Chapter Three — The Barmaid

The glass at the top of the rack caught the light as she pushed it into place, and she counted it again because she always counted it again. Forty-five. That had been the number this morning. That had been the number last night. Forty-five was a number the man who owned the bar could count.

She turned back to the counter and wiped her hands on the towel that was tied at her hip, and checked the clock. Eight-thirty. There were five men on the stools — three regulars at the far end, two younger men playing the kind of drinking game that meant they would be sick within the hour and not tip — and a couple at the table by the door who were not speaking. It was slow for a Thursday. Thursday, in this bar, was a night that could be anything.

Her name, on the papers she had come into the country with, and on the papers she had filled out for this job, was Maribel Matos Mendoza. That was also the name her mother had chosen for her and the name her grandmother had called her and the name she had written, in a childhood handwriting, on the inside cover of the only book she had owned by the time she was ten. It was the only thing about her papers that was true.

She did not mind. She worked. She cleaned glasses and counted them and counted the money at the end of the night and did not drink, except when her boss told her she could drink, and she kept her hair up except on Fridays, and she learned every drink the men ordered and she learned every customer who tipped and every customer who did not.

The door opened and the old one walked in.

She did not look up at him. Seven weeks. He comes on Thursdays now. He used to come on Wednesdays. He changed the day.

She finished with the glasses. She turned to the bar. He was already on the stool he had used the last four times. He had on the same coat he had been wearing in November, because men like him had one good coat and wore it until it was a rag, and this coat was not yet a rag. He was reading something on his phone. He looked up at her as if he had seen her in an airport and were not sure whether it was her.

"Maribel," he said.

"Señor," she said.

"Jesús."

"Don Jesús," she said.

She had been calling him señor for seven weeks because he had not, until a fortnight ago, given her his name. He had given it to her in the way men in this country gave their names, offhand, after they had already decided something. She had kept the don. He was an older man in a good coat in a place like this; she was a barmaid at night. The word was not a courtesy. The word was a small fence she had put around the two of them.

She poured him a red wine from the open bottle, which was not his bottle — she knew what his bottle was — and set the glass in front of him, and let him see her take the open bottle back to the shelf, and then, without being asked, opened his bottle and poured a glass from it and set the second glass next to the first, and cleared the first without comment.

"Gracias," he said.

"De nada," she said.

"How is the cold tonight."

"It is not cold."

"It is cold for me."

"Señor, you are not from Brazil," she said, and did not smile.

He laughed.

She took a step down the counter and cleaned something that did not need cleaning, to let him have the space of his drink, because men who drank alone did not want the barmaid to hover.

She had been twelve when her father had sat her down in the chair. It was the only chair in the kitchen. She could still see it, if she closed her eyes — the back of it, a pale wood with a crack running through the seat. That crack had always caught the back of her thighs when she got up. Her sisters had sat in that chair too, one by one, older first, and had heard versions of the same speech. Filha, we are not going to invest in your studies. You are going to do what your sisters have done, and soon you are going to have children, and your life is going to be what it has to be. To be a mother is the most important thing you have to do.

She had not cried. She had nodded. She had got up from the chair, and the crack had caught the back of her thighs as it always did, and she had gone into the back yard to find her little sister, and she had told her, that night, in the dark, under a thin blanket: That is not what is going to happen to me.

Her little sister had been seven and had not understood. That was fine.

"Maribel," the old man said.

"Señor."

"Jesús."

"Don Jesús," she said.

He lifted his glass. She went to the cash register. She rang nothing. She returned. He was still watching her.

"You are not from here," he said.

"You have told me this before."

"I have."

"I am not from here."

"Where are you from?"

"The south," she said. "Near the coast."

It was not the south. It was not near the coast. It was not where she had been living when her father had sat her in the chair, and it was not where she had been living when she had boarded the plane, and it was not where her mother had taught her the first prayer, and it was not a real place she had ever known. It was the answer men preferred. It had been the answer the immigration officer had preferred. It had been the answer the man at the bank had preferred when she had brought him the papers that said she had an account.

The immigration officer had been a woman, in fact, but the rule held.

"What do you do when you are not here?" Don Jesús said.

"I study."

"What."

"Mechanical engineering."

He whistled, in the way older men whistled when they decided to approve of something.

She was not studying mechanical engineering. She was not studying anything. She would be studying mechanical engineering within the year. She had already decided.

She moved down the counter. The two younger men at the far end waved. She brought them their third drink and watched their hands around the glasses to see if they would tip, and they tipped, and she did not smile, and she went back to the register.

Her first bar job had been the cleaning shift at a place in Vallecas, scrubbing the floors before opening, six mornings a week, for a boss who had put his hand on the small of her back exactly once and then, having looked at her face, had not put it there again. The second had been a restaurant in a suburb she could not now remember the name of, where she had lasted six weeks before the owner's wife had decided that the patrons' eyes were moving in directions the owner's wife did not want them to move, and had paid her a week in cash and shown her the door without speaking. This place was the third. This place she had been at for seventeen months. You do not go into the third place thinking it is the third place. The third place is a place you stay. The third place is a place you know.

Don Jesús finished his first glass.

"Another," he said.

"Señor."

She poured.

He did not speak for a while after that. He drank slowly. She had learned, in seven weeks, that he drank slowly when he was thinking and fast when he was bored. He was thinking. He is going to ask me something. He has been trying to ask me something for two weeks.

He lifted his phone. He looked at it. He set it down again.

"Maribel," he said.

"Señor."

"My son's birthday is on Saturday."

She waited.

"He is going to be in Galicia for the weekend. The family has a place. I am inviting you."

She held the glass she was polishing. She did not look at him. She was aware, for a moment, of every object in the room — the fan above the door, the light in the corner that had been on since she had arrived, the man on the stool at the far end with his head on his arm. I am being seen. He is seeing me.

"I do not know your son," she said.

"No."

"I do not know your family."

"No."

"Why are you inviting me."

Don Jesús considered.

"Because I think he will like you," he said, "and because I have been watching you pour wine for two months, and you have been tired for all of it, and it has made me think that I would like to see you somewhere where you are not tired."

She almost smiled. She did not. He is a generous man. Generous men are not always easy. They are easier than the stingy ones.

She put the glass down.

He reached into the inside pocket of the coat and took out a card. He laid it on the counter between them. It was a good card, thick, with a printed name and a printed number. Underneath the printed number he had written, in pencil, a second number.

"Call me," he said. "I will send someone to bring you. If you want to come."

She did not touch the card yet. He has had this card with him for two weeks.

"Señor," she said.

"Don Jesús."

"Don Jesús, my shift ends at one."

"I know what time your shift ends."

"Then why are you telling me now."

"Because I have been telling you for two weeks in my head," he said, "and my head is not the same place it was two weeks ago, and I have decided I am going to be a man who says things out loud."

She took the card.

She put it in the pocket of the apron at her hip. The card was heavier, through the apron, than any card she had yet carried in any of the aprons she had tied on in this country. It was also, she knew, the first rung of the ladder a man had told her, twenty years ago in a kitchen chair, did not exist. She did not show him her face.

"I will call you," she said.

"Good."

He finished his second glass. He did not order a third. He left a note under the empty glass that was not the tip amount. It was more than the tip amount. It was less than a bribe. It was exactly the sum a man paid when he wanted to be remembered, and she was the person who was going to remember him, and he knew it.

"Buenas noches," he said.

"Buenas noches, don Jesús."

He went to the door. He paused there. He looked back at her once, in the way men of his age looked back, which was to say with no expectation of being looked back at. She had already turned to the rack, and she was polishing, and she was counting the glasses, and she was not watching him, but she felt the door close behind him, and then she did not watch him through the window either, because there was no need, because she had already taken the card.

"Forty-five," she thought.

She kept polishing.