Filling up the Virgin(234)

By the time the police, the MPs, and the drunken louts had all left, all of my regular customers had gone as well. I was left with an empty bar and a bunch of smashed furniture. I sighed and grabbed a broom, then started cleaning up the mess.

The worst part about the whole thing, aside from the damages to the bar, was that since both groups had been hauled off, none of them had been able to leave me a tip.



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CHAPTER 2:

The next day, I opened the bar early. There were at least a few hundred dollars worth of damages from the fight, and I had to bring in some extra business to make up for the cost. A couple of my regulars wandered in the door not long after I turned on the neon OPEN sign, though they weren't some of my best tippers.

I went through my day feeling the weight of last night on my shoulders. Watching the marines and the SEALs brawl had shaken me. Don't get me wrong, I'm no wilting flower. I've tossed a drunk or three out on the curb when I had to, and being a big girl gave me a lot more upper body strength than most people gave me credit for. But that was different than trying to break up an all-out brawl among trained soldiers. These had been men who were trained to kill, and there had been no way I was putting myself in between them.

I was still considering what to do about the whole situation when one of the navy SEALs walked in the front door. It was the gentlemanly one, the one who'd called me “ma'am.” The only reason I didn't tell him to turn around and leave the moment I saw him was because he'd been the one working to break up the fight.

“I hope you left your friends back at the base,” I said as he approached the bar. “I'm not looking for any more trouble here tonight.”

“No trouble, ma'am,” he said. “My boys are going to spend the next few weeks regretting what they did here, after the way our superiors dragged them over the coals. I can assure you, they were not behaving the way the navy expects of its men.”

“Well, good,” I said, somewhat mollified. “Just as long as they learn their lesson and don't do this sort of thing again.”

“I'd also like to pay for the damages,” he said, reaching into his pocket. “I feel responsible, and I'd like to make it up to you.”

“You don't have to do that,” I said, though in truth I very much wanted to be reimbursed. “I've got insurance...”

“Please, ma'am. I insist.” He handed me a folded check. “And again, I apologize. You have yourself a nice day.”

“I...” Before I could say anything else, he turned and walked out the door. “Well, thank you.”

I shook my head and unfolded the check. Then my eyes just about fell out of my head.

He'd written out the check for the amount of $10,000.

I growled under my breath and stepped out from behind the bar, hurrying to try to catch up with him. I pushed the door open and stepped outside into the fading daylight. “Hey, what the hell is this? Some kind of a joke?”

I looked around, but all I saw was a military Humvee, already driving off. If the man heard me, he gave no sign of it.

I was left standing there, holding the check, wondering what I was supposed to do with it. I didn't believe for one minute that it would be any good. Though if it was some kind of prank, I figured I could at least try to deposit it. If it overdrew the man's checking account, that would be just the kind of punishment he deserved for messing with me.

I sighed and shoved the check into my pocket, then headed back inside. I had had about all I could handle of military men, though at least this time I'd managed to avoid having anything broken.



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CHAPTER 3:

I waited until the end of the week, when I was depositing the bar's receipts for the week, to take the check down to the bank. The teller did a double-take when she saw it, but she didn't say anything about it. I almost told her that I thought it was a prank, but I decided to keep my mouth shut and see what happened.

Over the next few days, I mostly forgot all about it. It was business as usual, and the weekend was always a busy time for me. I made sure to tell my other bartenders and waitresses about the fight, and warned them that they should call the police if anything like that happened again. We got a few men from the base who came in Friday and Saturday night, but I didn't recognize any faces from the night of the brawl, and none of the military men caused any problems.

I'd practically forgotten about the whole thing until days later, when I was going over my bookkeeping for the end of the month. I booted up the computer in my office and started going over all of the daily sales reports from the bar, tallying my deposits and deducting the various expenses that had to be paid: the lease on the building, the liquor license, the beer costs, the electric bill, and so on. It wasn't until I saw the bar's account balance that I realized something was off.