cliché musings

It starts like a bad joke–a woman walks into a bar, et cetera, et cetera–except there’s a set up but no punchline.

Everyone stares as she enters, heads lifting up with drinks halfway to their mouths, thirty-seven pairs of eyes following her shaky steps to the counter. Eliza notices, of course she does, but she can pinpoint the moment she stopped caring at around six hours and twenty-three minutes ago. They’ll stare, jab their friends in the side, point and say look, what the hell, stare for another eight and a half seconds, and then go back to whatever boring conversations they were having about the kind of macaroni and cheese they should buy and whether or not they should cut their hair, or something like that, probably. Maybe someone will be uncaring enough to take a photo, and then Eliza will be lucky enough to end up on Twitter and Instagram through reposted screenshots with 250,000 likes.

She slides onto one of the empty bar stools, second from the end of the counter. She has to lift the bottom of her dress and bunch it over her calves, and hold onto the seat while she swings a leg over, settling the 2-inch heel of her shoe on the stool’s attached metal bar. She does it all with 96 percent of the grace and dignity of a damsel climbing onto her glorious white steed.

The bartender is shaking a drink, eyes shifting her way every other second, probably meant for a customer who’s also pretending not to look. Eliza rests her head in her hand, four acrylic fingernails tapping on the wood counter. 

“What’s with the outfit, miss?”

She tilts her head, eyes meeting the man sitting to the left of her. He must be at least twenty years older than her, dark hair beginning to gray, deep laugh lines and a wrinkling forehead, but there’s something boyish in his face, with a round jaw and curious eyes.

Eliza then looks down at the dress. The purple fabric ruffles and drapes down to 1/4th of an inch above her ankles, and puffs out to the width between her shoulders, thanks to the hoopskirt that cost $22.97 extra. The corset, tightened to slim her waistline by at least an inch, is silver with lace swirls of black and splashed magenta, intending to come off metallic and expensive but looking like two, seven-inch pieces from Joann’s Fabrics glued to a cotton dress. The neckline is just wide enough–she guesses five inches, more or less–to be enticing, by Victorian standards, anyway.

She got it eight years ago, when the high school drama club put on an original production about the love affairs of 19th century, English nobility. The run time lasted a total of 41 minutes, and she had three lines to project to an audience of parents, while in her stuffy and scratchy Victorian outfit.

“What about it?” she says back. She keeps her face neutral, eyebrows raised in confusion, just to be even more frustrating.

The man is silent for three seconds, peering at her. “Is it a costume or something?” he asks.

Eliza shrugs. “Not really.”

He gives up. “Okay,” he says, and turns back to his drink.

The bartender finishes the order, and comes over to Eliza’s side of the counter. He looks at her dress at first, but seems to remember his years of customer service and flicks back to her face. “Can I get you anything?”

“Just a rum and Coke, please.”

She can’t sense dozens of eyes on her anymore, and assumes most of the bar has gone back to macaroni and hair-cutting conversations. She almost feels disappointed, and wishes someone really did get that photo. She’d show up on one of those meme accounts Nathan follows, and he’d be, like he likes to say, shook. He’d realize he was wrong, and that she was spontaneous and funny and interesting to be around and not consumed by her job. Not that she wants him to, of course. It’s already been six hours and twenty-seven minutes, so she doesn’t care anymore.

The bartender sets a glass down in front of her, dark brown liquid bubbling with cubes of ice. Eliza raises the glass, and downs the entire drink in seven and a half seconds.

“Can I get another?” she calls to the bartender, who’s no longer watching her because of the dress.

“Sure, ma’am,” he says. “Uh, got anything on your mind?”

“Do you think I’m being spontaneous?” she blurts. She just really has to know.

“Sorry?” he questions, while pouring in the rum.

“Do you think I’m being spontaneous?” she repeats. “Like, I’m not at home doing statistic shit. I decided to go to a bar in a big dress because it seems like fun.”

“And you just had the dress lying around?”

She pauses. “Well, no. It was still with my old things at my mom’s. So I drove down there to get it and then drove back here.”

“I would just ask you if it’s really spontaneous if you planned this out, is all.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that, so she doesn’t say anything at all.