Morgan

I’ve always loved the sound in a bar moments before last call. I love the sound of tension. You can hear it if you listen closely in those moments when the jukebox stops playing, the glasses stop clinking, and the people stop yapping. If you open your ears and try to shut down every other sense, that same dive takes on an almost ethereal quality; it’s almost like reading people’s minds. Tonight is full of back-story. I like watching the people who haven’t had quite enough to drink, the ones who have obviously had too much, the ones who are leaving with someone they shouldn’t be leaving with, the ones who are getting left behind… yes that one, I think I’ll talk to her next.

My name is Blue. I guess you could call me a sociopath; at least that’s what my wife told me last fall, just before she took my beloved daughter back to the east coast where she said she was going to raise her in the “proper” environment. I googled the word once. The definition didn’t really seem to fit. Glibness and superficial charm aren’t qualities that I would necessarily say I possess. I know people. I just do. I know people and I know how to get people to do what I want them to do. I wouldn’t say that makes me a sociopath. An observer of sorts, a people watcher, if you will… that’s what I am. And Blue isn’t the name I was given, that is just an alias.

She just sat there, forlorn. Her vodka-cranberry was sweating, the coaster beneath it soaking. I watched as she sucked it dry, I watched her stare at the melting ice. The Mexican guy she came with was playing darts in the corner with a thinner, blonder, younger version of her. Maybe he’s a sociopath… not me. I glanced cautiously in her direction, making sure I read her correctly the first time. She flashed me a quick smile as soon as she noticed me looking. She was prettier than she probably knew. She had problems with her weight, which was apparent. Her dishwater hair, although poorly maintained was long and thick. I liked this.

“Is someone sitting here?” I motioned toward the barstool between us.
The girl feigned standoffishness as she shook her head. I got up from where I was sitting and took my cognac to the spot next to her.

“Goose and cranberry,” I called out to the bartender, “I’ll have another one, too.”
I looked closely at her hands. She had bruises on her wrists and they looked as though they trailed right up her arms, but her sleeves were pulled past her elbows so I really couldn’t tell. When she noticed me looking, she tucked her hands beneath the bar and onto her lap. Her entire body shifted in the stool and the discomfort I felt dripping off of her aura a second ago intensified. I saw her glance toward the Mexican guy again. It was almost as if she was silently screaming for his attention, trying to get him to notice that a gentleman had just bought her a drink. Not a sociopath, a gentleman.

“Thank you,” the girl said quietly when the bartender brought the drinks over.

“What’s your name?” I asked. I didn’t care for a name. I just wanted to know how she planned on getting home later. She hesitated.

“Lucy.”

“Is that your boyfriend, Lucy?”

“No… we just met,” I could tell she was lying. There’s nothing I hate more than a liar. I looked more closely at her face; she wasn’t wearing any makeup and she looked older than she probably was. I gave her a little too much credit when I said she was prettier than she had assumed. She wasn’t very pretty at all. This girl was a liar and a cheat, quite possibly a floozy too. I noticed the shift in my mood and I sought to regain my placidity. My stare softened immediately.

“Well, Lucy, I’m Morgan. And it’s a pleasure to meet the most beautiful woman in the building tonight.

She blushed, “Hardly,” her body relaxed; she brought her hands back up to the bar and tightly gripped the bucket of goose. She took a long sip.

Careful this time not to let her look into my eyes, I reached up and brushed a strand of her stringy hair out of her face; she didn’t exactly shudder away with my touch. My eyes gave me away sometimes, especially after a few drinks. But this, this was too easy.

I read once that nervous people often had the desire to please people. I had that experience once too. Years ago, before I met my wife I frequented a coffee shop in New York’s East Village whose head barista was just about the most nervous little piece of flesh I had ever set my eyes on. She needed me, it seemed. And for months, I was the one to whom she could tell her secrets; her dad never loved her, her mother was a whore… such as she, and her boyfriend was sleeping with someone else. So she did too. I continued that affair for a while, until I caught her lying to me. She had told me that she was no longer sleeping with him, but she was. I could smell his stench all over her one night. She had been such a lying whore that I didn’t even think twice about what I did to her. Not that it would have mattered in the end, because I never could just let people go, I had to send them away.

Lucy was so obviously nervous that I could just about hear her heart pounding beside me. Her every breath caught in her throat and I could hear it over the barroom clatter. She tucked that same piece of hair behind her ear and shifted the barstool toward me slightly. Lucy’s nervousness made boring this entire event, but it was starting to fade… and I wanted to finish what I had started.

Our conversation unfolded more quickly than one would expect from perfect strangers in a dive bar in downtown Los Angeles; perhaps it was a combination of my people skills and her inherent discomfort with life. She grew up in the suburbs and moved to the city to pursue a career in the film industry. Naturally, I thought; this would be the city for that. Little did she know that Hollywood was looking for beauty, a trait that she obviously did not possess. Lucy finally admitted that the man with the younger woman was actually the father of her child.

“He doesn’t love me the way he seems to love other women. I mean, look at him,” Lucy narrowed her eyes at the couple playing darts in the corner, “What does that skank have to offer him? …I’m the mother of his child, for God’s sake!”

I smiled to myself knowing what that Mexican guy in the corner was up to. That inner smile, stayed hidden as I let my face take on a sympathetic, more nurturing gaze. I gently grabbed her hand and smoothed my fingers over a rough patch of her skin. His name is Antonio, and he’s the one who gave her the bruises.

“He was so sweet when we met. Then I had my son and things… things changed, y’know?” I listened to her as she told me the story, shaking my head at the appropriate times.

I matched her stories with some of my own. I used the story I normally used, and it just so happened to fit into Lucy’s scheme. I’m a movie producer and I can get her in… I know people, it seems. You see, I know people. I know people and I know what they want. So sitting in that bar… I got to know Lucy a little more. And she got to know a little bit about Morgan. That poor bitch… she had no idea about Blue.

“Do you need a ride home, Lucy?”

She glanced, once more, to the dartboards in the corner. And just like that, I had her. We finished our drinks and we were gone.