after hours at the almost home
after hours at the almost home
tara yellen
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Unbridled Books
Denver, Colorado
Copyright © 2008 by Tara Yellen
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof,
may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Yellen, Tara.
After hours at the Almost Home / Tara Yellen.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-932961-48-5
1. Bars (Drinking establishments)—Fiction. 2. Colorado—Fiction.
I. Title.
PS3625.E455A69 2008
813′.6—dc22 2008000462
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Book Design by SH • CV
First Printing
For my mom, my dad, and Betsey
When the blackbird flew out of sight, It marked the edge of one of many circles.
—WALLACE STEVENS,
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”
after hours at the almost home
The Almost Home, the bar and grill at 2nd and Middleton, was not an old building or a new building, it was somewhere in between—built quick and sturdy, gray brick, steel trim, the type of place you’d overlook if it wasn’t smack-dab in the middle of Cherry Creek, Denver’s affluent shopping district. In a row of mostly shoe and stationery stores, the Almost Home stood out unapologetic, chugging smoke, its beer signs the first hint of twilight in the neighbor-hood—coming to life, it seemed, suddenly, though really they were on all day. Even from the outside, even without seeing anyone enter or exit, you could tell this wasn’t where the businessmen and women and the Dolce & Gabbana shoppers went for lunch. It was the kind of place a person could go to drink before noon. Maybe stick around for the burger special, watch the news.
On certain days, however, for court verdicts or important games, everything was different. People came from all over and the Almost Home transformed. Nothing technically changed, of course, aside from the occasional plastic banner or two, but it was as though, in an instant, the bar would step from its own shadows to assume center stage in Cherry Creek. Like the beer lights: before you knew it, there it was.
Tonight was the Super Bowl. This was the second year in a row Denver was playing. Last year they’d won, and this year they were expected to win again. At 3:30 in the afternoon, an hour from kickoff, the Almost Home was filling up. Throngs of people arrived in clumps. Families and college kids and fans and friends of fans—anyone you could think of.
One of them was JJ.
She stood outside. People passed her by, entering the Almost Home in flashes of orange and blue—hats and ski coats and face paint. It was winter. She was in Denver. Exactly on time, JJ was prepared—she’d stocked her purse with pens and breath mints, was wearing the brand of no-skid sneakers the manager had suggested—but she didn’t go in, not yet. Instead, she took a few seconds to picture it clearly: one day far in the future, while strolling past this corner, coming from brunch or maybe the symphony, she’d catch a waft of french-fry grease. She’d stop. She’d pull in the smell and think, I remember that first day.
It was exhilarating now to conjure it in the then, and it gave JJ perspective on the past year. Failed beginnings made you more interesting, she thought, not less. She’d gone places. She’d moved five times and worked at six jobs. She knew exactly where to find the most economical garbage pail, dish drainer, and bath mat in any Target, anywhere in the country; she knew how to disinfect a secondhand mattress. If nothing else, disorientation gave her this: the drive to propel herself from disorder to order. It gave her antsy hope.
And now, finally, standing before this building—which was otherwise unremarkable in its boxiness, in its blank slabs of chipped and salt-stained brick—it seemed to JJ that things could actually fall into place.
There was an advantage to such foresight. It offered a warning:
Don’t mess this one up.
1.
JJ was in the way. The aisles were crammed, people bumped into her—there was no place to stand. “Excuse me,” she said. She squeezed her elbows close to her body, then tripped through a jangle of chairs. She’d never waited tables before, and so far all they’d had time to show her were how to change the soda syrups and where to find napkins. Customers grabbed her arms and asked her for things she couldn’t hear or didn’t understand. “Go Broncos,” she said.
“Do something,” a tall waitress hissed as she passed, her ponytail whapping JJ in the mouth. The waitress was carrying a tray of drinks high in the air and was moving fast without looking like she was moving fast. People got out of the way. JJ tried to follow her, to ask what it was exactly she should do, but the waitress was already far ahead, the crowd filling in behind her, the tray of drinks traveling over heads the only proof she hadn’t vanished entirely.
JJ did her best. She handed out napkins, refilled waters. Tried to keep track of the servers. There were three of them: the tall blond waitress, another waitress who was older, in her thirties or forties, and a waiter who’d given her a quick tour earlier and told a funny joke about a goat that couldn’t spell. His head was shaved and he was big. Really big. Tall and overweight both. He wasn’t the type you’d imagine waiting tables—maybe not even someone you’d want around food. But the customers seemed to like him. One table applauded when he brought them pitchers of beer, another chanted his name. As for the bartenders, JJ couldn’t see the one working now, way back there behind the swarm of customers—and had only briefly met the lanky, dark-haired guy who’d been behind the bar when she first arrived. He hadn’t had time to say much.
It was fun, JJ decided. Or it looked fun: the activity, the purpose. How the servers all held their mouths in the same fixed manner. The way they balanced trays and carried plates across their wrists and up the insides of their arms. The food slid a bit on the plates, and the ketchup bottles that they stuck heads-down into their aprons waggled dangerously with every step, but nothing fell. Not even with the tall blonde and her cloppy heels. Amazing, JJ thought, watching her swoop a tray of bottles over someone’s suddenly raised arm.
Something good happened in the football game. People jumped up and cheered. It was a strange mix of people. A woman dressed like a witch stood up and covered her ears. Across the room, at the midpoint of the long, boomerang-shaped bar, the big waiter—Keith—waved his tray and hollered for the bartender. “Order up!” The servers got their drinks there, at the wait station. It was marked by two silver handlebars curving into question marks. Like the kind you saw going into swimming pools.
Customers yelled, “Beer!” “Shots!” “Grandma,” a woman called and held up her glass. Grandma. Maybe JJ’d heard it wrong.
The