Author's Note: I wasn't sure if this story was meant to stand on its own or become another chapter in Tales of Unimportant People, so in the interest of not cluttering up my page, I added it here. This story is whatever you want it to be; I'm not sayin' ;).

My heartfelt thanks goes out to everyone who has reviewed the Short Stories so far. Thank you!! It may not be an epic chapter story of gargantuan proportions, but it means a lot when people take the time to review the little things, too.

Dino's Bar and Grill

He first showed up on my barstool in the middle of November. The sleet was punishing the front windows of Dino's Bar and Grill, where I tend the bar, and he came in out of the night; a man without any enthusiasm for anything. He headed slowly for the bar, eyes flat and glassed over, and at first I thought he was drunk or high.

He wasn't. His name was Michael, he was twenty-eight years old, and he was tired of struggling with his life. He sat on the barstool all night, as families came and went in the booths surrounding the bar and as patrons more like himself ate peanuts and threw a few bucks down on their way out the door. His back sagged in a C-curve, legs braced in triangles on the slats of the stool, and he looked into the beer I brought him as if the answers to his problems were down there. As a bartender, I see that look a lot.

I ignored him most of the night in favor of the more talkative patrons, but the way he looked sadly at the young couples brought me over to him at ten o'clock.

"How ya doin'; take another?"

He looked up at me for the first time, and I was surprised at the stillness in his eyes. He had dark brown eyes to match his hair, and though he was still a young guy, he'd been through the mill. He gave me a noncommittal shrug, and I brought him his second beer and a small bowl of pretzels. He looked at the pretzels for a moment before taking one, chewing it mechanically. The slump of his shoulders moved me to speak.

"What you do, Mike?" I asked, shortening the name on his license as I leaned against the counter and wiped down a tap.

"Michael," he said. There was a long pause. "Drive a forklift for J.C. Enterprises."

I jerked my chin at the window. "The warehouse up the road?"

"Yeah."

I watched him for a moment, then prompted him again. "You like it?"

He looked back up at me as if surprised and slightly put out that I was carrying on. "I guess," he said quietly. "Physical work does something for ya... pays alright... all-guy team."

I smirked at him. "All-guy team, huh? You playin' for that team?"

His look was confused, then he shook his head. "Not playing for any team."

"Then why is it a benefit that it's all guys?"

He looked back into the amber liquid in his glass. "I don't like women," he said, and the conversation was over.

It was two o'clock and he was staring at SportsCenter on the television behind the bar. I put the last of the taps away and looked over at him. He hadn't moved a muscle in ten minutes.

"Michael," I said, wiping out a glass, "time to go home."

"Sorry," he said, and threw down a twenty. I turned to the register to give him his change - $10.16 - but when I turned back to the bar with it, he was gone.

I might not have been the most welcoming barkeep he'd ever come across, but I guess it was good enough for him, because he was back the next night, same stool, same expression. I brought him a beer without asking what he wanted - I could tell it would be the same as last night.

"Hey Michael," I greeted him, pushing a bowl of popcorn at him.

The group of girls at the end of the bar shrieked with laughter, and the look he suddenly cast their way was so severe that I said something without thinking about it.

"Whoa! Hey man, why the evil look?"

He looked away from them, into my face for just a moment, and I saw the severe look fade back into his usual monotonous glance just as quickly as it'd come. He shook his head and scooted slightly on the bar stool so that he wouldn't have the women in his vision. Their shrill laughs and loud conversations were aggravating him, I could tell, by the way his shoulders were inching up.

"Why don't you like women?" I pulled up my own stool and leaned my forearms on the bar, tattoos on my inner forearms gleaming in the moderate light.

He sighed and looked past me, at the taps. "It's a weird world," he said heavily.

I furrowed my brow, trying to figure him out. "Why?" I finally asked, figuring a simple question was the best way to go.

He stroked his fingers over the rim of his glass. "My wife... my ex-wife... cheated on me, left me without an explanation, and the court system gave her... everything I owned."

"Shit," I said.

"Yeah," he raised the glass to his lips. "Shit."

I watched his face for a while as he drank and looked at nothing. "No explanation?" I finally asked.

He shook his head. "In my own bed, and everything, and I caught her."

He looked up at me and there were tears in his eyes... but not tears of hurt. They were tears of humiliation. "I did everything I was supposed to. We were married for three years, just out of college. I gave her a house, I had a good job, I paid lots of attention to her but gave her room to grow on her own. I never yelled at her, but I was strong for her. I'm not a model, but I'm not the worst-looking person in the world."

He took a deep breath. "But she left with him, just walked right past me and out the door. Then she took me to court, and even though she cheated on me, and she was the one that left me, that cold-blooded bitch of a judge awarded her seventeen percent of my income every month - and the house.

"I died the night of that court order. She ripped out my heart, then took all of my stuff, and now every month I have to cut her a check... to 'apologize' for being the one in the relationship that was committed."

There was half a glass of beer in front of him, and he tilted his head back and drank the rest of it. I watched him without moving.

"When was that?" I asked him.

"Two years ago," he said, "tomorrow."

A month later, and the impossible was happening. I knew that it was her by the look in his eye - ferocious and defeated all at once. She came in, a strawberry blonde with a hulking brunette husband and two children under two.

"God in Heaven," Michael said into his beer, turning away from them. "Of all of the bars and grills in New York City, why, why this one."

"Michael," I grabbed his hand. "Don't do anything stupid."

He looked up at me and there was no spark in his eyes. He sputtered a laugh. "I don't have the energy to drink my beer tonight," he said. "How do you expect me to do anything 'stupid'?"

I straightened up and looked down at him, pursing my lips.

She came over and peered at him from behind, trying to get a good side glimpse of his face. Oh, no.

"Michael?" she finally asked, looking horrified, and I knew at that moment that Michael hadn't always looked like this. The Michael she'd known had been handsome and gregarious, full of life, before she'd stomped it out. This Michael didn't move, still as a statue, looking at the baseball game. The kids squealed in the background; her husband tried to watch both them and his wife at the same time, protectively.

She sat down on the bar stool and kept peering into his face. I took another step closer to them, praying that he'd stay calm, that she wouldn't hurt him anymore. I was hoping with all my heart that she'd grown up in the past two years and in this moment realized that she was killing him with her existence.

"Michael?" she asked again, tentatively.

"Can't you leave me alone, you sick woman..." his response was so quiet and defeated, and I knew him, I knew that he wished he'd never been born.

She stared at him, at what he'd become, an alcoholic with no hope and a five o'clock shadow, and slid back off her stool. She went back to her new family, and they all stared at him for the rest of the night. I would've thought that he would leave, but strangely, he refused to back down. I couldn't blame him. How many people got to make the ones that hurt them feel guilty? If that was even what they were feeling. Who knew? Maybe they were mocking him.

The family left at seven-thirty, probably to put the kids to bed. She looked back at him one last time, and I never saw them again.

I cut Michael off at eleven o'clock, and he didn't fight me over it. I brought him a Coke and some wings with hot sauce. I don't know if he tasted them or not. The other patrons of the bar left, and I waited for close to come, my lone customer a shell of a man eating chicken wings and watching a baseball game's reruns. I pulled up a stool in front of him, throwing his empty wings basket into the trash behind me. His arms were on the countertop and turned sideways, so I could see the blue veins in his wrists. I put my fingers on them and stroked his forearms gently, wrist to elbow and back down again. The dead look in his eyes softened a bit, and he looked down at my hands before glancing up into my eyes.

I didn't make any excuse or give an explanation. He surprised me then: After this, which must have been one of the worst nights of his life, he smiled. It was tired and small, but it was a smile, and he gave all of it to me before looking back up at the game.

"Who won?" I mumbled, looking down his wrists.

"Yanks. Who else?"

I smiled. If he was talking, we were all right.