You ever do that? You ever give a guy your number and ask him to call and you don’t know shit ‘bout the guy ‘cept he keeps looking at you across the bar and he’s smiling and looking away again. Din’t even know his name and I was with someone anyways. I was with Kenny and we wasn’t exactly dating, but some nights I’d meet up with him and we’d have us a few drinks and go back to his place and not be lonely for a few hours. And this guy as wasn’t Kenny, well now, he was pretty as sunsets and he was looking at me.
Kenny din’t see nothing – not this guy unable to take his eyes off me and not me smiling back at him. Kenny, with his hand on my knee and higher than my knee sometimes, and he was talking ‘nough for the both of us and he knew what was what and how the evening would end, so he was cocksure and happy and blind to what was going on. And this guy at the bar all by hisself, that’s what it looked like, and I was listening to Kenny but watching this guy.
We was maybe two hours in that bar and Kenny was getting to the point where his words was all slow and losing their shape and I knowed we’d be leaving soon, and we’d walk a meandering walk to Kenny’s apartment, stopping to kiss in every shop doorway and his hands all ferreting under my coat and Kenny saying my name over and over like a Litany prayer. And this sunset=pretty guy at the bar looking like maybe he might have more to say to me.
So that’s when I thought, why not? Ain’t no harm in it, I thought. And I told Kenny I was going for to powder my nose, which he knew what that meant, and in the cubicle I wrote my name and number on the back of a old bus ticket and one big kiss-x underneath. And on my way back to Kenny I passed the guy at the bar, my lips so close to his ear I could smell him, and I said in a whisper to call me and I slipped the bit bus ticket into his jacket pocket like a thief getting it all wrong.
I don’t mind admitting that my heart was thumping like a concert drum and my face was split into a grin that would not go away and Kenny said I must’ve been playing with myself I’d been away so long. And the guy at the bar, well, I saw him looking at the bit bus ticket and reading my name and my number over and over like he couldn’t believe his luck.
Me and Kenny, we left soon after and we walked all wavy and like a snake slithering, which is not in a straight line, and kissing under streetlights and in the shadows of shop doorways, and Kenny saying my name like he always did and his hands all running under my clothes. And back to his place at last and in a breathless hurry to be in his sea-tossing bed.
And after, when Kenny was dead to the world and deep and drowning in his whisky dreams, and I was awake and thinking back over things, well, I thought ’bout the guy in the bar and how he kept looking at me and smiling, and now he had my number in his pocket and maybe in his head. And I was laying next to Kenny and grinning again and calling myself stupid at the same time and wondering what I’d say if ever the guy at the bar called me.
Patricia Ann McNair 
You ever do that? You ever give a guy your number and ask him to call and you don’t know shit ‘bout the guy ‘cept he keeps looking at you across the bar and he’s smiling and looking away again. Din’t even know his name and I was with someone anyways. I was with Kenny and we wasn’t exactly dating, but some nights I’d meet up with him and we’d have us a few drinks and go back to his place and not be lonely for a few hours. And this guy as wasn’t Kenny, well now, he was pretty as sunsets and he was looking at me.
Kenny din’t see nothing – not this guy unable to take his eyes off me and not me smiling back at him. Kenny, with his hand on my knee and higher than my knee sometimes, and he was talking ‘nough for the both of us and he knew what was what and how the evening would end, so he was cocksure and happy and blind to what was going on. And this guy at the bar all by hisself, that’s what it looked like, and I was listening to Kenny but watching this guy.
We was maybe two hours in that bar and Kenny was getting to the point where his words was all slow and losing their shape and I knowed we’d be leaving soon, and we’d walk a meandering walk to Kenny’s apartment, stopping to kiss in every shop doorway and his hands all ferreting under my coat and Kenny saying my name over and over like a Litany prayer. And this sunset=pretty guy at the bar looking like maybe he might have more to say to me.
So that’s when I thought, why not? Ain’t no harm in it, I thought. And I told Kenny I was going for to powder my nose, which he knew what that meant, and in the cubicle I wrote my name and number on the back of a old bus ticket and one big kiss-x underneath. And on my way back to Kenny I passed the guy at the bar, my lips so close to his ear I could smell him, and I said in a whisper to call me and I slipped the bit bus ticket into his jacket pocket like a thief getting it all wrong.
I don’t mind admitting that my heart was thumping like a concert drum and my face was split into a grin that would not go away and Kenny said I must’ve been playing with myself I’d been away so long. And the guy at the bar, well, I saw him looking at the bit bus ticket and reading my name and my number over and over like he couldn’t believe his luck.
Me and Kenny, we left soon after and we walked all wavy and like a snake slithering, which is not in a straight line, and kissing under streetlights and in the shadows of shop doorways, and Kenny saying my name like he always did and his hands all running under my clothes. And back to his place at last and in a breathless hurry to be in his sea-tossing bed.
And after, when Kenny was dead to the world and deep and drowning in his whisky dreams, and I was awake and thinking back over things, well, I thought ’bout the guy in the bar and how he kept looking at me and smiling, and now he had my number in his pocket and maybe in his head. And I was laying next to Kenny and grinning again and calling myself stupid at the same time and wondering what I’d say if ever the guy at the bar called me.