Bianca seems sad or beat, disheartened. Something.
There was a World Cup game earlier today. I came in after it, and now the place is mostly deserted. I told her I’d been staying away during the World Cup games.
“I don’t blame you,” she sort of muttered, and walked away.
Maybe she’s just tired from working these stupid soccer matches. They get really busy and the crowds can get rowdy. Usually she’s so cheerful though. So young and chipper and smiley, with her cute shapely little body, and her ball cap with the deeply curved brim pulled tightly down over her long black hair. Her smile snaggles at the incisors, but it’s no less endearing for that.
One table still keeps her a bit weeded, a group of old ladies, well-healed and demanding. Kind of an odd crowd for the St. A’s this time of day or any other really.
***
Oh, I guess it wasn’t bad as all that. Now she’s jabbering happily with me. Telling me how Spanish was her first language. How her parents are from Mexico. How she goes back sometimes to visit the ranch her grandmother owns near Mazatlán. She walks with her father the three miles to water the cattle and back. She wasn’t born there though. She tells me she was born in Othello. I tell her I was born in Baltimore. And that I moved to Seattle in 1990. She says she was born that year. We both laugh, but it does end the conversation. She moves down the bar to wash some glasses or stock some bar fruit or something.