Lesbians slept in every hired bed in the resort that weekend. The little town was full of lesbians, and they liked it. The three friends left the organized clean-and-sober parties and walked into Pat's Tavern about eleven o'clock. Pat's was a drinker's bar. A locals bar. No dancing, no music, no tables. Just the bar, a juke box, and the TV at the far end, volume off.
Lorna entered first, and sat next to a women who looked entirely too young to be in a bar without her dad. She wore a satin jacket with "Pat's Tavern" embroidered across her thin shoulders, so maybe that was her father standing behind the bar, intermittently chatting with the young woman, as he unobtrusively served the regulars lined up in front of him.
"Is your friend sitting here?" Lorna asked the teenager, pointing to the empty stool next to her.
"Ha! no," she said, and looked away, as if she'd just been spare changed.
Zelda followed Lorna, and sat next to her on a stool at the end of the bar. She deftly rolled her Drum cigarette.
Gwen leaned on the bar at the corner, there being more bar available than stools. She ordered Corona, but Zelda and Lorna just had draughts.
The three chatted and watched the mime version of Madonna's Blonde Ambition on the MTV for a while, before a conversation between a straight man and the bartender attracted their attention.
"Do you have a piece of string?" asked the man, who sat on a stool next to Gwen. "I can show you this great trick."
The bartender stood in front of the man, arms folded. "What would I want with a piece of string," he said, no question mark implied. He remained silently standing in front of the man, daring him to ask again.
"Oh, you must have a piece of string. This is a great trick. Don't you have a piece of string around here?"
"We don't have any string. Why would we have string here?"
The man turned to the three lesbians. "Do you have any string? This is a great trick. An amazing trick. It's a real trick, real magic."
"Oh really?" Lorna said.
"Oh, it's a great trick. You take a ring see, and pass a string right through it without breaking it. It's a great trick. All you need is a piece of string. A twenty-five inch piece of string. Don't you girls have any string?"
Gwen, Zelda, and Lorna shook their heads without apology. They didn't bother to look through their pockets.
He wasn't going to get any string out of them, but the man exploited the attention they had reluctantly given over.
"Are you visiting up here? Where are you from?"
"Greece," Lorna said, and smiled into her beer. Zelda said she was from San Francisco, and so did Gwen.
"Oh, really, I'm from San Francisco too, just on a little vacation with my girlfriend," the string man said, gesturing at the wholesome woman whose waist was attached to the inside of his arm. "What part do you live in?"
"The rich part," Gwen said, her vowels revealing her London childhood.
"The rich part," he repeated, accent and all. He smiled and played along. "I don't know where exactly that is. Is that new?" Zelda and Lorna bent their heads and snickered. Gwen braced her arms against the bar, and looked away from him impatiently.
"The rich part. The Richmond."
"The Richmond. I've heard of that, sure. What are you doing up here?"
"We're at the lesbian weekend. We're all lesbians."
"Lesbians! that's great. That's great that you have this whole deal going on. Bands and dances and stuff, huh?" He gestured out towards the town and smiled broader. "I'm all for it. I don't want to bother you, I just want to watch." He nodded his head and his smile grew sicker. "As long as I can watch, I think it's just great," he declared, pausing to receive approval. This was a great trick, a man morphing himself from a minor tavern irritant into a piece of ratshit.
Gwen turned away from the string man, and the lesbians resumed making lewd and appreciative comments about the Madonna concert. "Kee-rist she can dance," Lorna observed.
"What the fuck is that in her mouth?" asked Gwen while squeezing more lime into her beer.
"It's a microphone or something, so she can dance through their legs like that."
"Do you think America knows all those guys are gay boys?"
"I want to know how can she sing upside-down," Zelda wondered with not a little envy.
The string man was going on again at the bartender.
"It's too bad you don't have a piece a string. It's a great trick, a great trick. Are you sure you don't have a piece of string?"
"I don't think I do," said the bartender, but he jerked himself off the back of the bar and walked down to far end, under the TV, and started opening refrigerators and cabinets.
"You just gotta have a piece of string. Just a twenty-five inch piece of string," the man continued. "You know, if you have a piece of string, I'll teach this trick to you. I've made a lot of money off this trick. You know, getting people to bet and so forth, I make my living off this trick."
"How do you make your living off it if you don't have any string?" the bartender muttered as he opened and shut the last refrigerator. "Nope, no string. No string in the place. No string." The bartender opened his hands then leaned again against the back bar, crossed his arms and stared at the string man.
At this point, Lorna had had enough. She reached into her jeans pocket.
"Hey look, she has some string. You had it all along," accused the man.
"No," she said, and pulled out her black Swiss army knife. She opened the longer blade, leaned across the bar, and held it out to him point first. She looked at him in the eyes and enunciated every word: "Why don't you take this knife and cut off the bottom of your shirt? Then you'd have a piece of string and you could do your trick."
"Well? no, I can't do it, not this shirt."
The girlfriend nervously entered the conversation.
"Don't honey, that's a nice shirt. It's a Izod."
"I think you should use your shirt for a piece of string," Lorna pressed. "You can get another shirt. You've been bugging us for a half-hour about that fucking trick. So do it." She thrust the knife towards him again.
"No, thanks, but I can't ruin the shirt."
Lorna sipped her beer again before saying, "I want to see the trick now. Real magic you say? I want to see this real magic trick of yours that you make a living off of. Show it to me. I want to watch it. Go ahead, it's just a shirt. Just cut off a little bit. You'll be able to tuck it in later. Here."
She slid the open knife down the bar; it stopped in front of him, blade pointing at his belly.
He looked around. The bartender still stood placidly against the bar, watching. The teenager chuckled. Zelda and Gwen glanced at each other, then stared at the man, daring him. His girlfriend tried to talk him out of it, saying things about how he doesn't have any nice clothes, and how could he ruin that shirt. But he must have been just a little bit too drunk. Or perhaps he couldn't stop himself, with these lesbians here who wouldn't stop watching him.
"Yah, ok, I'll just cut off a little bit. All I need is twenty-five inches. No, it won't hurt the shirt," he said, now brushing the girlfriend away, "It's my shirt anyway, I can do with it what I want. Stop it. You can sew it up later."
He picked up Lorna's knife and started to cut off the hem of his shirt, taking only one layer of material. The three friends watched every progress of the operation. At first he sliced carefully with the razor-sharp blade, but that took longer than he wanted it to. The three drank their beers. Toward the end, his impatience overcame his care, and he hacked and ripped away at the double-knit.
"Ok," he said triumphantly, stretching out the tattered material, then carefully laying it down on the bar. "Here we go," and he rubbed his hands together.
Lorna interrupted him."Sorry," she said, tossing back the last of her beer, and catching the eyes of her companions. "We were just leaving." She leaned over and retrieved her knife, smiling at him. Gwen and Zelda finished the last of their beers and the three of them turned and walked out the door, on to the street, and back into the lesbian festivities.