The bar is packed with people. The music is too loud and I don’t see any space available. I lean over the bar to beg for a table from a waitress who looks completely overwhelmed.
“Hi! Do you have a table available, please? We’re coming to watch the football game!”
“Yeah, well, like everyone else, sir!” she said without looking at me, in a tone of contempt.
“Is that so. Okay, thanks.”
She looks up, surprised by my polite response, finds me, and smiles.
“I’ll see what I can do!” she said to me with a supportive wink.
“Thank you. We’re three.”
“Well done,” Paul whispers to me. “With kindness, you get whatever you want. Women don’t like nags.”
“Does anyone!?”
But Paul didn’t hear my reply. The waitress, whom I haven’t taken my eyes off of, beckons us. She found us a small round table,
