There's a New Bar in Town

41 McCLOSKEY MARK McCLOSKEY THERE'S A NEW BAR IN TOWN There's a new bar in town, and new girls to mind it. They bear their trays like models on a runway; the hanging ferns don't seem green by nature but out of envy for the girls' hair as it sweeps by, and the new wood seems raw with hunger for them. The suits that always seem to mean credit come down in the elevators to try the new bar. Laughter blurts from them like small ham sandwiches which the girls catch and drop in the trashcans in their stations as they add up the next round. Some suits are joined by dresses like silk drawstrings at the unveiling of statues; some gradually rumple and smells arise from them like an old basement. These ones put matchbooks with the bar's name on them in their vests and apologize to the other suits for leaving. My body is on the line in the new bar; the last suit I had eloped with my health insurance. There's nothing you can do for being bald ifyou have no suit except jut your ass out at the bar. My mouth has always been afraid of its own shadow. The new girls look at me from the back of their heads. I hang on long enough to see their hair slip and their shoulders clench toward the gin-and-tonic they dream of having when their shift ends. Their lumpy purses come out of hiding when it does. Their names arrive in advance of who they are like fingers dipped in sink-water. I'm just right; I get the dirt of their lost tips and chipped nails, the runs in the panty-hose of their horoscopes. Their boyfriends trickle through their chit-chat like amonia. 42 THE MINNESOTA REVIEW The new girls are the old girls after all. I see the lives I've had too many of, the cut-offpoint and the dark drive home. I see next evening hanging in the bathroom like a mirror made in heaven for a hunchback. ...