Saturday, 27 April 2002 | Bartender

The bartender looked barely twenty, wore delicate heels and a tight skirt with a split up the side. When she spoke, she held her face at an angle so that she had to look up at you, her smile almost pointing at the floor. Now last time I took a check I got in trouble, but if you're sure it's good, I'll let you do it...you just have to promise me you won't get me in trouble, she said in a soft accent. My name's Megan. She looked like the type who puts her hand on your arm when you speak to her. I liked her immediately.

When the jukebox ate my quarters, she gave me a dollar bill and told me to try again. If you just tell me what song it was, I might be able to tell you the number, she said as I pressed the delayed arrow button on the machine. I've worked here for a little while, you know. Just after she walked off I found the first song again—Psycho Killer by the Talking Heads. 4-8-0-1. Almost as soon as I pressed the final digit, I heard the first few notes of music blare out of the speakers. But instead of the Talking Heads, I heard a twangy-voiced man wail, "ain't nothin wrong with bein a redneck..." She ran back over with another dollar, explaining that I'd chosen the only album they didn't actually have. Try again.

In the back, old men playing poker at card tables with empty Budweiser cans, cigarettes hanging out of their mouths, folded-over Jokers littering the floor. A man put in a Jimmy Buffet song and danced with a plump woman wearing overalls and sang to her about four lonely days in a brown LA haze, his arm wrapped around her waist. A golden retriever panted under one of the pool tables next to where I was playing. Richard Petty watched all of us with a grin on his face from several spots on the wall, always from behind dark glasses.