I get to the bar and Val is back there, setting up. M, it turns out, is looking at an apartment and last night was the only time she could get in to see it. Fair enough. So Val and I hung out all night.

The first thing she does is offer me a stack of Playboy. I turn it down. She looks shocked. So we go back and forth on this and she starts telling someone that she just doesn’t understand it, why would I want to turn down a Playboy? Don’t I like girls?

And I looked at her and sighed. “Val, for all you know I like sheep.”

“Oh, see now that’s just going too far,” she says once she manages to not choke on her drink.

“That’s nothing close to too far. Too far isn’t even in the same room.”

Val, you see, can be a trouble maker. A different sort of one than M is, generally. And well, leaving us alone without adult supervision may have been a bad idea.

“Look at her! Being nice to those customers!”

“I know, Val, it’s a shame.”

“Most weeks those are my customers. Now she’s ruining them! They’ll think they’re supposed to be liked, or paid attention to.”

“What can you do?”

“First they learn to think that my job is to give a damn about them, what next?”

“They’ll want you to be nice, then they’ll expect good service, shit, there goes your whole operation.”

“I know! Shit.”

“Maybe if you just set a few on fire, you know, by accident, the rest will fall in line…”

“Naw, well, maybe, but damn why she got to ruin my groove?”

My end of the bar became the snarkfest hiding hole. It was hysterical. At one point a friend of Val’s showed up and sat down and the three of us joked around some. He told Val that I hadn’t wanted the Playboy stack (yes that was brought up constantly, all night) because Val wasn’t in it. So she starts asking how much Playboy pays centerfold models. We have no fucking idea. But she keeps asking. Finally she turns to me and asks again.

“I’m not the fucking Buddha!” I said, a bit too loudly. About half the bar glanced over. Well, I’m not. That was Laszlo, but I hear the pay is lousy.

Val, I feel the need to add, can not put on a jacket. Twice last night she went to get a jacket on. Got one arm in and then kinda flailed about to get the other sleeve going. I kept asking if she needed remedial clothes classes, but she just cursed at me.

She also wanted it known that she is a “delicate flower”, a point she made repeatedly by yelling about it and slamming her fist into the bar. Delicate, I tell you. Delicate.
“I’m delicate!” she repeated, demanding that we accept this.

“Val.”

“What?! I’m DELICATE!”

“No. No you really aren’t.”

“Damn you, I’m fucking delicate!”

“And subtle.”

“Fuck! I’m delicate!”

“Mmm. But no. In the least.”

“Is that the answer you think you ought to give? Does that sound like the right answer to you? Does that seem like the answer I want to hear?”

“Those are three different answers. Also that guy at the other end of the bar needs a drink.”

“Well I’m still delicate!”

Yeah. She also doesn’t deal well with caffeine. As in it makes her a fucking loon. So a big can of Red Bull and a cup of coffee later … she would just start cackling. Sometimes while sipping a drink. Sometimes just because it made people nervous.

So that was last night, really. Trouble maker. Delicate trouble maker. Or something.