Imbedded

The bar called Geometry has its last call at 0000 H; what civvies call midnight.  She has no choice.  State law demands it.  She must be she.  It’s a law imbedded in the legacy of convention.  Vehicles, land or water, are likewise imbedded.  On an august night of October a conventionally named woman imbeds herself in the establishment bar at the synecdochial bar.  The former is a square, the latter half an irregular hexagon with its east and west edges shorter than its southern edge where the woman imbeds herself on a barstool.

    Bartenders busy themselves at the vertices.  Shaking a dirty martini at one, salting the rim of a margarita  at another.  Her own rum cocktail is almost finished.  She is almost finished.  She finishes her surveying of Geometry, her circle-tables for singles or pairs, her rectangle-tables for parties, her square-tables for a pair of couples, her diamond-patterned tile floor.  Too much fake chastity.  The crossed legs and ankles, the drinks blended and shaken and stirred and frothed.  In a male bar there is simply pouring.  Men pour themselves.  One man has imbedded himself at the east edge and takes healthy shallow swallows of the whiskey poured into a Glencairn glass.  

    “Getting an eyeful?”  She asks.

    He wipes his lips that have a subtly striking Cupid’s bow, “Sorry?” - in a voice that sounds just awakened from a deep sleep in his throat.

    “My rack” - with no anger - “enjoying the view?” she asks because she’s almost finished.

    Another swallow, wipe, “I was looking at your - “

    “Tits, yes, I know.”

    And suddenly she is imbedded in anger, but he disarms her with a lick over his Cupid’s bow and a soft click with the same tongue that performed the lick, “Decolletage.”

    “Day college, what?  I’m not a student.”

    A sealed-lipped smile, “Decolletage.  Mainly, the dog tags you’re wearing.”

    “I’m still not sure what you’re saying, but I guess you don’t mean my tits.”

    “I don’t.”

    “Want to see them up close?”

    “ . . . wha . . . ?”

    “The dog tags, not my tits.”

    The smile is unsealed, “Oh, yeah, sure.”

    His voice is almost fully awake.  Not so gravelly.  Somewhere between tenor and baritone and clear.  Adamant.  He sounds like he had no struggle with puberty.  A glass-emptying swallow, wipe, and he reaches out.  Seriously?  He expects her to stretch, to damn near have to leave her imbedded place of almost finished comfort to put the tags in his reach?  Clutching them in absurd rejection she makes a verbal pounce, “Nevermind.”

    Her pounce lands harmlessly.  She is a declawed cat.  Must be, because he surveys Geometry as she has surveyed her, takes his time, indulges, almost dismissing her, her the woman, her the pouncer, while taking in her the establishment in which he has imbedded himself with a poured drink, poured so as to emphasize his endowment?  or simply his conventional chromosomal character?  Men drink drinks that are simply poured.  Poured straight.  From bottle to glass.  Such straight drinking.  Such contrary speaking.  How many straight pouring men say decolletage?  

“It’s probably personal.  I don’t need to see them.

“Their not mine.”

“Okay.”

A bartender catches his catch of the eyes, nods in understanding of his affirmation and comes to pour.  Pour like a man.  A pour of straight whiskey for a straight pouring man.  

“Stiff drink,” and her voice is sleepy like it might fall asleep in her throat.  A throat she has used to deep-throat her way to management.  She is not a student.  She is a manager at a financial corporation dominated by powerful and persuasively pouring men.  Stiff.  Such a … yes . .  such a stiff word from someone so unphallic.

“I’m building up some Dutch courage.”

“Are you Dutch?”

“No,” he says in a tone suggesting that he thinks she’s an idiot, “I mean I’m trying to relax enough to make a confession.”

“To a priest.”

“No” - you idiot.

“So?”

Swallow, wipe of lips with back of hand, “I was getting an eyeful.”

“. . . well . . . thanks for your honesty.  Satisfied?”

A sudden full throttle swallow and his glass is empty, “Sure.  Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me.  Thank my mom.  She was a D-cup.”

Out of nowhere, “Yes, well, this isn’t a frat party, this is a bonafide bar.  They deal with glasses here, not cups.”

He pulls out his wallet and signals to pay his tab.  An unexplained urgency compels her, “They were my father’s.  The dog tags.”

    He smiles.  Sealed smile again.  Moments pass.  Wan-tup-threep-fower.  Pass like cadence.  Until a bartender comes to settle his bill.  Settled in silence.  He approaches as he puts his wallet back in his rear-pants pocket.  With his index finger - he must be left-handed because he uses his left hand - he traces the outline of the dags as they rest against her decolletage.  There is whiskey on his breath.  Straightly poured whiskey.  He is a poured straight man. Poured straight and pouncing himself in his own phallically permissive way.  

The briefest brevity of the warmth of touch between his fingers and her decolletage as he lifts the tags, “Catholic.  So, that’s why you thought my confession would be to a priest.”

She can answer nothing.

Tags released.  His warmth still hazed lightly on them.  Gone.  Almost.  Instantly.  Now she is finished.  With the circles and the squares and the rectangles and diamond tiles.  The last call is given.  Geometry must consume her shapes into a closeness of closure.  He is not imbedded no more.  He has forgotten her as he has forgotten his first kiss kill love regret all of the above.  And she will imbed herself again in the geometric unexpected pour.  But not before he tells her, “I asked a chaplain how to reconcile murder with Heaven and he asked me, ‘Who says you’re going to Heaven?’”

His confession didn’t lead to a proposition.  Maybe he preferred small tits.  More than once she’s heard men say that more than a handful is a waste of time.  Well.  He was Catholic, her father.  She is somewhere I don’t know.  Because I had gotten the Dutch Courage to disembed myself and go home to Fort Hood to fortify for disengaging with it again for my next tour and imbed myself again in the same war.