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“Gary, I don’t know what to say. I really don’t. This is crazy. It really is. I’ve never even seen you outside of this bar.” Sam closed the register and stopped examining the tape.
“I know.” Gary picked up the smaller ring and rolled it with is index finger along his thumb – back and forth.
“What about Susan?”
“I’m going to tell her no.”
“But why?” I’ve told you no. I’m not going to marry you, Gary. Tell Susan yes.”
“I know what you said. I know I’m not going to change your mind. I can’t marry Susan. I’m in love with another.”
Sam was struck dumb again. She’d had people tell her before that they were in love with her. Boy friends, lovers, drunk customers, sober customers. It was absolutely crazy, but Gary was the first to sound as though he meant it. “Gary,” she started, but he interrupted her by holding up his hand.
Gary put the ring back on the bar beside the other. He reached again into his shirt pocket. This time he drew out a white satin ribbon. It was about two feet long, a quarter inch wide and made of silk. Gary wound the ribbon twice around the first finger of his left hand , closed his eyes, and smelled the cloth.
Again Sam opened her mouth, this time to ask what he was doing. A quick glance from Gary told her to wait and see. He unwound the ribbon from his finger, lifted the larger ring and very slowly threaded the ribbon through the ring. After a minute of intricate twisting and tying and winding, all the gold of the ring was covered by beautiful knots of silk. Where there had been a gold ring, there was now a satin. Gary lifted the second ring, and a minute later, there was a second ring of satin knots, attached rigidly to the first. A single ribbon. Two rings of gold. A chain of two links, one larger than the other. A figure-eight with one loop spun ninety degrees off from the other.
Gary held this transformed object in both his hands turning it and looking at it, or through it. He glanced briefly at Sam, placed the thing on the bar and left with a creaking of the door.
Sam walked from the till to the other end of the bar and reached for the joined rings, and stopped herself. She stood instead and looked down at them. After a few minutes, she picked up the two glasses from the bar. Again she wiped their rings from the bar with her rag. She went back to the far end of the bar and mopped its surface from the till all the way along until she reached the rings. She mopped a circle around the rings. And another. She closed her eyes. She lifted her mopping hand and dropped it onto the rings, but she couldn’t bring herself to wipe them away. She gingerly let go the rag, and just left it there, covering the gold and satin chain.
Liquid amber swirled into the bottom of a glass, and Sam took a sip. She shook her head. Sam picked up the phone. “Jeannie? Can you come down to the bar please? Yes. Yeah, I’m okay. Don’t worry about me, just come down here.”
When Jeannie creaked the door open, Sam was sitting on Gary’s stool, nursing her second pint, leaning on an elbow and staring at the rag, which she had not moved. Jeannie went around behind the bar, filled a pint glass for herself, went back around the bar, took the stool next to Sam, propped her head on her hand, fixed her eyes on the rag and asked, “What are we looking at?”
Sam picked up her head and took hold of a corner of the rag. When she lifted the rag off the bar, there was nothing beneath it. “Shit!” Sam stood quickly.
Jeannie too stood quickly. “What, what is it?”
Sam shook the rag a bit and breathed a sigh of relief when the rings fell to the copper with a satin muted clatter.
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