MysteryGuy?

Working the taps, MYSTERY GUY felt his arms wake up--finally being appreciated beyond their monotonous swaying of the back and forth kind. (Or Hale's line when starts to work again...?)

"You're a distinctual sort of dude, mate. You know what I'm saying?"
I had no idea.
"Absolutely," I said.

The man in the pink hat scoffs for the third time that evening, so that by now I recognized it as an expletive of approval. Luckily there was no one around to see me gloat. I poured Pinky another shot without being asked, good bartender that I am.

Tonight at the bar I saw someone in the midst of a crowd of her friends. Do you know what I mean by that? There were at least a dozen of them, but no matter where she stood she seemed the one surrounded. I keep thinking, 'Does that say something about her? Or does that say something about me?

If it's the latter, I think I'd better grow out of it soon--I can't believe how easy it is to utterly ignore the individuality of seeming pack members.

What's she look like? The better question might be, what doesn't she look like? Or maybe, for an edging of flair, what does she exude? Something like thoughtfulness, I think. Ah! But what does that mean? What next? Something generic--something barely there. Like a patch of sky, painted/allowed in the corner of a ceiling--of a low ceiling, that is.

Anyway, I mean to answer the question, 'Why?' if I can. First things first, she wore a backwards hat, and her eyes narrowed painstakingly with each fixation of her gaze. Absolutely, which is how she seemed to see things.

Maybe that's all it was--a matter of movement. No, but it wouldn't be a case of physical stillness, what with how often she pulled a chosen friend into the crowded room and made her real--even into the crowded room blaring with the dissatisfying music, t-shirt hanging over her shoulders in all the wrong places. She wasn't the only girl grinning either, but it was just as well--I was only curious about hers.

Images of her smiling face watching itself in the mirror for a fleeting moment, and then wilting maybe, they manifested of their own accord by the design of my imagination. I saw her with an inscrutable expression, showing the clothes she would wear that morning. Yawning, and then rechoosing. Would she smile self-deprecating before she did it. Would she get an arbitrary sense of her choices? Of her life, perhaps? And would she keep right on smiling?, I wondered.

Like tonight, though? Why was I wondering about this girl anyway, when each of the other people I saw would have been subjected to the same processes of the days. Why couldn't I seriously care about their expressions, as if they'd be as invisible as my own through my eyes?

Her colors were monochromatic; she was all browns and grays. Cedar-skin, sequoia-hair, and lips and eyes. Shades of sand at midnight ensemble, as if feigning colorlessness. (Almost colorless?) None of this would mean a thing on someone else--I wouldn't even have noticed! How easy it is to get nowhere.