O' Fateful Night

Mayo Man

The holidays always left Kylie a little deflated, and this year looked to be shaping up the same as the rest. As soon as her room mates finished their finals they bolted for hearth and home leaving Kylie to hold down the fort in their rental house where tinsel garland too short for their four foot tree hung in straight zigzagged lines trying to make the span from side-to-side and top-to-bottom across only the front limbs. Too little trying to go too far, just like her school budget which was why Kylie was taking the year off and picking up extra hours behind the bar.

Tabby's American Grill & Bar was a landmark not far from King's Island Cincinnati. The local hangout was frequented by a loyal compadre of regulars, light traffic off I-75, and all manner of revelers in between. Kylie might have made better tips elsewhere, one of the bars closer to campus for instance, but Tabby's was family owned, friendly and neither the owner nor the cooks allowed anyone to get overly frisky with the girls behind the counter. Three of those girls were daughters of the owners who took Kylie under their wings and turned her into one of the best bar keeps around. A fact that irritated Kylie's mother no end and made the daughter of that cheating ho smile every time she thought of it.

The crowd during the holidays swelled and Kylie took on as many hours as she could including some time now serving as night manager. Truth was the bad economy hit Tabby's pretty hard, the place was on the market, and if it didn't sell early next year the family would probably have to shut the business down. Management experience and a stellar recommendation were all Kylie would take with her. Maybe the distraction of these thoughts was why she didn't initially notice the loner.

He usually sat about as far from the bar as you could without getting in the way of the pool players at the back of the room. Tabby's only accommodated two pool tables set end to end with an aisle on the far right for foot traffic, mostly smokers in the winter, who went to the narrow deck beyond. He picked up a game occasionally, drank Coors Light religiously regardless of the specials, and ate chicken tenders with mayonnaise like they were going out of style. Thus he was dubbed Mayo Man after only a handful of twice a week visits. Thursday, Kylie's regular closing night, was always one of his visits.

If he stared over long at the girls behind the bar, it was hard to tell what with the two big screens on the wall behind them. Did his gaze follow them to the kitchen or was he checking out the Keno display to the left of that swinging door with its round port hole window? Mayo Man was a smoker, wore Dickie jeans, a doe skin colored Carhartt jacket and scuffed up work boots, a duplicate of half the men who hit Tabby's for their great food and to catch whatever sports they followed on the big screens in an atmosphere of down home camaraderie.

Football season was winding down with the Redskins going to the playoffs for the first time since 1999, but college basketball provided the back drop for the tall man who did catch Kylie's eye that fateful Thursday. His black hat blocked the score at the bottom of a side screen when he entered shortly after Terri took Mayo Man's order. The man in black, Kylie immediately thought, stopped there to survey the area as if he were looking for someone. He cut a striking figure, unsettling somehow, then chose a high top table backed to the wall not far from the Keno sign. There he perched on the bar stool like a finely feathered raven. From his fitted leather jacket to his black boots, the man in black was a tad overly dressed for Tabby's, and Kylie wondered what brought him in. She was certain she'd never seen him before. Maybe never seen anyone quite like him before.

He made her edgy. Her own self-conscious reaction included smoothing her chin length bob and straightening her holiday antlers. The gesture immediately irked Kylie. Always independent and self-reliant to a fault, no one intimidated Kylie Barnes. She chalked her nerves up to managing responsibilities on such a busy night and slipped out from behind the bar to prove it was nothing else. "I've got this one, Terri. Mayo Man's order is up."