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another time. Anyway, I got really drunk against the better advice of the bartender, who, by the way, was a guy and at least in his mid-fifties. I read page after page until I was bawling hysterically, and didn’t care. This is an old man’s bar more than anything, what did I care what they thought? Just then, a woman, actually more like a vision, walked in and sat about three stools away from me. She was fucking gorgeous.
    Everyone in the place stopped and stared, everyone except me.
    A beautiful woman was the last thing in the world I wanted to see, they were nothing but poison as far as I was concerned. I was wearing my glasses, and I took them off, threw them down on the bar, and buried my face in my arms.
    “A few moments after, I heard an angel’s voice close to my ear. ‘You’ll break your glasses that way,’ she cooed. I stopped sobbing and looked up. She was even more beautiful close up, if you can imagine. She spoke not a word and, like a magician, twisted and bent my frames for a few minutes and placed them gently back on my face. They felt like new. ‘There now, isn’t that better?’ she asked. Speechless for a second or two, the only words I could finally muster were ‘Can I buy you a 30
     
    drink?’ She ordered wine, I thought that was classy. We didn’t speak until I grew the balls to say ‘I don’t live far from here.’ She smiled, finished her wine, and grabbed her purse and my hand.
    As we walked out every guy in the place had his jaw on the floor.
    “You shouldn’t drive,’ she said. I poured myself into the passenger’s seat of her little Fiero and directed her to my apartment, amazed. The place was littered with liquor bottles and photographs torn in two. I couldn’t decide if I’d been shocked into stone cold sobriety or if I was hallucinating.”
    “Are you ready to order?” the kid interrupted my reverie.
    “Honey?” Janine said for the waitress’ amusement, or maybe with sincerity, I couldn’t tell.
    “Cajun swordfish.” I started giggling and couldn’t stop, remembering suddenly that I was high.
    “Make mine the same, and please bring us another round.” Janine kept her composure and I was afraid I’d embarrassed her.
    “Go on, I’m intrigued. It’s hard for me to imagine you all broken up about something, you come off so…detached from all of that.”
    Funny, I thought the same thing about her. I hoped I was equally off the mark. “Anyway, there really isn’t much to tell. We didn’t have sex, but we fooled around and made out a lot. I fell asleep in her arms and slept like never before, with…peace.”
    I paused, watching her eyes to see some flicker of recognition. She must have flashed back to the previous night in my arms, because she grinned a silly grin and looked away shyly.
    I finished, “When I woke up she was gone. She left a business card on my dresser. It’s likely I still have it somewhere.”
    “A business card? Let me guess, she worked for an optometrist.”
    “Very good, you were paying attention. Yes, that’s how she knew how to bend my frames back into shape like a magician. But, more importantly, what is the moral of this story?”
    Janine drummed her fingers on the table for a few minutes. She finished her second drink and lit a cigarette, all before answering. “Sometimes bringing a complete stranger 31
     
    home is the best thing that could ever happen to you.”
    I was expecting a witty answer, something like ‘Never let the one that got away actually get away,’ but instead she had brought it all home for me. Subconsciously, I knew this was exactly the reason I had brought her to this place.
    She was my second angel, most people aren’t lucky enough to get even one. The woman who had stumbled across me years ago did change my life. She’d made me feel whole, desirable, worth something. The day after that experience I told my ex to pack up her things and get out, much to her surprise, I might add.
    It had been so many years