of thunder signaled the rain to pour. All fourteen women and one man walked towards the door, drawn like magnets to the cooling rain. Tops were peeled off, skirts were dumped and thirteen women ran out into the downpour like it was the finest thing that could ever have happened at one o’clock in the morning. Kathy and Richard stared out the door, witnessing the bra and panty clad elation that comes with being utterly pissed in the first thunderstorm of the last three years.

The rain had an eventual sobering effect. Clothes were grabbed and swapped. People stumbled about in the darkness in the pub for handbags and phones. The first goodnights and see you laters were called out when taxis were flagged. Eventually a bemused Kathy and a slightly less stressed Richard were left staring at each other in the doorway. They wandered back over to the bar and pulled up a stool each. Richard poured them both another Tequila shot.

“Cheers to a crazy night,” he raised a glass.

“Cheers, Dick. It’s been fun,” Kathy smiled up at him and jumped in a waiting taxi.

By two in the morning, Richard flicked the switches off on the already dead lights, locked the doors and wandered out the back of the pub to the bunkroom where he slept. He vowed to himself that he would do a stocktake and wondered aloud if there was such a thing as long-life cream. He lay on the bunk, enjoying the cool air, despite the ceiling fan not working with the blackout. His ears continued pounding with the rhythm of the music and a tinny sound echoed somewhere about the room.

A tentative knocking at his door stirred him from an almost sleep. Dick thought he had imagined it, but there it was again. He groaned and rolled over on his bunk, expecting some old bloke’s Mrs had kicked him out and he was in need of an early morning pint. The knocking came again, a little more insistent this time. “Please, Richard. It’s Kathy.” The plea was followed by a muffled sob.

Richard rolled out of bed and staggered to the door. Kathy was standing in the now drizzling rain. Mascara and tears dribbled beneath her eyes, mixing with the bruising that was showing up above her left cheek.

“I’m so sorry, Richard. I didn’t know where else to go. If I went to one of the girl’s places like this, there would be a lynch mob out for Brian.”

“Maybe there needs to be,” he replied, gently placing a towel around her sodden shoulders.

“He isn’t a bad guy,” she weakly insisted.

“Brian is a shithead.” Dick replied, wondering how he missed the bruises that were fading on her arms and neck.

Richard boiled the kettle and made them both a cup of tea. Kathy cleaned herself up the best she could. Richard loaned her his favourite shirt and a pair of too-big boxers to sleep in for the night. He dozed in the armchair while she took the bunk. Dick reckoned himself a bit of a knight in shining armour up for rescuing a damsel in distress.

In the morning, Richard woke to the cavorting of magpies and lorikeets in the giant mango tree behind the pub. The bunk was empty. He sighed resignedly. They always go back to the arseholes, he told himself. Girls who like fun, like Kathy, never go for the bumbling buffoons like you. He jumped through the shower, remembering to do the pub’s first stocktake in years and his two a.m. vow to himself to learn a few cocktail basics. Maybe he could try his hand at a flair bar tending course. He walked through the backdoor of the pub, shaking his head with a smile on his lips when he suddenly froze, wondering how the back door of the pub was open. He adopted what he supposed was a stealthy pose. His fingertips brushed the baseball bat that was leaning against the doorframe. Kathy suddenly stood up, still in his favourite t-shirt with a clipboard in hand and a pen clamped in her teeth.

“Morning Richard, you scared me! I was…”

Richard didn’t let her finish. He dropped the baseball bat and decided in that split second that he was sick of being a buffoon and that a girl like Kathy deserved a guy like him. He wrapped an arm gently around her waist and looked at the clipboard that she waved about. “Is there such a thing as long-life cream?” he asked.

“Yeah, I think I’ve seen it.”

“Good then, we better order some.” He let his hand fall and turned his back on her, looking at the list she had created of their stock. He laughed quietly to himself. Being a buffoon, doesn’t mean you can’t play hard to get.

Kathy stared at Richard’s back. Did she just imagine his arm around her waist? She smiled to herself. She had always liked the bad guys, the manipulators and straight out bastards. Being a fun girl, doesn’t mean you can like a nice guy. Richard turned and faced her, gently touching the cheek that wasn’t purpling with bruise.

“Maybe we can create our own cocktail,” he smiled.