Part Two: What Happened to the Fence; or Nothing Good Happens After You’re Kicked Out of The Vegas

You didn’t miss part one of this little tale, did you?  It was posted yesterday.  Go ahead – go back and read it.  We’ll wait for you.

George lifts her beer.   “You remember Maryanne?”

“Heavy drinker, elfin facial features, somewhere between 60 and 65, maybe?”

George nods, takes a drink.  “Yeep.  So that means you remember Connie, then, too.”

Maryanne and Connie are two peas from the same drunken pod, with Connie just slightly older.  They are loud, happy drinkers with a penchant for The Statler Brothers and those weird purple shots provided (for free) after Viking touchdowns.

I nod.  “What does this have to do with the fence?”

“Or the tree or the car or the deck we just had a smoke on…”

I laugh. “What?”

George laughs, lifts those eyes – those beautiful,eye-liner-ed eyes! – and smiles.  “I know things.”

I cock my head at her, squint.  “Things,” I say, rolling the word around on my tongue.  “Tell me things.”

George takes another drink of her beer.  “I went to see The Music Man with Tom not too long ago.  You remember Tom, don’t you?”

I do.  Tom, like Maryanne and Connie, is a long-time resident of The Spring.  A man who studied at a seminary and talks philosophy with the earnest intensity of a teenager, he no longer drinks but tolerates well those who do.

I nod. 

“So in the course of dinner, before the show, he tells me about the night Maryanne got kicked out of The Vegas.”

I choke on my beer and we both burst into laughter.  “You can get kicked out of The Vegas?!”

The Vegas, a dive bar off Central with the coldest beer you can imagine and karaoke seven nights a week, is a throwback to another time.  Wood paneling, pull tabs, light fixtures from the seventies – we clink our glasses to the thought of anyone getting drunk enough to be kicked out of this bar.

“So she gets in her car,” George says, setting her glass down, “and drives the five blocks to The Spring.”

I raise my eyebrows.

“She comes in, manages to order two, maybe three drinks before the bartender realizes how wasted she is and cuts her off.”

“How could you not notice,” I say.  “Maryanne has to be one of the loudest drunks I’ve ever heard.”

“There is wisdom in what you say,” George reflects.  “And yet the facts speak for themselves.”

We consider this.

“So anyway, she’s cut off.  Maryanne decides to leave.  So she gets back into her car – and drives into that low planter, the one that runs around the smoking deck?  Everyone on it starts yelling, raises their glasses.  She freaks out, backs up – kitty corner, across the street – and straight into the fence.  Runs the fence over, actually backs completely over it.  She starts yelling – you can hear her from the bar, Tom says – backs up, puts her into drive and runs into a tree.  Backs up again, straightens it out – and hits a parked car.”

George pauses, takes a drink of her beer.  “At this point, Maryanne is completely freaked, gets out of her car – which wasn’t even her car, come to think of it, but her boyfriend’s car – and she takes off running down the street!  Right down the middle of the street!  She later tells friends that she was going to Connie’s, going to ask Connie if she’d hide her until things blew over.”

“But it was her boyfriend’s car. How would things blow over?”

George shrugs.  Our server glides past, backs up.  “Two more?”

“Two more,” I say.

“So then what?” I say. 

George starts laughing.  “So while this little loudmouthed woman is running down the middle of the street, crushed fences and trees and cars in her wake, who pulls up?”

I stare at her.

“The cops!  The cops pull up!”

“Uh-oh.”

George shakes her head.  “No ‘uh-oh’,” she says.  “And you know why?”

I shake my head.

“Because she’s adorable!  Because she’s a little old lady!  ‘I was confused, officer!  My shoelaces got caught in the accelerator and I got scared, officer!’”

My mouth drops open.

“She played the age card,” George says, shaking her head.  “The police actually drove her home.  No arrest, no ticket, nothing.”

“Senior citizens are devious creatures,” I say, “and we have much to learn from them.”

George laughs.  “Indeed we do,” she says.  She leans into her backpack, checks her cell phone.  “Look at that,” she says.  “Our bus comes in 30 minutes, and ooooh -" she looks up, smiling.  "Here come our beers!”