Learn to read the room

I inherited the couple from lunch. I had no idea how long they had been there, but there were two half-full martinis, some half-eaten bread and two empty water glasses. Even though the bar was empty except for them, they had chosen two spots far from the door and tucked around a corner.

Bar seating is a strange phenomenon. If there’s only one seat available, nobody complains, but give someone a wide range of options and things tend to go sideways. Furthermore, a person will secure two seats at the bar, one with a glass of water, only for their guest to arrive and sit on the other side of them. If positioning wasn’t such an important thing, then Cosmo magazine would probably have already run out of headlines.

I noticed that every time the front door opened, the man looked furtively in that direction, leaving me with the distinct impression that they didn’t want to be seen.

“You see,” he said to his date. “I prefer whiskeys with high rye in them.”

She hung on his every word.

“I usually drink only ‘bottled in bond’ whiskey,” he said obliviously.

She nodded and leaned forward just a bit more.

“That way you know that they are the age that they say they are,” he continued.

“Right?” he said, looking at me.

“Sure,” I said. “But …”

“Liquor companies can’t be trusted,” he said, interrupting my answer. “So, they turn their product over to the federal government, and that way you can be sure how old they really are.”

She listened, and she leaned. But sometime after the “four years of age” and the “100 proof” part of bottled in bond, she got up to use the restroom. Oddly, she first looked all around the room, like she was at a crosswalk, before she went.

“Can you put the game on?” said the man, not noticing that the World Series was already on the TV.

I pointed up.

He then began explaining “bottled in bond” to me, even though I hadn’t asked. Luckily, she returned about halfway through. Her hair was fluffed up, new lipstick had been applied and she’d undone some of the buttons on her shirt. I took that as my cue to walk away.

“Look,” he said to his date. “The game is on.”

I wouldn’t say that she looked pleased.

More drinks were ordered. And more bread. And more water.

He explained all the intricacies of every play. Every single one. And in an extra-innings baseball game, that’s an awful lot of explaining. Around the sixth inning, she started yawning, at first demurely, discreetly covering her mouth with the back of her hand.

“If they bunt here, they can drive the runner home and tie the game,” he explained to the woman, who hadn’t once so much as even glanced at the TV.

Whatever she had originally thought this evening was going to be, it certainly wasn’t turning out that way.

By the ninth inning, the yawns came more frequently, and now she wasn’t even bothering to raise her hand.

“Extra innings!” he practically screamed at the end of the ninth.

She bit her lip and leaned back. I had turned around, and when I turned back, I could have sworn that she had rebuttoned one of her shirt’s buttons.

More innings followed, along with more explanations. And she began leaning back in her seat, not forward. Near the end of the game, she was sitting bolt upright with her arms crossed.

“That was fantastic!” he said when the game ended, looking around for her.

But she had already left.

Leaving me with these thoughts:

• Three hours before, she would have gone home with him. Three hours later, she didn’t.

• “Lack of focus, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have 24-hour days,” once commented motivational speaker Zig Ziglar.

• Seven hours in a bar is a lot for anyone, bartender or guest.

• Thanks to federal law, alcohol labeling must be 100% accurate, which thereby relegates the archaic idea of “bottled in bond” completely redundant.

• Mansplaining is a great way to ruin an evening. You see, because it …