I'm in a bar on Christmas. The smoke is thick, the room surprisingly full. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing you advertise. I look at the people in the room and imagine them waking up past noon, cotton-mouthed, realizing they should be celebrating something, somewhere. Like homing pigeons, they are drawn to the lone neon light in the cold, an open sign flanked by beer logos.
A women is at the bar, scratching off a lottery ticket in a frenzy. A roll of uncut tickets is sitting next to her. She tears them off five at a time, her quarter moving furious across them. “I’m gonna win!” She shrills, giddy. “I’m feelin’ LUCKY tonight, it’s Christmas! I’m gonna win, I just know it.” I don’t know why she is here. Maybe she doesn’t either.
I am here to eat before going out to a movie with my husband’s family. We careened carpool from strip mall to empty strip mall, hunting for a bar in a fever. “Nothing is open on Christmas,” I tell them. Silently I wonder, after pulling into the third darkened parking lot of the evening, what kind of people spend Christmas in a bar.
I am surrounded by them now. The smell of fried chicken wafts in from the kitchen, oily, and dry. The woman at the bar straightens suddenly. “I got two dollars! I told you I was feelin’ lucky!” She leans over and hugs the man next to her. The way his hand slides around her waist, I think they are strangers. Bonded by the camaraderie of loneliness and cheap beer. She leans over to the man on her other side, giggling and kissing him once, twice, nearly missing. He is folding the discarded lottery pile in his hands, his eyes easing over her, sizing her up slowly. He knows they will both be there a while, and he takes his time. There is nowhere else to go.