Meeting a `stranger' at the bar

The front door banged hard on its little stopper, signaling her arrival. I'm not going to suggest she was like a golden retriever shaking off the rain once inside, but there was a lot of commotion, long reddish-blonde hair flapping around and a puddle when she left the foyer.

Some people know how to make an entrance, and some people just know no other way. “All the world's a stage,” once wrote a man much wiser than me, and for some people that stage is predominantly a bar. Proscenium arch? I stare through it every day.

“A dry martini?” I asked as she squeezed out some water from the ends of her hair.

“Beg your pardon?” she asked. “Out of those wet clothes and into a dry martini?” I added. “I don't get it,” she said.

Not everybody does.

“But, I will have a martini,” she said, nodding at the only other person sitting at the bar, a woman about her same age, as she settled noisily in. There was a big purse, a big jacket and a big cellphone, all of which went onto the bar, right next to another big purse, big jacket and big cellphone already there.

I stood there for a minute awaiting further instructions. When none were forthcoming, I had to start asking questions. And take my word for it, no performance is enhanced by the asking of questions.

“What kind of martini?” I asked.

Both women were married. Both had been divorced. Both had children, now grown. And both didn't know where their husbands were. And they didn't seem to care. They could easily have been two sides of the same coin.

It turned out that there were instructions, lots of them, and lots of questions for me, too, all leading up to a lemon drop “martini” — shaker ice on the side, of course.

“Of course.”

But performances are about attention. And this one gathered some.

The other woman looked at the new arrival.

“That sounds interesting,” she said.

“I started drinking these back in the '90s,” Red said.

“Oh yeah? Where?”

“I used to hang out at (insert busy singles bar's name from the '90s).”

“Hey, so did I.”

And just like that, they bonded. Opposites might attract initially, but it's the sameness that keeps us together. We don't bond over what we disagree about, but rather what we agree on. And they agreed on a lot.

Both women were married. Both had been divorced. Both had