Tina (Four of Five)

Not that I got a dame nose or anything, but when I walked into the Cat's Cradle, I almost threw up on the doorstep. I found out why it smelled like the inside of a dead fish that ate another dead fish. Lot of cannery employees came barreling in right after 5, and they tracked in all that chum and fish guts on their shoes, ground it into the floor boards. I understood why a beer was so expensive. This place was the only place would let the cannery workers in. All I knew at that point, my bourbon tasted like fish sauce.

Bar like this, where everyone knows everyone else, easiest way to get left alone is to come on too strong. I walked up to the first table I saw, sat on down and started laughing like I was in on the joke. Had one of them awkward moments where everyone but me stopped laughing. I trailed off like a windup toy running out of wind. Got up, retreated to the bar. Now I could look around and no one would pay me a second thought. Nursed my bourbon, trying to smell it so I wouldn't have to smell more fish. Didn't want to spend all Tina's money off the bat.

Sure enough, Zeke was laughing it up at a corner table with some buddies. More he drank, more his hair fell out of place. No more hair net in here. He'd wave his glass, slosh his beer all over, especially on himself. I saw a thin white band on his ring finger where his ring shoulda been.

The waitress, she was a looker once. The fish smell musta sucked the life outta her. Zeke was slapping everyone's back real friendly like, but to the waitress, his hand lingered, rubbed the small of her back. With what he had to go home to, I couldn't understand why he up and disappeared into the back alley with the waitress. Maybe his beer goggles showed him someone forty pounds lighter and twenty years younger.

I waited a bit, then stepped outside. Docks never smelled so nice before. Two of them wouldnt'a noticed me even if I was on top of them. I just kept snapping pics from across the street. They were exploring each other like it was Columbus on the new world. I didn't get how she could be that close and not get sick. Maybe the fish smell really killed her sense of smell. Maybe her nose was just a plastic fake.