“What’s your name, darling?”

“Georgia.”

“Ah! Georgia like the state— Georgia on my mind.” He rolled a fat cigar around between his teeth, and the fine lines around his eyes flared like ripples on water. “You look pretty hungry, honey.”

“I eat.”

“You want something now?” He tapped the bourbon-shine bartop. “It’ll blunt that cannibal gleam.”

“What are you saying?” Georgia lifted one chicken-wing clavicle, snappable and fragile.

He grinned from around his cigar. “Only that there’s free food if you want it.”

That peculiar silence of public spaces that is not really silence whelmed up around them. Georgia studied her hungry eyes in the mirror behind the bar.

“I’d rather have a drink.”

“Then have a drink.” He stuck up a pudgy index finger that was thicker than his cigar and called over the bartender.

Georgia put in her order.

“That liquid diet will keep you hungry.”

“Why are you so worried about what I eat?”

“I worry about what everyone eats.”

“Why’s that? You a nutritionist or something?”

“Do I look like a nutritionist?”

Georgia rolled a glassy gaze across him, but she said nothing.

“I’m just a dude who doesn’t like to see anyone hungry.”

“That’s a weird hobby, I’d say. You allowed to smoke that in here?”

“I can smoke anywhere I like, honey.”

“Aren’t you big?”

“That’s what she said.”

“I did say it. I’m a she, aren’t I?”

“Are you? You never can tell these days. I feel bad for ugly women.”

Georgia’s liquid gaze stilled above her liquid dinner. “You saying I’m ugly?”

“No, but it sounded that way, didn’t it?”

Georgia stayed quiet.

“Truth is nobody’s anything these days, and I’m disgusted by all of ’em.”

“But not enough to quit worrying about what they eat.”

He smiled around his cigar, and the wrinkles near his eyes were like paper mache as if his face was a mask. “What are you doing here? Someone with as fine a clavicle as you shouldn’t be chatting up some old bum like me.”

“Bums like you buy the best liquid dinner.”

“Ah! Now, there’s a life purpose.”

“Only the best.”

“Could be worse.”

Again, the awkward clatter of the room overwhelmed them. Georgia sipped her cocktail and ogled the square-chinned bartender. He was the only handsome man in the place.

“What made you pick this place tonight?”

“The hat on the sign.” Georgia dimpled her cheek.

“Such a narrow string of fate.”

“Whose fate?”

“Your own, of course.”

“What’s the matter with it?”

He smiled around the edges of his cup and leaned forward to displace ash into an empty glass. It fell in a gray starburst atop the crystal.

“What makes you think the narrow path is bad?”

Georgia frowned.

“Wide is the way unto destruction. Destruction is more inclusive than the modern feminist.”

Still, Georgia frowned.

“You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

Relieved to find some words to stand on, Georgia smiled. “Not really.”

“Yes— Yes. Such is fate. Scorn the narrow, hard path— It’s the easiest thing. How’s your drink?”

“Wet.”

“Someone with a clavicle as nice as yours shouldn’t say things like that.”

Georgia’s eyes widened. “What did I say?”

He smiled, the edge of his lips turning up. “Oh, nothing.”

Georgia looked around, thinking maybe she should find a different drink buyer once she was finished with this one.

“You always pick on the girls that come in here?”

“There’s not too many girls who come in here.”

Georgia noticed that this was true.

“It’s what you get for choosing bars based on their signs.”

“That’s not very nice.”

“Truth isn’t obligated to be nice. In fact— nice things and nice people are rarely truthful. Nice people are in the business of making you feel good, and truth doesn’t always make you feel good.”

Georgia looked at him with a tense frown taut between her brows. “I’m not sure the drink is worth the conversation.”

He grinned around his cigar and hooked it from his mouth. “Ah! See. You’re catching on.”

Georgia frowned at him. She tipped up her glass for the last sip. “Thank you all the same.”

“What? You don’t want another one?”

“Not really.”

“You’re looking hungry again.”

“So?”

“A gal with a clavicle like yours shouldn’t look so starved. Bad things are bound to happen.”

Georgia hopped down from her barstool and huffed. “Listen, my business is my business— And what the heck is a clavicle?”

© 2023 Katie Baker