The Bar Bet

I had spent the whole day on my knees scrubbing other people's toilets, which at forty-two is rougher on the back than it used to be, and by the time I pushed through the door of O'Malley's that Tuesday evening my shoulders were up around my ears and my mood was somewhere south of terrible. Cleaning houses pays the bills and I'm good at it, I'll give it that much, but there are only so many times a week you can scrub soap scum out of a stranger's tub before you start feeling like your whole life is one long squeegee stroke. The place was nearly empty, just old Marty at the far end of the oak counter nursing his lager and staring at the dog photo like it was going to change, and Phil behind the taps doing that thing he does when there's nothing to do, wiping the same dry glass for the fourth time.

"Well look who it is," he said, and the way his eyebrows went up told me he could read my mood from across the room, which after three years of dating me he probably could.

Phil is forty-five now, three years older than me, and he was bartending here the night I came in for my friend's birthday when I was thirty-nine, and he poured me a whiskey on the rocks without asking what I wanted and I decided before I finished the first sip that I was going to keep him. We'd been together ever since, and most of the time that's a comfort, but lately I've been restless in a way I couldn't name, like my skin didn't fit right.

I took the second stool from the end, near where he was standing, and I set my purse on the counter with a little more weight than it needed. "Phil, I am bored out of my skull. I cleaned four houses today and every single one of them had the same beige everything, beige walls, beige couch, beige toilet brush, and one of the toilets had a ring on it that I swear was there before I was born. I need something to happen. Anything. Something spicy."

"Spicy," he repeated, wiping the glass. "It's a Tuesday, Natalia. The spiciest thing that happens on a Tuesday is when Marty puts two shots in his coffee."

"Then we make our own spice," I said, and I reached into my purse.

Now you should know this about me, and Phil knows this about me, which is partly why he stays, I hope. I get an idea and I don't sit on it. I bought that little bullet vibrator three weeks ago online at two in the morning, silver and about the size of my thumb, and it had been sitting in the drawer of my nightstand ever since waiting for a moment, and when I felt the weight of it in my palm I knew this was the moment. I set it on the counter between us, small and unassuming, like a piece of electronics a person might have wandered in with.

Phil looked at it, then at me, then at Marty down the counter, and his ears went pink, which I love about him, that a man who can hold a bar full of drunks in line with one look still turns pink over his girlfriend's purse toys. "Natalia," he said, quiet, "we are at work."

"You're at work. I'm a customer having a drink with her boyfriend. What happens under the counter is between us and the counter." I pressed my palm flat on the oak. "Here's the dare. I turn this on, I use it, right here, under the bar, while you serve Marty another beer. You keep a straight face the whole time and you win. You flinch and I win. Bragging rights, that's all. And the second either of us says pickle, it all stops and we go back to being two people having a drink."

He stared at me and I stared back and I could see the war going on behind his eyes, the sensible side saying this is a bar and the other side, the side I was counting on, saying but what if. "And what do I get if I win?" he asked.

"Nothing but the satisfaction. No stakes, nobody owes anybody anything. Are you in?"

He took a breath, glanced at Marty, who was signaling for another lager with two lazy fingers, and said, "You're a menace and I've loved you for three years. Yes. I'm in. Pickle if I need it." Which is more of a yes than he usually gives, and I'll take it.

I slipped off the stool just enough to work the little bullet under the waistband of my jeans, and I'll admit it took some wiggling that I did not make subtle, and then I settled back on the stool with my thighs pressed together and my hand in my lap like I was just adjusting my jeans. Phil pulled Marty's lager, and I clicked the toy on low just as he started to walk it down the counter.

Oh. Well. Low was already a lot. The buzz sat right against me through my jeans, a dull sweet throb that made my whole lap feel warm, and I had to press my knees together and look at the dog photo and think about bleach and toilet rings and beige couches to keep my face still. Phil set the beer down in front of Marty, made small talk about the weather, the price of lager, the dog in the photo, all in his normal voice, and the only tell was that his eyes kept flicking down the counter at me, quick little glances as if checking a stove he knows is on.

Marty took his sweet time, of course. He wanted to talk about his niece's wedding. Phil said the right things, that's a nice age for a wedding, and sounds like a good turnout, and every word cost him something, I could see it in his shoulders. My thighs were trembling from holding them shut and the slow throb was building in a way that made breathing into a project, and when Marty finally finished his speech about seating charts and pushed back from the counter with his glass, Phil watched him all the way to the door like a man