I still remember the first time she came in.

I was tired. It’d been a long shift.

I’d chosen to start serving at this particular establishment because it had a reputation of being slow. Had is the operative word here. At one point in time, I could assemble a drink and have a man—maybe late 50s, early 60s—sit at the bar and look down wistfully, spouting off his regrets about a wasted life. I would get to listen. It was background noise. Therapeutic, honest background noise in a world full of characters and bullshit.

But, lo and behold, this particular haunt I picked started becoming all the rage for young people.

Blech. Who needs ‘em, right?

All full of life, vigor, and energy. Smiles and excitement about the future. Wanting to party, wanting to flirt, wearing layer upon layer of forced personas.

“Hey chief,” says the guy, curling two fingers while dressed up in clothes daddy bought. “We, uh, want a round for this whole group, yeah?” he says, forcing his voice down two octaves while doing his best imitation of an alpha male. Just off a bender of binge-watching hours of Charisma on Command videos? I’d want to say but wouldn’t.

And of course, the people surrounding this man, all wearing masks of their own. Fake cheers, fake gratitude, and pretty girls penny-pinching through college more than happy to get a free drink off this schmuck before getting the fuck out of dodge and—

God, I was sick of it.

But, as is the case with life, the places I did want to be were out of range. Unattainable.

The dive bars filled with the seedy, miserable, philosophical crowd I craved were just too far away from the shitty apartment I lived in to justify working at. An honest environment would’ve cost me too much in gas prices unfortunately—enough that my nonexistent paycheck would’ve gone towards breaking even at absolute best.

She came in while I was making a rum and coke for someone. A double.

I wasn’t one to project favorable feelings onto a stranger. I was thrown to find, as I saw her enter the bar, that I didn’t immediately hate her.

She looked like an absolute stranger to the establishment. Yet, I got no sense that she saw herself as above it. It felt like she was a human being. Someone who needed to be here for some reason, but was unequipped for it. Like she felt silly. Like she found the music to be too loud, too overwhelming.

I watched her take awkward steps through the chaos of the floor, ever-so-slowly weaving past people unable to move because they lacked spatial awareness, and because she couldn’t muster up the words “excuse me” for some reason. She was too kind. Too polite.

And then, she was right in front of me. She looked up instinctively, as if expecting a menu, and then down at the counter, as if expecting a QR code, and then she just sort of shuffled closer, with an energy like she was afraid of interrupting something even though I was looking right at her, doing literally nothing else, fully prepared to take her order.

“So, I don’t drink.”

“You don’t drink,” I repeated back, deadpan.

“Not really. I’m bad with, like, knowing… what to get.”

“Well, let’s keep it simple I guess. Did you want a beer? More partial to a cocktail, maybe?”

“Ooh! Cocktail. I love cocktails.”

“So you do drink.”

“I drink, but like, not in a fancy or informed way. Usually I just get what the other person’s drinking. But the other person isn’t here yet, so I guess I’ll get whatever tastes the most like juice.”

I failed to suppress a laugh. Hearing those words from a fully grown adult was something else.

“Oh I’m sorry,” she said, “Are you gonna look down on me for not being all bougie about my drinks? I guess what I meant to say was—I want something hoppy, aged 24 years, from Ireland, with a bit of a kick, maybe a sour—”

“You are melding so many unrelated things together right now, it is crazy—”

“Actually, I’m just a trailblazer and completely ahead of my time.” And then, a look in her eyes as if she was beaming the words ‘Yes, I’m aware I’m a dork’ right at me. “And I am absolutely, positively, not an uninformed loser.”

I finished making her a Pina Colada and handed it to her.

“I hope you enjoy your drink, ma’am.”

A sweet, appreciative curl of her lips as she tapped her card, then turned to leave. She was back to the hurricane of people swirling across the room. I watched her body take on an awkward pantomime performance of—how the fuck do I find a table through this sea of mayhem?

My eyes stayed with her for longer than I’d like to admit.

And then I realized—I was smiling. And it wasn’t as a courtesy or a lie or a way to make someone think I was listening while I was off in maladaptive daydream land.

She sat at an elevated rustic corner table by an antique mirror—the one closest to the bathrooms. A table that could seat a lot of people, but only had her.

The other person joined her eventually. I caught them talking at odd intervals as I fell back into my miserable shift at my miserable job, fielding the same two repetitive questions from doe-eyed 20 year olds: “What’s it like being a bartender?” and “Did you always want to get into this line of work?” —”No,” I wanted to say to both questions.

My eyes would continually drift over to that corner table as the hours ticked away. I felt a pang of jealousy as I saw her hold the hand of the man seated across from her. A man who looked like he was having a rough go of it—wistful at times, borderline miserable at others, and occasionally tinged with nostalgia. He was all emotion.

And she was consoling him, it seemed. Hearing his heart’s story.

We closed in on midnight, and the two of them were still there. She wasn’t saying much of anything, but he was certainly saying all of everything by the looks of it.

Her eyes remained steadfast on him, nodding as she took in his every word.

-----------------

It was early in my late shift.

Tuesday night. Things were slow, but not too slow.

It was ideal.

Quiet. I could focus on the white noise of murmured, tired conversations, the clinking of glasses. It was like a meditation tape. My equivalent of the soothing sounds of the ocean.

I had time to make my drinks with love. Err, not so much love but—focus. That’s the word.

A man arrived at the counter. He looked familiar.

It took a second for me to place him.

The gentleman from the other night. The one who sat across from the bashful woman who caught my eye. The one that got to hold her hand.

He—on that particular night, anyways—was a basket of complex emotions.

Now, however, there was a certain calmness to him. A groundedness. He looked peaceful, like his head was finally above water.

“Hey, what can I fix you up with?”

“You have my permission to surprise me,” he said humbly.

I snickered. If this was her boyfriend, or husband, he certainly had an interesting rhythm to his moods.

I grabbed a glass and a muddler and started preparing an Old Fashioned for him. As I did, in betrayal to my usual approach to customer service—I asked him a non-logistical question:

“And how’s your day?”

He took a genuine beat to collect his thoughts—eyes raised diagonally at the ceiling, a thoughtful twist at the right corner of his mouth, and a contemplative, repetitive nod as if the words were playing in his head like a metronome. Then—

“You ever just feel… grateful?” he said. “Grateful that everything’s finally come together, it all makes sense now, and it’s all gonna be alright?”

“Hah! Cannot say I know the feeling, but envious for sure.”

“Guess I’m quite the lucky man.”

“Oh, you are.”

Based on his reaction, I don’t think the reference landed for him. It seemed like he had a wonderful woman in his life, hence—lucky!

He instead seemed to take the message in a much more vague, almost cosmic way.

“I do have to tell you though, quite sincerely, that it ain’t all luck.” He shot me a knowing look.

“You gotta really put yourself out there. You have to be open. Emotionally naked. Those are the things it takes to find your home. Your people.”

Don’t think I’ll be there anytime soon, good sir.

I gave him the drink, and he made his way back to that same corner table.

For the few remaining times that night that he accidentally slipped into my eyeline as I was loitering on the clock, he was the perfect picture of contentment.

-----------------

Another busy night in my self-inflicted holding pattern of a career.

Some people say that bartenders are modern day philosophers. Those people are stupid.

It’s a customer service gig like any other. Only difference here is you give people alcohol to leave you alone, but it never, ever works.

This night was particularly stressful. We were down a person. I hated when we were down a person. When we were down a person, my boss would yell. And then I would wonder why the fuck I didn’t just finish college. And so the domino effect of self-loathing would go.

There were too many people, asking for too many drinks.

I almost didn’t even notice she was there.

She’d brought a new person this time. Arms linked. Girlfriends out for an evening.

She approached the bar yet again, sheepish as before. Interestingly, the girl she was with seemed like her polar opposite. She looked decisive. Focused. Fake. A paper tiger—that was my assessment.

“Hey,” said the one I was more sympathetic to, with a couple of verbal stumbles after the ‘Hey.’ “Wait—shoot—did I never actually get your name the last time we talked?”

“Brian,” I said.

“Which means I never gave you my name either–”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“Nope,” I said, cutting off what felt like it was going to be a self-effacing apology.

She extended her hand. “I’m Monica. And I’m sorry. I’m usually better about that. That meaning, polite enough to ask someone’s name.” I returned her greeting. She gave me one of the firmest handshakes I’d ever received. “Okay, so we know each other’s names now, which is good. This—” she said, motioning to the friend beside her, “Is Sabrina. And Sabrina,” she gestured back to me, “this is Brian. Okay, great, good. Now that we’re all friends, Brian, I’d love it if you could make the same drink you made last time. If you, uh, remember what it was.”

“You mean the one where you asked me to make you juice?”

The barb only brought a cheeky laugh from her. “Yes, the very same!”

I watched them from behind the counter later. They were at that same, distant table. Of course they were.

I wanted to judge them. I really, really did. The shift had been a headache and fancying myself as better than the unwashed masses was exactly what the doctor was ordering.

I wanted so badly to assume that Sabrina was the shallow friend to Monica, a person who actually seemed somewhat kind. Somewhat genuine.

But as Monica held Sabrina’s hand over the table, looking at her as if she was the only person that existed in our wretched cosmos, and Sabrina in turn spoke openly as she cycled through ugly laughs, ugly crying, ugly reminiscing—emotional whiplash that I couldn’t quite keep up with—all I saw was a person shedding any semblance of a front; peeling off layers of emotional make-up, becoming completely raw to the person they were in front of. Laying it all out there, frankly, for Monica to receive with quiet nods and gentle affirmations.

Their conversation went on for hours.

Their drinks—the Pina Coladas I made—were still in front of them, chipped away at with only the lightest of sips over the course of their conversation. Glasses half full—or half empty, I guess—depending on how you look at things.

-----------------

Three weeks passed before I saw Monica again.

The thought of her would cross my mind every now and then—the strange want to actually talk to her. With how much my life was dimmed by forced, transactional conversations, it was a foreign feeling.

Finally, on a night where I arrived late for work, I saw her. Seated in the corner, a barely touched drink in front of her, hand gently resting on the man beside her as he poured his heart out to her.

Completely different guy from the last guy.

And at this point I was convinced, as I watched the man emote as if he’d just come from a Brene Brown Ted Talk, that she was some sort of modern, new age therapist. “55 minute sessions? Pftt—what about 3 to 5 hours at a bar? That’s really help us curb your existential dread!”—her imaginary words, not mine.

I caught some conflicting feelings in myself as I looked on.

Despite how awkward she could be, there was some sort of bizarre charisma or allure there—the charisma of someone being completely themselves.

It made me nervous, though it was hard to put a finger on why.

Nevertheless, the hours passed. Work was work, and as I finished exhausting my reservoirs of nods and smiles in exchange for compliments, platitudes, and the occasional openly rude customer, my eyes flitted over to her table. To Monica saying goodbye to her new client, or friend, or lover—whoever he was. A long hug. Then, a very deep glance into the stranger's eyes.

An intense glance. A loving glance.

And then, they parted.

Huh. So, maybe, scratch therapist?

Or, alternatively, a very, very new age therapist?

Curse you, pangs of jealousy. I’m 35 now. I should be beyond feelings at this point.

She approached the bar.

“Hey,” I said.

“Brian,” she said, leaning her elbow onto the bar with an animated, almost full-body exhale.

“How are you?”

“Would it be uncool of me to say I’m tired?”

“Why would that be uncool?”

“Because you’re a bartender, so ‘I’m tired’ probably describes your entire evening.”

“Oh! Well, I mean, if I were off the clock then I’d say absolutely you’re being uncool you jerk—but, since I’m working, no not at all. D’ya have any traumatic stories you wanted to share? War memories? Tales about the one that got away?”

“War stories for days,” she said with a soft chuckle, then an even softer “No…” and then a more serious, “Hey.”

“Hi,” I said again.

“You’re probably wondering what I’m doing at the corner of the bar, right?”

“Yes, I am actually.”

“I’m helping people.”

“Are you a therapist?”

She smiled.

“I suppose that’s one way to look at it.”

“I think I’m a bit confused.”

She picked her words carefully.

“I find people who are like me. People who maybe feel like they don’t belong. Outsiders. Folks who are tired of pretending that they’re okay living in an uncaring world. And I connect with them. And I build friendships with them. Meaningful connections.”

“How do you know that someone’s an outsider?”

A pause, And then—

“It’s all in the eyes.”

-----------------

She told me that I was welcome to sit with her on one of my days off. We could go to another pub if I didn’t want to spend my off hours where I worked.

Strange as the proposition was, I went for it. At this point, I’d sussed her out as being a truthful, open, and vulnerable person. Someone who seemed, at times, confused about it all. Confused in an endearing way. A way that felt different. Special.

A way that made me want to know more.

On a night we both agreed upon, I met her at a different joint on the other side of town. I sat across from her, curiously skeptical about how all of this would go.

And then hours passed.

And within them, I opened up. Truly.

It’s sort of hard not to spill it all when someone gives you their absolutely undivided attention. With perfect eye contact and affirmations pulled out of the book of Mr. Rogers, she sat there, statuesque, as I whittled off details about my childhood, my confusion about life, feelings of aimlessness, shame at how fucking judgmental I could be, and everything more. All of my misplaced anger, my vitriol.

There were no real horror stories in my past, it turns out. Nor any major present-day ailments that were bringing me misery. Putting up walls and scrutinizing strangers were just my coping mechanisms for being over-socialized and in my head about it all.

At the end of the night, she gave me that same look of endearment she gave to the other man, as a sort of peace—a camaraderie—came over me.

“You’re alright,” she said, hand gently cradling my cheek. “It’s the world that’s stealing your joy from you.”

It seemed as if the words held more weight for her than they did me. But, I nonetheless obliged, with a sort of silent agreement. An internal nod.

I felt warm about it all. She gave me the tightest hug imaginable before leaving, and whispered in my ear as she did: “I know a way things can be better. If you’re interested, find me again.”

-----------------

I hadn’t seen her at the bar for quite some time.

And I have to admit, it made me antsy.

It was hard to have someone Mary Poppins waltz their way into your life, be utterly emotionally naked with no reservations, allow you to do the same, and then disappear right after teasing some cosmic secret about the answer to all of life’s problems.

During this period of lack, I found myself softening in my role as liquid therapist a bit. People’s idiosyncrasies, their ‘faking it’ personas, their buried miseries, posturing, need to party, flirt, fight, mentions of beta-sigma-alpha-omega, ability to lie to themselves, desire to run away from themselves—from everything, actually. I understood it. I sympathized with it.

We’re all just trying.

I mean, I was still a judgmental P.O.S. 85% of the time, but hey, that remaining 15%—we can call that an improvement.

I was at the tail end of the kind of slow shift that made you curse yourself for ever hating the busy ones.

I closed up shop and there she was—in the doorway—as I was leaving.

I didn’t have it in me to pretend I wasn’t enthused to see her.

Instead, I ran up to her and hugged her.

“I missed you,” I said, with the delivery of a nerd at prom.

“I hope you’ve been well,” she said, returning the embrace.

It felt nice.

“You said that things could be better. I wanna know how,” I said.

She smiled, her lips and eyes lighting up.

“Of course. Let me show you. Do you want to come over?”

-----------------

It’s funny—there’s a certain connotation that comes with being invited to a sort-of stranger’s place at closing time.

Yet, I was absolutely sure—Monica’s head and intentions were in a completely different space from the rest of the waking and drinking world.

We sat on her sofa together. She gave me a tender look.

“I made something to help explain everything you’re feeling. I hope it’ll be helpful.”

I exhaled slowly, then nodded.

She got up and popped a shabby, plain-white DVD, marked with Sharpie scribbles, into the player.

She returned to the couch as the video started on her TV.

Over a black screen, an odd disquieting melody played that I believe was intended to be

comforting—soft synthesizers and strange notes.

Then, a narration.

“We are not our bodies. Instinctively, we all know this.”

It was Monica’s voice, speaking over footage of the cosmos. Galaxies and stars.

“We look closely at this world, as the delicate, sensitive souls that we are. And we can tell: we don’t belong here.”

Footage from earth. Empty woods. Empty parks. Empty cities.

“Our 3-dimensional forms. Holding our souls down.”

And then, a slide-show of images that resembled pages from a high school biology textbook. A diagram of the human body, with a line pointing to the chest saying ‘SOUL’. Lines coming from the arms, the head, the legs, eyes, ears, all labeled as ‘NOT SOUL’.

“And if we stay here long enough, our soul will wither away and die.”

Another textbook-style diagram, but of a decomposing body this time.

“Even if we appear healthy.”

Footage of the ocean now. It looked like an amateur video, taken by someone actually wading in the middle of the sea.

“We don’t know who brought us here, or why. And we don’t need to know.”

The camera panned up from the water and angled sharply to the night sky, facing the glowing moon.

“We just need to go home now.”

And then, a new image.

Over the backdrop of a sea of stars, a pitch-black door on the left side of the screen.

On the right, the same high-school textbook diagram of the human body, standing upright this time.

An arrow pointing to the door.

Her narration was gone now.

Text appeared on-screen:

Step One: Decide to Exit

Step Two: Find Like-Minded Friends

Step Three: Pick the method that brings you the greatest sense of internal comfort.

Step Four: Exit Stage Left.

Step Five: When you’re done, don’t go into the light.

And then, her voice returned.

“Let’s go together now.”

She held my hand tightly as the video concluded.

I felt disturbed. I felt unsafe.

I tore my gaze from the TV and turned to her. Her eyes were serene, peaceful, calm. Welcoming.

“It’s okay now, Brian. You’re okay. I’m here with you now.”

“Monica… what exactly did you mean with that video?”

I detached my hand from hers and rose from the sofa.

She stood up as well.

“You know what it means. You know it every time you look out aimlessly from behind the counter.”

I backed away. “I’m gonna need you to say it explicitly.”

She traced my steps. “We’re departing tomorrow. We’ll be leaving from the bar. You’re welcome to join us at the table.”

I reached the door. “I have to go,” I said, reaching behind me to feel for the doorknob.

One last good look at her—she wasn’t perturbed, sad, offended, confused, or anything. Softly, she said—

“I’ll be seeing you, Brian.”

I turned and left.

-----------------

I worked the evening shift the next day.

I was dead in the eyes. Exhausted. Not judging a soul. Just breathing. Just relishing the intake of stale bar air.

When she arrived, she went straight to the corner table.

Slowly, others poured in. Some of them I recognized as patrons who had shown up at the bar before—folks I was unaware were ever associated with Monica. They sat with her, eyes trained on her.

Soon after, her girlfriend from before—Sabrina—pulled up a seat as well. The two other men I’d seen her with on different nights took their spots too.

New faces appeared next, ones unfamiliar to me.

By the end, there were twelve at the table.

From my distant vantage point, their conservations seemed muted, soft, hopeful but with a discordant dash of somberness.

It was hard to focus on my job. To focus on the customers coming up to me. I’d look over to the corner, to catch more gentle speaking, the sharing of thoughts, sentiments. Words that looked as though they were coming out as whispers. I wanted to be a fly on the wall. I also wanted to be as far away as humanly possible.

Was there something I could say here? Something that a good samaritan was supposed to be doing right now?

Over the following forty-five minutes give or take, their words stopped. They closed their eyes together in a lengthy, silent moment. It didn’t quite seem like a meditation. Or a prayer. I’m not sure what it was.

Eventually, they all opened their eyes around the same time.

And then they turned in unison and looked at me. With wide smiles.

Their eyes were filled with what seemed like a very disturbing form of love. An image pressed to my memory forever.

Monica alone got up and walked through the crowd. Purposeful this time.

Once again she was in front of me, on the other side of the counter.

“You can still join us,” she said.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t believe this, ‘cause it’s gonna sound really silly, but there’s actually a special spot in the middle of the ocean. One that leads all the way up to the stars.”

She gave me a knowing smile.

“We thought it might be a good idea to check it out together,” she said. She held her hand out for me. “If you want to come.”

I wasn’t sure what it was—loyalty? A sense of camaraderie? A fear of letting her down?—but as much as I was repulsed and terrified by her, I still had to fight the urge to give her my hand

Eventually, she gleaned my decision through my inaction and retracted her invite.

“Thank you for talking to me and spending so much meaningful time with me, Brian.”

She returned to the table.

The others rose. They left behind anything they’d brought with them.

Then, all twelve of them linked arms like they were about to go on a pub crawl together, and left.

-----------------

Their bodies were found in the ocean a week later. Each of them had worn a weighted metal belt to help them sink.

The cops told me that half of the corpses were found in close proximity to each other. The other half were scattered about. I had to assume that the group found clustered together were the ones successfully able to keep their arms linked the entire time.

I had the chance to see the photos of the deceased during the identification process.

I did my best to provide the authorities with details on the faces I recognized—times I’d seen them at the bar; rare occasions where I’d spoken with them. My tiny insignificant crumbs of information were thankfully counterbalanced by insights provided by some of the regulars who’d known them better. It didn’t take long to piece together the identities of the recently departed. Not just who they were, but their full histories—careers, families, friends, aspirations. Anecdotes. Blanks filled in.

All except for Monica.

As it turns out, if she did have a history, it certainly wasn’t one with much depth. She had no known family. No friends—aside from the ones she left with on her final night, of course. No information on when she’d actually moved to the area or where she’d come from.

I was the only one who seemed to know anything about her.

As if that wasn’t uncomfortable enough of a revelation, the cops decided to keep the hits coming—they must’ve been in an oversharing mood.

They let me know that this recent death event wasn’t quite as unique as I might have imagined. In fact, instances of groups walking into the water together, weights worn, arms linked, had been documented as a recurring phenomena over the last half-century or so in our quiet town. The folk tales and horror stories about events like this had, of course, existed for far longer in our little slice of the country.

The sorts of folk tales I could’ve imagined a man—maybe late 50s, early 60s—sharing with me on a night where I was tuning him out as comforting background noise while making a drink.

I took one last good look at Monica’s photo before I wrapped up with the authorities.

Out of all of the images, hers was the one that looked the most tranquil. The most at peace.

“I’ll be seeing you, Brian.”

Months had passed.

The incident had left me with a sinking but, mostly ignorable, feeling. Routine had thankfully proven to be a formidable distraction.

I was behind the counter, same as always, in a moment of time where I was unoccupied. No immediate task in front of me, nor some lingering item of work that I’d forgotten to do. I looked out at the bar scene. Not a miserable look this time, nor an aimless one either. Just a look.

Out amongst the crowd of youngsters, characters, and fakes—not mutually exclusive titles, mind you, nor titles I used in a derogatory fashion anymore—I saw someone enter the bar. A new face. Unfamiliar. One that had a distinct sort of energy to them. They weren’t an imposter like all the others. They looked like they felt silly. Like they didn’t belong here, but didn’t see themselves as above it all.

In the past, I would’ve found this person to almost be charming. Now, they were just a person.

They took awkward steps through the bar floor, they were over-polite, and then they were right in front of me.

“A Pina Colada please,” she said.

I suppressed my laugh. Her eyes lit up with a glint of confusion.

“What?” she asked, playfully.

“Nah, it’s just—sorry—just a little uncanny. Kind of a throwback there. You, uh, reminded of me someone just now, but that’s—anyways. Pina Colada, comin’ right up.”

I went to work. When I heard her response, all I could do was continue making her drink, operating off of muscle memory alone.

“I have to admit I’m a bit disappointed you didn’t join us last time Brian.”

I mechanically continued the process of blending the drink.

“Don’t remember telling you my nam—”

“I hope you understand that there’s still a lot I need to do here,” she said. “Like-minded friends to find, meaningful connections to make. Departures to schedule,” she said.

My throat caught. The ritual of making a drink for a customer was the only bit of normalcy I had left in this exchange. I tried to cling to it. I tried to drag it out as long as possible. But I had to speak.

“Monica?” I finally said, more breath than voice.

But when I studied her features, she didn’t resemble Monica at all. And I can only assume she knew as much.

“You can call me Elizabeth this time,” she said. “And don’t worry. I never, ever want to rush you.”

And then, that same knowing, disarming, look.

“You can join me when you’re ready.”

I struggled to put the finishing touches on the cocktail when I heard my boss’s voice—

“Brian, what are you doing?”

I turned to look at him, confused.

“What?”

“What are you doing?” he repeated.

“Making a drin—”

I looked ahead, and there was no one at the bar.

“—A drink,” I finished.

“For yourself?”

I thought about it.

“I guess, yeah.”

He gave me a concerned look. The kind of look that asks you to say more, and share what might be going on.

But I changed the subject. It was probably best to keep things surface level from now on.

No need to go deep.