Page 9 of The Player in New Zealand
Okay, maybe not perfect. But something close. It was far away from Boston and they’d offered me a job. That, I could work with.
Haft & Hops wasn’t just a bar, though. It had been a winery on the outskirts of Wellington, but as the city had grown, the area had been developed into suburbs. But it had been converted into a bar and an axe-throwing range. It seemed the craze had made it over to New Zealand, too. I’d seen a few around Boston, but had never been.
I had a place to work, a cheap hostel downtown, and a reliable bus route between the two. And Devon didn’t know where I was.
It was heaven.
And after my conversation the night prior with Nina, her excitement had invigorated me. I felt the thrill of wanderlust creeping through my body, the adrenaline building the more I saw all that New Zealand had to offer.
By the time I needed to get dressed and catch the bus to go to work, my head was full of ideas.
* * *
That drunken scenewith Tane didn’t happen again, but over the next three weeks I learned that his routine was reliable. Most nights he came down, drinking with a mix of guys in one of the back booths.
On those nights, Tane was loud, surrounded by the same guys, doing the same cheers and chants. Over time, I picked up tidbits here and there of their lives. They all loved rugby, and Tane was worshipped for being a superstar. They were around on busy nights, adding to the cacophony in the room.
Sometimes I’d catch a certain noise that would stand out to my ear and I’d look up and my eyes would meet Tane’s.
But Tane still drank a lot. Nina ran defense when he got too drunk, scattering the group with the usual threats and then getting Tane upstairs. If he was too wasted or the bar was still too busy for a bouncer to leave his shift, Tane was put in the office to sleep it off.
My coworkers mostly ignored him, so I did too.
There were some nights, though, when Tane’s crew wasn’t around. They were the quieter nights, when the ones who did show up mumbled about kids and wives as they paid and left early.
And soon it would be just Tane in the back, drinking alone. He drew my eye even more on those nights.
“How about another round, love?” the guy three seats down called out to me, pulling my attention away from Tane. The man, easily in his sixties, had been drinking for a few hours, steadily nursing whiskeys.
He wasn’t drunk, at least not that I thought, but a little voice whispered in the back of my mind that I should start encouraging him to move on.
A bartender’s intuition.
I smiled at him and pulled out a clean glass. “You got it.”
“The good stuff.” He gestured up and behind me at the top shelf as I filled the glass with ice.
“Sure.” I turned around, reaching up to grab the bottle, and then spun back to the bar. He didn’t even try to hide that he had been staring at my ass, and his gaze barely shifted to the glass while I poured and then put the bottle back.
“There you are, sir.”
“Thank you.”
I took two paces away before he spoke again. “Where are you from in the States?”
Stopping at the computer, I called out over my shoulder, “Boston.” I added the drink to his tab as he told me about his visit to Boston twenty-odd years ago.
“What’s a girl like you doing here? Shouldn’t you be down in Queenstown bungee jumping with all the kids your age?” He chuckled to himself. “Or maybe you aren’t into hanging out with people your own age?” He winked.
I laughed to cover up my discomfort, and kept my answer bland. “Oh, I hang out with all types.” I moved farther away down the bar, but he kept talking to me anyway.
“I knew a girl like you once,” he said, just as I was getting too far away to be politely conversing at a normal volume. I was familiar with this move. The goal was to keep me near, focus my attention on him, start to make me uncomfortable.
The worst guys always tried it when the bar was quiet, when I didn’t have other customers to tend to. When ignoring them bordered on rude.
I didn’t go closer, but I didn’t move away, either. Instead I busied myself straightening things that didn’t really need straightening, wiping things down that didn’t really need wiping.
“She was beautiful, just like you,” he continued.
