I had this rancher named Darren. A good, simple sonofabitch with a square head and that quiet, sun-baked sadness you see in men who’ve been married too long. He had a couple of kids, a sassy little blonde girl and a boy who looked just like him, which was probably a goddamn tragedy in its own right. Him and his wife, Leonora, they looked like a typical, miserable couple. Dark eyes, dead-end jobs, not enough money, bitching and moaning. They were a beautiful, ugly, and completely honest mirror of my own goddamn life at the time.
I considered him a friend. An expensive one, anyway. I’d have him out to my place to fix a pump, mend a fence, take out a tree. The kind of simple, honest man-work that I was too busy being “important” to do myself. I’d take him out drinking, pay him for his time. A good, simple transaction. Their family even became friends with my wife. Everything was quiet, respectable, and completely normal.
And then I opened Amalia’s.
The tequila bar. The beautiful, ugly, and completely necessary epicenter of my own impending apocalypse. I was separating from my wife, the war drums were beating, and I was spending more and more time at the bar, the new king of my own little shithole kingdom.
One night, Leonora, the ranch hand’s wife, she’s at the bar with a friend. I was happy to see her, a familiar face in a sea of new, hungry, and completely desperate ones. She made some comment, a quiet, polite, and completely obvious little hint, about how she couldn’t afford the drinks. My organic margaritas were sixteen bucks a pop, a goddamn fortune for a rancher’s wife. So I did the kingly thing. I made sure the bartender “took care of her.” A simple, beautiful, and completely innocent gesture of generosity. That was it.
Fast forward. The divorce papers are filed. I am a free man, a newly minted and slightly terrified “Master Key” in a town full of bored, unhappy locks. And Leonora is back at the bar.
She was three sheets to the wind, as they say. Drunk, beautiful, and completely unguarded. “You always intimidated me,” she slurred, leaning in a little too close. “There’s something dark about you. I find that attractive.”
Christ. It threw me off. But by then, I was the owner of a tequila bar. I was starting to learn that a drunk woman’s confession is just a beautiful, ugly, and completely honest opening bid. I chalked it up to the booze and my own newfound, imaginary stud status.
Fast forward again, maybe a month. The place is packed. A beautiful, sweaty, and completely chaotic mess of a Friday night. I walk in, already half in the bag myself, and her head just swivels. She sees me, rushes over, grabs me by the goddamn arm. “I gotta talk to you,” she says, and she drags me. Not to a table. Not to the patio. To the goddamn girls’ bathroom.
She gets me in there, shoves me against the wall, and starts this weird, angry, and completely incoherent monologue. And then she’s… on me. Fumbling with my zipper. It wasn’t sexy; it was a goddamn mugging. A desperate, sloppy, and completely baffling attack. And I’m standing there, the owner of the goddamn bar, in the women’s bathroom, with a customer’s wife trying to give me a thirty-second, rage-fueled blowjob, and all I can think is, “I’m having performance issues.”
People are pounding on the door. “What the fuck is going on in there?”
I pushed her off. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I said. I walked out, adjusting my pants, a beautiful, guilty, and completely confused king, walking out of the wrong goddamn bathroom. She stumbled out after me, and I just… disappeared into the crowd.
A few days later, I’m at the bar, having a quiet drink. And I do the stupidest goddamn thing a man can do. I talk. I tell my “friend” Mark, a man who, of course, turned out to be a goddamn traitor, the whole story. “Dude,” I’m laughing, “you’re not gonna believe this, but Darren’s wife, Leonora, she yanked on my wiener in the girls’ bathroom.” A quiet, stupid, and completely fatal brag.
And Mark, that beautiful, gossiping bastard, he goes and tells Darren.
I’m shacked up at some girl’s house a few days later, a little redhead named Laura. A knock on the door. I answer it. And it’s Darren.
His eyeballs were freaking ready to pop out of his skull. He looked like he was vibrating, a big, square-headed engine of pure, unadulterated rage. He just stared at me, and I could see the whole goddamn movie playing out in his head. He was either going to explode, or he was going to cry.
“Did you fuck my wife?” he asked, his voice a low, ugly growl.
“Excuse me?” I said, playing dumb.
“DID. YOU. FUCK. MY. WIFE?”
And I told him the truth. Sort of. “No, man, I did not fuck your wife. She came on a little hard at the restaurant, but nothing happened.”
And just like that, the engine died. His whole body, all that beautiful, murderous rage, it just… deflated. His shoulders slumped. And he started to cry. A big, ugly, hopeless, and completely honest sob.
I did the only thing I could do. I reached out, I pulled the poor bastard into my house, and I let him cry on my goddamn shoulder.
And he told me. His marriage was a shithole. They were done. She was acting out, a quiet, desperate, and completely ugly campaign of self-destruction to hurt him. And the final, beautiful, and completely diabolical knife twist? She’d had their daughter, his little blonde girl, serve him the divorce papers. A beautiful, ugly, and completely devastating piece of female warfare.
I felt like a piece of shit. It was my goddamn mouth that had lit the fuse. My stupid, barstool brag.
He called me up later, after talking to Mark again. He was furious. Mark, that beautiful, shit-stirring bastard, had apparently given him the real story, the deluxe version, the one with the zipper and the bathroom stall. “She had her mouth on your dick!” he screamed.
“Hey,” I said, “I told you I didn’t have sex with her. It was just her being flirtatious.” A pathetic, beautiful, and completely lawyerly distinction that didn’t mean a goddamn thing.
He was pissed, but what could he do? He knew who the real enemy was.
And that, right there, that’s the beautiful, ugly lesson, isn’t it? The quiet tragedy of man, and the beautiful, chaotic, and completely unpredictable nature of a woman on the edge.
Last I heard, Darren, the good guy, the sad, broken ranch hand, he remarried. A good-looking Asian chick. An upgrade. And Leonora? She turned into a fat pig, married some kid thirty years younger than her, and they look absolutely goddamn ridiculous together.
Just like my kids’ mom and her new husband.
A beautiful, quiet, and completely hilarious circus show. The universe, that old, drunk bastard, it really does have a sense of humor. It always balances the goddamn books.
