The server places the beer in front of her and heads back to the sanctuary of the air conditioning. The woman slides over to the people on the other end of the table. Her name is Monique, she has come from Manitoba, her accent is uniquely French, she has run away from home. She wants the man on the end of the table to throw away her phone because she never wants to look at it again. After some protesting, he does. They cheer, “fuck them all!” and the man and woman depart.

Monique sees a friend and asks if I will watch her stuff while she goes for a smoke. I comply, “No problem”. She leaves her large pink bag over flowing onto the table and her barely touched pint. Meanwhile a couple enter the patio. They are young, beautiful, and infatuated with each other. They sit down where the other people had been and wait for the server. Monique comes back, discomfort immediately spreads across the faces of the lovely couple. “I’m Monique, I’m from Manitoba, I’ve run away from home. Where are you from?”

“We’ve decided to go inside.” They exit.

Monique slides over to us, “Could one of you please call me a cab? I got rid of my phone.”

“Of course,” I say.

“It’s for Monique, they’ll want to know where I’m going.”

“Where are you going?”

“The halfway house.”

“Hello, I’d like a cab to the brewery for Monique going to the halfway house.” Five minutes.

“They’ll be here in five minutes, maybe that’s too soon to finish your beer.”

“It’s okay, it’s best I end the night now anyway.”

The sun is shining bright, rush hour hasn’t begun yet.

Monique’s cab comes and she leaves her nearly full beer on the table.

The young couple returns and shortly after them another couple joins us at the table, they are older.

The woman in the older couple sits down first, “Is this your beer?” She asks the young couple.

An adamant, enthusiastic NO from the young couple, they go on to explain to her how she does NOT want to drink out of that beer, if she would have seen the disgusting, terrifying drunk that it belonged to. And she better be careful because she might come back and if she does and they are in her spot there will probably be a scene because this woman was from the street and who knows what she might do.

The older woman’s partner sits down. It’s okay if the psychotic drug addicted street person comes back, her husband will protect her.

The server returns, “Is anyone drinking this beer?”

The young man laughing, “That woman was but who knows where she is.”

I pipe up, “She’s gone.”

Everyone looks at me.

“But is she really gone?”

“Yes, she’s gone. She asked me to call her a cab to go home and I called her a cab to go home.” I exchange a look with my friend.

Obvious relief is on the faces of the party of four.

“You shouldn’t let people like that in your establishment you know, it’s bad for business.”

The server comes by us, “I just hate to see anyone waste a good beer.”

The four on the end become fast friends.

“You’re from Australia, I spent three weeks there twelve years ago.” 

“I’m obsessed with pottery too.”

“Sky diving is definitely on my bucket list.”

“The biggest rush of your life.”

“Babe, we both have birthdays in November, can you believe it?”

“You two remind me so much of us when we were younger, hey hon?”

“Small world.”

“Where are you guys staying?”

“In our van but we are almost out of money. You wouldn’t happen to have a driveway we could park on?” ● This story was originally published in Issue No. 2 of Found You Magazine in August 2020. Buy this issue.