There is a bar, just a regular, normal, average bar and in it there are seven people, although if you include the barman - and why wouldn’t you? - there are eight.
Three of these people are sat in a table by the window talking loudly and laughing and waving their hands all over the place. They probably work together and are all wearing smart clothes, loosened at the neck, jackets cast over chairs, sleeves rolled up. They are talking about people from this department and that department and they generally aren’t saying very nice things about those people but they are laughing as they say these things so it doesn’t sound too malicious. Perhaps they are simply blowing off steam after a difficult day.
Two of these people are sat at a table away from the window and the loud, laughing, waving people and they are talking quietly between each other. They could be a couple or they could be friends, but either way, that is where they are. They are sat at the same table but on opposite sides and they are facing each other, head inclined to the other. They could be talking about something particularly serious or no serious at all but each is listening intently to what the other is saying.
The barman is out back somewhere, moving crates or doing something that involves him rattling bottles and cans and scraping heavy things over the ground.
The other two people are sat alone at opposite ends of the long, narrow, curved bar, drinking quietly. The woman, for one of the two people sat alone at the bar is indeed a woman, is sipping her drink – a clear drink with ice, maybe a vodka tonic, maybe a small lemonade - and reading a book, one of those heavy hardback ones that can hold the weight of doors or stay open on a flat surface by itself and often draw inane comments about the reader’s intellectual prowess from other people who see it, as if a big book means anything more than the writer had a lot of things to say and a lot of time in which to say them.
The man, because it is often a man and woman in stories like these, although it isn’t always and it doesn’t have to be; the man is sitting on a stool with his head bowed and turned to the wall with all the beer mats attached to show customers what they can and can’t choose to drink and has his head resting in one hand so it is difficult to see his face. He is drinking what looks to be a light, bottled beer and it is almost empty; at the bottom is a scrunched up lime and probably more spit than alcohol. He also appears to be crying; quietly, silently and it is this that brings him to the attention of the woman opposite. His body is shaking slightly, quivering almost. At first she thinks he is laughing at something, one of those laughs that you have to conceal from other people when you are alone else the other people around you think that you are either laughing at them and they want to know why or that there is something wrong with you. Especially when you are laughing to yourself alone in a bar on a Tuesday evening, which is when this all takes place. But the woman thinks she notices a tiny little glint of a tear on the man’s face that drips onto his hand and as he has stayed in this position too long to be laughing, she is sure he is crying.
Eventually, he wipes his face with the palm of his hand, sniffs, takes a drink and catches the eye of the woman before looking quickly away. The woman looks quickly away too for fear of embarrassing the man. In the fraction of a second that they do make eye contact however, the woman thinks she recognises him. He isn’t a friend, he isn’t family and he isn’t a work colleague. She is sure, not one hundred per cent, but she is sure, absolutely sure, that he is an actor. Not just a TV actor either, but a real actor, someone whose films she’s seen at the cinema and on video. In fact, she thinks, didn’t she just see something he was in the other week when she went out with her girlfriends? It could really be him too she thinks – didn’t she see something in the paper the other day about him moving into one of those expensive town houses up near that place where all the rich writers and actors live? She likes going there when the weather’s nice with friends and walking around the quiet, clean streets. She wonders if she should go over to the man to see what’s upsetting him. What’s his name? She’d need to know his name if she was going to see what’s upsetting. Would she? Maybe not. Maybe she can help, maybe she can cheer him up. Then again, he might think she’s an overeager fan and tell her where to get off. She’s not a fan though – she can’t even remember his name. She’s just seen a few of his films, that’s all. She doesn’t really go in for all that celebrity rubbish. Even so, he doesn’t know that – he might get really angry with her and throw things at her and rant at her about his need for privacy and say things like can’t a guy just sit in a bar and have a drink and a cry anymore without being hassled for an autograph or a photo?
But then again, he might not. They might actually get on really well and become friends or maybe even lovers. No, not lovers, she isn’t attracted to him. But friends, definitely. She could be his non-famous down-to-earth friend in whom he confides when the rest of the world doesn’t understand. Is it him? She’s not sure now. She wishes she read the magazines that her sister read, then she would know for certain. If she did read those magazines, she might also know why he is upset. Those magazines always have photographs like that. Of famous people crying or being drunk or high or all three. Has his wife left him? Is he married? He might not be - he might be gay. Maybe that’s why he’s crying. Maybe his wife has left him because she found out he was gay. He doesn’t look gay. She’s pretty sure he has a wife – isn’t that why he moved into that fancy house in the first place? Didn’t his wife want to be closer to her family? Maybe he has a drug problem - no - an alcohol problem. He’s fallen off the wagon and that’s why he’s upset. There could be hundreds of reasons. Tomorrow, she decides, she’s going to buy the biggest and best celebrity magazine she can find instead of her usual paper so she never finds herself in this situation again. And she’ll start reading those free papers she always gets thrust in her face every evening at the station. She’s never read them because they look like they’re full of the kind of news that isn’t going to be news for very much longer. Also there’s always piles of them on every seat on the train she takes to get home and she hates it when people waste things like paper and anyway she prefers reading books more than anything, like the one she’s reading now by a writer who might be famous but definitely wouldn’t be in a free paper or a celebrity magazine and even then she probably wouldn’t recognise him, even if he’d been sat on the other end of the bar crying over his failed marriage/sexuality/drug or alcohol problem.
Maybe she should just ask him outright if he’s alright and if there’s anything she can do to help. She realises she’s been staring at him again for a while and now he’s looking at her too. She catches herself and looks away. It isn’t him, it’s not the actor guy she thought it was, just a normal person with normal person problems. She decides that it’s a good thing that he isn’t the famous actor she thought he was because she really wouldn’t have had a clue what to say to him. She probably would have said something really stupid like Oh I Love Your Work and he’d ask which one her favourite was and she wouldn’t be able to answer because she wouldn’t remember any of his films and she would have to keep calling him You because she still couldn’t remember his name even though it wasn’t him and she didn’t need to remember. So it was a good thing but she was still going to start reading the free papers and her sister’s magazines and she was still going to buy her own magazines as well because if she was ever in this situation again and it was for real she wanted to be prepared.
