Spoiler! :
Cars were lined up in front of the bar, and rock blasted through its windows. A sign hanging above the door sported a badly-painted picture of a snarling lion on it, beside the words THE LION’S DEN.
“Are we sure this is a bar?” Jack asked. “Sounds more like the name of a porn shop.” He started for the door, but Adele said, “Hang on a minute.”
“What?”
“Give me your hat.”
Jack raised his eyebrows, but she just smiled at him. He removed his cowboy hat and handed it to her. She dug in her jeans pockets, pulled out a few quarters, put them in the hat, and set it on the ground.
“Watch this,” she said.
She took a deep breath and, as more cars pulled up and more people headed for the door, proclaimed in a dramatic voice, “Juliet proclaims her love for Romeo on the balcony!” The people stared. She turned towards the bar, and when she turned back around she had a look of longing on her face.
“Romeo, Romeo,” she sighed, “Wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name, or,” in a more powerful, determined voice, “if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I’ll no longer be a Capulet!”
Some of the people watching wore open-mouthed looks that Jack thought meant they were sure she was nuts, but most of them looked interested. At least they stood there, watching and listening, rather than going into the bar.
“’Tis but thy name that is my enemy. Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face. O, be some other name belonging to a man.”
Now people inside were staring out the grimy bar windows. Some of them came out to watch, beers in hand. Adele seemed not to notice.
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet. So Romeo would, were he not Romeo called, retain that dear perfection which he owes without that title. Romeo, doff they name! And for thy name, which is no part of thee, take all myself.”
Having reached the end of her monologue, she took another deep breath and proclaimed, “Helena mourns the loss of Demetrius' love!” She turned toward the bar again, and this time when she turned back she wore a look of deepest sorrow.
“How happy some o’er other some can be!” she said mournfully, and Jack would not have been surprised to see tears in her eyes. “Through Athens I am thought as fair as she. But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so…”
More Shakespeare, he supposed, but he wasn’t positive; he was not overly familiar with Shakespeare. The onlookers, however, whether familiar or not, seemed riveted. A few of them had even taken seats on the grass and were watching delightedly, and during this monologue, he noticed, they started darting forward in ones and twos to deposit dollar bills or change in his cowboy hat, upturned on the ground beside Adele. Even lacking knowledge of Shakespeare, he couldn’t help but admire her: Her western accent may have been terrible, but there was no doubting her other abilities as an actress.
At the end of a third monologue (which he thought was from Macbeth, though he couldn’t be sure), she bowed deeply to the applause of the crowd. There were a few shouts of encore, but she smiled and answered them with maybe some other time. Then she turned to Jack.
“Impressive,” he said.
“Thanks,” she said, tucking kinky black curls behind her ear. She picked up his hat and counted the money she’d made. “Wow. Forty-two thirty-seven. I like these people, they’re generous. That’s way more than I ever made out of twenty minutes in New York.”
Jack held the door open for her.
“Waitressing was just your day job, huh?”
She smiled and led him to the bar counter.
“Something like that. I only took to street-performing when things got really tight. Hard to make much money at it in New York – there are so many street-performers there to begin with. But I could make a couple bucks when I needed to.” She gave him his hat and half the money. He put the hat back on and asked, “What’s this for?”
“Figured I could cover the motel, now that I have the means. You already have a car repair to worry about.”
“I – well, thanks.” The back of his neck felt hot as he put the money in his wallet, but there was a look in her eyes like a challenge: Just try it. I dare you. He knew she wouldn’t take the money back.
People who had seen her performance kept offering to buy her drinks. She was a drinking a strawberry Smirnoff paid for with her newfound riches, but she refused all offers of more.
“You might say yes to one of them,” Jack said.
She took a sip and shook her head. “Mmm. One drink does it for me.”
She spoke cheerfully of performances she’d done in New York, of people who had given her generous tips and people who had heckled her, of other street-performers, regulars who had chased her away from their corners. Jack listened and finished off several more beers, growing increasingly annoyed with the men who continued to offer her free drinks. They kept interrupting the stories she was telling him, and they seemed not to notice that she was with someone. And when were they going to realize that she didn’t want any more alcohol? She’d been drinking diet Dr. Pepper since she’d finished her single Smirnoff and she’d said no to every one of them yet, but somehow they still failed to get the message. You’d think they’d get the idea after a while, Jack thought bitterly. Then he wondered why he cared, but he couldn’t figure that one out, so he decided not to worry about it and ordered another Pabst. Not like he was driving anywhere tonight anyway. Damn serpentine belt. If it even was that.
Adele seemed to notice the change in his mood after a while, because she quieted down and sipped at her Dr. Pepper, glancing at him every now and then and smiling slightly when he caught her.
“You okay?” she asked finally.
He looked at the bar counter uncomfortably and tugged the brim of his hat lower.
“Fine,” he said. Adele studied him thoughtfully.
“Wanna go for a walk?” she asked.
“Sure.” He felt relieved, for some reason; maybe because the bar, though much smaller than Yeehaw’s, was now just as crowded. People seemed to have come from miles around, and Jack couldn’t see why. It was just a dingy little pub.
They were halfway to the door when Adele was stopped by yet another offer of free alcohol, this one from a man already on the far side of drunk himself. He was a full head shorter than Jack but barrel-chested and confident in the way that only drunk people can be. His eyes were out of focus and a little bloodshot, but his voice was tolerably unslurred. He squeezed between Jack and Adele.
“Hey, beautiful. Lemme buy you a drink.”
“Thanks, no.” Adele tried to shove past him, but he grabbed her wrist and said, “Come on. One drink. I’ll show you a good time, babe.”
“Hey, asshole, she said no,” Jack said. The back of his neck felt hot again. Too damn hot in here, too many damn people.
“She don’t know what she’s missing. Gimme a kiss, darling.”
“Let go of me.” Her eyes flicked to Jack’s face and he could see that she was scared, but her voice was steady. “Let go.”
The stranger twisted her arm and she yelped. Suddenly Jack’s forehead felt hot too, and his ears, and his eyes, and he did the first thing he thought of doing: Grabbed the man about the waist, wrenched him away, and threw him to the floor.
“Let’s go,” he said to Adele. She walked to him quickly and headed for the door, but no sooner had he started to follow her than a bellow like that of a mad cow rang out and something hit him hard in the back. When he turned around the something hit him hard in the front too – the stranger again – but the three punches to Jack’s ribcage were the last punches he got in before Jack grabbed him and hit him back. At first there were cries of “Hey, watch it!” as they bumped into people nearby, but then the cries turned to whistles and cheers and shouts of “Lookit Randy! He’s getting his ass handed to him tonight!”
Jack didn’t feel like he was handing the man his ass. He felt like shit. His back and ribcage throbbed where Randy had punched him, and his fist was sore from a poorly-aimed shot at Randy’s face. He stopped hitting as soon as the bartender came over, yelling for them to break it up. Randy had a nosebleed, but he was still screaming for the fight.
“Look what he did to my fucking face, man, look what he did! Let me back at him, I swear he won’t leave this bar unless someone carries him out – dude, let go of me—!” But the people who had hold of his arms just shook their heads in a fond sort of way and pulled him out of sight.
“Sorry,” Jack muttered to the bartender. The heat had all drained out of him, leaving only embarrassment and the soreness of his back, ribs, and fist. The bartender chuckled.
“You’re okay, son,” he said. “No harm done to the bar, and Randy’s been in worse fights than that before. We don’t worry about it none here.”
“You, um – you don’t happen to have anything for bruises, do you?” Adele asked. Her eyes were wide and she seemed to have no idea how to behave under the circumstances. The bartender chuckled again.
“’S’matter of fact, I do, missy,” he said. “Figured I better have something of a first-aid kit behind the counter, number of faces Randy tries to rearrange. Good thing his aim’s off when he’s drunk.”
He disappeared among the throngs of people and was back a minute later with a small jar.
“Just about out,” he said, holding the jar up to the light. “Here, missy, you take it for him. Not more than enough left in there for a few bruises, I think. Put some ice on ‘em, too, they’ll be fine.”
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