His Local Woman

by Melissa Jessop (United States of America)

Making a local connection USA

I started going to the bar after it happened. I’d sit between fishermen and ask my bartender for rum and coke. Always rum and coke. His name was Mac and he worked behind that long wooden counter pouring drinks. I loved Mac because he didn’t try to kiss me. He didn’t tell me he liked my small, round nose or ask to touch it. He was never drunk, but he always called me “my dear” in a special way. He called any of the few girls who came in “my dear.” I never knew who I’d meet or what I’d do at the bar. It was sort of thrilling. It was my first time being single in years. There were other places in town where the seasonal workers went, but this place was dim, gruff, and local. Boys came off the fishing boats to get drunk and to try to get laid. Once I took a fifty-five-year-old man there. I thought it’d be funny because the place is dingy and he wasn’t. We’d met on the ocean earlier that day. My company served chicken caesar wraps for lunch, so I’d go out on the boats to see whales and get a free meal. Sometimes I even got an extra wrap to take home if the crew made too many. The man was there to get his picture taken in front of a glacier. He said, “What are you doing after this?” We were the only two people on the deck—both gripping the rails with white fingers. Cold rain was dripping off my eyelashes and lips. The ocean was roiling, and the sky was grey and grieving. Everybody else was inside the cabin where men were leaning into black plastic garbage bags and their women staggered with green faces to the counter to get them a bottle of water. “I’m going to dinner.” “With a group of friends, or…” he said. The captain made an announcement and between swells the man and I stumbled back into the cabin. The crew locked the doors to the deck. Then they closed the tiny windows because some passengers were getting cold. The boat dropped eight feet and slammed into a wall of water. I closed my eyes and breathed sour air through my nose. For a while I chatted with a group of people my age standing next to the cabin doors. After they exchanged numbers and followed each other on Instagram without asking for my username or number, I went and sat at a table with the man. It was decided we would go to dinner together along with the British guy the man was sharing a bench with. When I got to the bar the British guy wasn’t there. The man told me he was very young to be retired. He talked about his travels and his kids who were in their thirties. I told him I’d lived in Alaska for four years and that I was waiting for summer to end. He didn’t seem impressed, but he called me a beautiful local woman, like he thought of me as a woman. He reached across the table and stroked my hand, tenderly spreading my fingers apart. “It was a mistake. The tattoo. I was eighteen.” I pulled my hand back, hiding the ink on my finger. After that he tried to buy my rum and coke, I think. He said, “Do you want to come back to my hotel?” after I’d gone to the bathroom and saw that I had ruddy cheeks and glossy eyes. “I can’t tonight.” I told him. “Sorry.” I tried to act like I really, normally, would have liked to go home with a strange tourist twice my age. I don’t know why I had to do that. I zipped up my jacket and walked through the rain. I knew the man would be gone tomorrow, just like everybody who visits this coastal Alaskan town. I stopped at the creek by the road and watched a dozen dying salmon battle the current. They looked absolutely haggard. Mac slid a rum and coke across the counter, looking at me longer than normal. “It's on the house, my dear."