other.
“Bitch!” he yelled at no one in particular. “She has ruined my life!”
The bar fell quiet for the first time that night. There was only Branson’s superficial commentary droning from the surviving TVs and, beyond that, an uncomfortable silence.
A bouncer appeared, ready to do his job, but the bar manager quietly told him not to intervene.
Brett spun around, swept the drinks off the bar space in front of him and jumped toward the group, all the while haunted by Joanne’s smiling face on another monitor.
All the colour had drained from his face, tears lined the footballer’s dangerous eyes. His lips were moist with saliva. His eyelids fluttered. Sweat fell from his furrowed brow. He shook his head and repeatedly brought his fist down on a shelf, eventually smashing the unit away from the wall.
Most of the group of men was still standing in the midst of a human hurricane.
“Hey man can we, like, help you?” the tall man asked hesitantly.
“Bitch! The fucking Indian Hills bitch! She took me for everything. Aagggghhh,” Brett roared so loud that if anyone actually walked LA’s sidewalks they would have heard his primal scream from the other side of the street outside Joe’s Bar.
Without warning, Mr Football viciously punched in the eye the smallest guy in the group, one of the dudes he had just been photographed with.
The bewildered victim flew backwards and crashed heavily into another group of patrons, knocking several other men over. The elbow of one of these falling men, in turn, knocked an autographed picture of the LA Eagles 2007 Super Bowl winning team off the wall. The glass cracked, the frame buckled and the market value of one of Joe’s most prized collectables took a sudden dive as it hit the floor hard.
The tall man stepped back from the fray. This group of heroic men had no intention of physically challenging the mountainous and unpredictable Brett Farrell who had, by now, grabbed another couple of shot glasses and was again standing back at the bar. Sobbing like a baby.
Brett continued to fixate on the Estee Lauder telecast and self medicate with alcohol. He engaged with the hostess he had assaulted in a familiar tone, as if nothing had happened 15 minutes earlier.
“Why is she doing this to me? Please, tell me why?”
Kathy, the long-suffering hostess, snapped. She seriously thought about pulling the pistol out of her purse and putting an end to Brett’s night of shame but, unfortunately for Joanne and Angela, she thought better of it.
Instead she marched up to the bar manager.
“I can’t believe you won’t call the police on this psycho pig. I quit. I’m out of here before I cap his ass!” she said angrily and paused, hoping her boss was going to intervene, deal with the footballer and ask her to stay. But he just stared evasively at his shoes.
“I’m out of here right now, and know this bro I’m dialling 911. It’s the first thing I’ll be doing when I’m safely in a cab,” Kathy said assertively.
The bar manager lifted his head but would not look her in the eye as he replied: “I’m real sorry Kathy but he’s just too well connected. You can call 911, I don’t blame you, but I swear there ain’t no-one going to do nothing to about psycho Mr Football. Not in this fucked up city.”
He glared down the bar at the drunken wreck of a man and pointed.
“That low mothafucker is bigger than god.”
The bar manager finally made eye contact with his best ex employee.
“What I can do is pay you triple for tonight’s full shift. And because I’m real sorry to see you go like this, Kathy, if you sign a non-disclosure agreement before you leave, I’ll pay three months wages into you account first thing tomorrow. Whaddya say girl?”
While Kathy nodded blankly, it was now she who avoided looking her ex boss in the eye.
“OK. Get changed and meet me in my office. I’ll be there in 10 minutes,” the manager said. She nodded again, turned and walked away full of disbelief.
The bar manager shook his head and pretended to survey the stock beside the main cash register.
Kirstie, the other hostess, stared intently at him from the other end of the bar.
“Fuck this,” the manager muttered to himself when she finally caught his eye. He picked up the bar phone and touched three buttons. “It’s Joe’s. Yeah, yeah. We got a code nine going down. Send a VIP security posse down here right away.” He gently placed the phone back down in its cradle and glared at Brett sitting four metres away. “Fuck you” he muttered and practiced a slow motion punch.
Kirstie walked up and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Thank you boss,” she said, and then scooted down the bar to serve the tall man.
Unaware of anyone and anything else, the footballer sobbed and continued interrogating the universe as he watched Joanne and Branson hug on the television. He noticed how comfortable and relaxed their body language was.
“Why? Why? Why?” Brett croaked.
But TV land was completely oblivious to his achy breaky heart. Joanne continued to smile ever so sweetly from the screens. Brett was transfixed and appalled as Branson’s lecherous hand tenderly stroked Joanne’s back with what his paranoid mind took to be a sense of familiarity.
“Aagggghhh!” the football super hero screamed again. “You’ll pay for this slut, I promise. You are riding for a fall.”
Half of Brett’s fan club had remained at the scene of the crime. They had witnessed Mr Football’s anti social behaviour first hand, yet most of them immediately excused him because of the blind filter of herd behaviour that groupies of all descriptions are so prone to.
“Typical of these uptown girls. She ditched him the moment she was famous … It’s such a tragedy, the Super Bowl is a week away and our man, Mr Football, is a fucking wreck. I mean, just look at him,” the tall man noted earnestly as he returned from the bar with a tray loaded with full glasses.
“It’s so wrong. It’s so unfair of her,” agreed the fat man who was surveying the basket case at the bar. “What the hell was she thinking of?”
“Someone from the Eagles should be talking to her,” the tall man suggested, a proposition the group’s body language suggested they supported. “The club should pull her fancy Hollywood ass back into line.”
“Right. You’re so right. The only way we are going to win Super Bowl 2009 is if Mr Football is in the zone,” the fat man said. “Why aren’t the Eagles on to it already?”
With the bar manager and Kirstie watching from the side lines, two tall thin bouncers wearing loose black trousers, long sleeved black shirts and black Nike sport shoes appeared at the bar on either side of Brett.
“Mr Farrell, sir, you’ve had enough to drink tonight. It’s now time for you to leave,” the taller man said in a measured, respectful tone.
The bar manager walked toward the football groupies with his arms outstretched and a plastic smile. “Gentlemen, I’m real sorry about this interruption,” he said. “Please accompany me to the VIP bar where your drinks will be on the house for the rest of the night.”
“You the man,” the tall man said and slapped the bar manager on the back. The group collected their drinks and followed him away from the bar.
Brett jumped out of his stool. Despite being unsteady on his feet, he shaped up, in martial arts style, ready to fight.
The