The Difference Is…

It was nearly last call. Tavia hefted a tray of glasses onto the stack. Her bar was almost ready for tomorrow. No good reason to put it off until tomorrow when she could do it today, she mused.

It had been a slow night. A group of men drinking cheap beer and watching the game early, then home to the wife and kids. A few younger couples playing pool and then there was the Lump at the end of the bar. Well dressed but still a Lump. He hadn’t said much beyond, “I’ll have a nother.” Pointing at his glass and indicating another Black and Tan. He had started the night with a few shots of Jack, but then he had settled on the special, Black and Tan.

Seemed silly really, after three or four Black and Tans – one could no longer taste the higher end beer, so why not go cheap. But Tavia was not one to look anyone’s money in the mouth and scoff. She’d by God take the Lump’s money, no skin off her nose; might make up for his lack of manners. Not a true drunk yet, she surmised, but well on his way. She had seen it all before.

Gliding around the bar and into the sea of empty tables, Tavia surveyed her tidy little bar and began turning out neon signs and over the table lamps. Passing the Lump to his left she cheerfully asked, “You need one more? ‘Bout time to head home for the night.” Looking him over, trying to decide if she needed to call old Charlie and have him take the Lump home. His eyes looked clear, so she figured he would be ok. He had nursed the beers all night.

He shook his head. Like Tavia could hear brains rattle and she had a feeling this one’s brains did shake around in the hollowness the head he had on his shoulders.

She ducked into the kitchen and made sure Paul had locked the backdoor and locked the freezer.

When she returned to the bar area, she locked the registers and pocketed the keys.

At forty-two she had been tending this bar or other bars for neigh on 25 years, before she was legal. Her daddy owned a juke joint in the Windy City and she had learned the old fashion way. Her momma had run off with a barber and she had taken over cooking and such while still in high school. Honest work and an honest living. Tavia’s motto was they could look all they wanted – but no touching! While she was 42 she looked every bit of 35 and worked it to her advantage when it suited her, her occupation was slinging suds and nothing else. Her crème caramel skin was smooth and her dreads neat and not salt-n-pepper, but rather deep midnight black. He brown eyes were snappy and wise. Perhaps the eyes gave away her age, but certainly not her trim yet curvaceous figure.

Ready to have the Lump off the third stool from the left side of the bar, Tavia made a show of jingling the keys like the bells on Santa’s sleigh.

The Lump looked up from his empty glass and adjusted his tie. Tavia barely restrained the rush of giggles bubbling against her vocal cords. Like he needed a straight tie at 3 in the morning. The streetlights and other drunks were not going to care. Hell, she scarcely cared. Naked or sharped up, she wanted him out, time to go home. He had spent his money and now out with him. Go sleep it off at home and not on the edge of her bar like Norm.

Tavia turned into the kitchen for her coat. As she returned to the bar, he was smiling at her like the Cheshire cat.

“Oh here we go,” Tavia thought to herself.

“How about you and I go back to my place. It is just up the street. You got a real fine behind and I think I’d like to tap it like a new keg.” He slurred a bit, but looked serious.

“No can do, Mister.”

“Why you ain’t got no ring or nothing on your hand, girl.” He bit out, less charming now.

“Why? Well because this sugar, this grade A brown sugar. Well it be for real men and not any old guy. I done had my share of guys and I am not selling this sugar cheap to a GUY! A man, see he knows what to do with the finest sugar.” Tavia gave him her patented do not yank my f-ing chain here buddy look and as if choreographed, Paul her ex-brother-in-law came around the corner from the kitchen.

Lump stood up without another word and walked out the door.

Paul shook his head. Now Paul, Paul was a man. Had taken the long road but he had paid his dues, learned his lessons and Paul was a man. While it had taken a stint upstate and the breakup of his marriage to her baby half sister to teach him some hard lessons; he had learned them all the same. To Tavia it did not matter how the lesson was learned – just that it had been. But when he had come hat in hand looking for a job, she had given him a job and put up with his PO and all that shit. Took no shit off of Paul, but they had been working together for 5 years and it was smooth as glass and he was a damn fine cook and a strong bar back.

“Now don’t you be laughing at me Paul. You know there is a difference.” Tavia scolded shaking her head and feeling her dreads tickle the back of her neck. The colorful scarf she had wrapped around her head had settled lower on her head and neck as the night had worn on.

“T-girl, I know there is. You done taught me that. Now let’s get on home, we got more of the same tomorrow. ‘Sides, I get to see my babies tomorrow and I am not going to be dead on my feet for that. That be too important.”

Tavia patted his arm, knowing how hard he had fought for unsupervised visits and then sauntered to the door, peaking out the window and making sure the Lump had moved his sorry guy ass along. Then she led Paul out into the crisp fall morning. Tomorrow was another day.

Bill cursed the drizzle. Winter in Philly was for shit. His ex was for shit. His boss was too, Goddamn troll to be precise. He paid his taxes and put in his time for the man and that money grubbing wench was always dragging his ass into court and then insisting he see the kids too. What was it with her?

Walking up the street, he passed Old St. Joseph Church and groaned at a group of Nuns congregated in his path, out front on the sidewalk. There had to be fifty of them. All dressed up in their habits. Looking like a flock of penguins, waddling to and fro and clucking.

As he dodged penguins and grumbled, cursed and fussed, he managed to trip over a homeless man, who was sitting on the steps, to the left of the front door.

“Get an f-ing job. Like the rest of us.” Bill screamed, as he picked himself up off the damp sidewalk and went after his brief case. “I am surrounded by Goddamn incompetence and stupidity.”

He turned, kicked the homeless man’s bags, sending cans and cardboard flying and continued his march up the street, grumbling about the penguins and the lazy bums.

Sister Claire walked over to Old Joe. Claire was the youngest of the sisters, visiting Old St. Joseph’s, as part of a diocese wide educational and outreach seminar. She had been eating with Old Joe in the soup kitchen all week. Patiently listening to his war stories, about a war that was before her time, but no less of an impact on the fabric of her life and trying to learn from his words.

She bent slowly and knelt on the wet street and began to help Joe gather his belongings. It was not much, but it was his. His cardboard for shelter at night and his cans for money. It was a sin that Old Joe had served his country and now his country served itself. It was a sin, that his life was held in a collection of bags. It was a shame that the man who was stalking up the street did not see that which was around him, like a dark fog. The dark cloud of self-righteousness, self-loathing and self centeredness which cloaked him, radiating is foul humor and eating his soul.

After getting Old Joe repacked and ready for his cross-town walk to his humble abode, an abandon building, one he would surely be evicted from sooner rather than later. Father Scott had told her patiently after she suggested Old Joe would benefit from placement in home, Old Joe just could not cope with a house and all that the responsibilities it would entail and Old Joe had walked out of the assisted living facility. Old Joe lived on the land, as he had for over 30 years. Claire could not fathom it. But then Joe observed the code and treated her decently and his fellow squatters, so who was she to judge.

The next day she set out a plate for her and Old Joe and as she sat down, Joe handed her a card. A business card.

“Sister, I be heading out and south if I can. It is getting too cold and they raided the huts last night. I be taking that as a sign from the Lord above. But I want to beg a favor from you. I would do it, but then I am just some bum. Some piece of street garbage. But you, you are an angel, sister. If he’s ta listen, it’d be to an angel I tell you.”

Then the light dawned. This card must have come off the angry man yesterday. Fallen from a pocket or out of his attaché case as he tripped over Old Joe and his belongings.

“Tell him sister, tell’em he only gets one chance. Once chance to make something of his days. To make his mark. He be on the wrong path. I knows, cuz I walks it every day. You could help him, ‘fore it be too late. It be too late for me, but I thinks he could make amends. I had a chance and I made a bad bad choice. One I can’t make right. But he be a young guy yet. He could make a better choice. He could man up. It’s a hard road but the other road, it be harder still. I thought I was some badass GUY – begging your pardon sister. But I did, I thought I was the GUY. And I was. I now be the guy, who’s down on his luck. I never was the man.”

With that Old Joe stood. Held out his hand and shook hers, with a firm and honest grip.

Claire was speechless.

It was Thursday night. Claire stood in the rain, in her habit with her umbrella over her head. She would be leaving the city tomorrow, back to DC and her convent and outreach mission. Since Tuesday she had agonized over Old Joe’s words. She had prayed and heard nothing. Total silence. So she decided the thing to do was try and speak with the guy, the horrible mean spirited guy who would kick a man who was down.

She had no idea what to say. So here she stood in the rain at 5 pm, waiting for the man to walk out of his office building; a huge glass and metal office building. Like a needle in haystack she thought. What a fool’s errand.

Just as she was about to bag the entire thing, she saw him; the cursing, mean, grumpy guy. He turned up the street and she hustled to follow him. Not sure where she was going. They walked for seven blocks and then he turned again.

Paused as if considering something and then entered the door he had paused in front of.

CORNER PUB. Claire gulped, great a bar. Just what she needed. God was silent but man the devil was screaming loud and clear.

Crossing the street, she watched in the window. After about fifteen minutes, she decided it was now or never. It was at least a 15 block back to the church. Time was a wasting.

As she pulled the green wooden door open, she heard the bells chime and then the beautiful bar keep look up and do a double take.

Seeing her target, she marched, like a drill sergeant over to his stool and took the one on his left.

She leveled the woman behind the bar a stare and said, “Club soda with a lime, if you please. He’s buying.” Tavia stifled her amused shock, as the sister pointed to the Lump. Now this was an unlikely pair. The Lump and a Sister, very interesting indeed she mused as she prepared the drink.

Tavia served up the soda on the rocks, walked it over to the sister – who could not have been a day over 25, habit or no.

“Well I will be. I have served many a person, but never a nun. Cheers to your sister.”

Tavia smiled at the Lump, who had now become a semi regular and increasingly unwelcome and surly fixture at her bar. Paul had called the Lump, their cross to bear.

“We’ll just call it on the house.” She said to the unlikely pair and walked back to her accounting ledger at the other end of the bar. It was still quiet, but would fill up, given the game was on later in the evening.

Claire sipped her soda and decided where to begin. How does one tell a guy it is bad form to kick a man when he is down? Now many a nun might use this as an opportunity to turn the guy to God or whatnot. But Claire could care who or where he prayed. That was his choice. Her series of bad choices had brought her to the vocation. She wanted to make a difference and she needed the external discipline the convent brought her. While God did not speak, he pushed and pulled her to this place. It was where she was. But this was not about her.

Tavia was listening with one ear, as only a long time barkeeper could do. This was a great comedy, the surly Lump and the young club soda drinking nun.

Claire pondered the bubbles in her glass and then decided to go for broke, it was getting late and she was already going to hear about it from Mother Superior, might as well get this over with.

She stood up, still feeling Bill seething. His bad mood radiated off of him like an old radiator under a drafty window; the heat differential visible to a discerning eye, vaporous and foul, not unlike the description of the pits of hell in Father Scott’s last sermon.

Tapping his shoulder, she took a deep breath, “Bill, I do not know you and what I know of you makes me suspect that I would not like you, if I had or took the time to get to know you. I am here because the old man asked me to try. Old Joe, thought I could help you. He felt you were a guy worth helping. I cannot say I see what he saw, but I made the trip anyway.”

Self-consciously Claire adjusted her habit and took a deep breath. Tavia had stopped pretending to work and was watching the scene in front her, in her empty bar.

“Sister go bother some other guy, who the hell do you think….” Bill sneered only to stop cold, as Claire raised her pale hand. The determined look on her face could have stopped a runaway freight train.

“I know who I am, Bill. I am a young woman who made a series of very poor choices. I choose to run away from my very stable home at 16 because I knew it all. I choose to walk the streets for money. I choose to become a $2 crack whore. And you know what; I choose to make a change. Maybe not the change others would make and every day I am aware that I can make other choices, but for now I choose to serve God in this way. I am not sure what other choices lay ahead of me. I choose to walk 15 blocks each way to honor Old Joe’s request. He is a good man.”

Bill scoffted at that, assuming the “good man” she was speaking about was the bum lounging on the church stairs. Claire once again adjusted your habit, glanced at the clock over the bar and like someone facing a firing squad took a deep breath, closed her eyes and then continued speaking, only to be interrupted in mid breath.

“Who the hell do you think you are?”

Claire smiled a sad but determined smile.

“I am just a young woman, honoring her promise and trying to help someone. I will tell you what I have learned this afternoon. Perhaps it was the lesson all along. Perhaps this is the lesson Old Joe wanted me to share with you or maybe it is the lesson I was to learn. Only time will tell. This is what I know Bill. A man makes choices and a guy thinks he is entitled to them. My question to you Bill is: Who do you think you are?”

Claire turned, in a swoosh of her long habit and strode out the door, the bells jingling and the door shutting with a resounding thud.

Tavia had watched her float out the door, like a cloud, into the night. She turned back to her book keeping.

Glancing up, at the sound of the bells a few minutes later. Expecting it to be someone coming in and rather shocked to see Bill walking out.

Indeed, who did he think he was? As the minutes ticked by on the clock, Tavia decided, as with all things, only time would tell.

**** I dedicate this to someone very special. You know who you are.****

 

You can go to Elisa Phillips' blog at: http://elisa111.vox.com/