Three empty highball glasses stand next to an untouched glass of red wine. A fourth, containing two ice cubes and a short couple of centimeters of murky but expensive liquid, shakes dangerously over the trio, but the face of the woman holding it is perfectly placid.

She likes it here. She likes that it's almost too dark to see the person next to you, that it's too dark for her to be recognized in that vague way ("Hey, weren't you on Friends once? No? What about Smallville?"), that it's so dark men will hit on her before they realize how old she is (or that she's more of a predator than they could ever hope to be).

But mostly, she likes the fact that they'll bring her the right drinks in the right order.

Colquitt could be any depressed divorcee ambled in from the financial district, except that her suit is a little more expensive than seems reasonable below the rank of Vice President, and the way she slugs back bourbon like an old pro. Which, of course, is what she is. Everybody has to be a professional something, and this is Colquitt's new career. With luck, she'll be getting her promotion to alcoholic sometime in the next few months.

With an imperious wave, she commands another. The drink is overpriced, but it's the right brand. Christ, it's not like she can't afford it.

Alcohol is important. Especially to those with things to forget. Or, for that matter, with blood to thin... oops, wrong thought, need another drink.

Jeff sometimes wished he didn't find fitting foods to the undead palette so bloody appealing. He hated them, after all, it made no sense to also want to make the perfect drink for 'em.

Jeff didn't make much sense. Especially adfter this much to drink. He coudl almosts fesll the alcohlol flowlign trhough hims viens making everyhting more.. blurry. BLurrrsy was good.

Ragged blond hair, hidden by a loose hat. Blue eyes, hidden by said hair. Pale skin hidden by the lighting, which would make anything the same shade. Clothes messy but not in need of mending. Careless, not a tramp.

What is Jeff drinking? Something strong. Something almost tasteless. Something the writer can only surmise exists for occasions such as Jeff's.

Someone next to him. Chances of running into something dead drinking itself into oblivion in a bar? Slim to none. Chances of Jeff needing to talk to someone? Slim to infinity. "Whatre you having?" Slurred, slightly, not much. After a couple years oxygen lack became commonplace and something easily worked around.

Jeff had to work hard to get drunk.

He also doesn't flirt. This is one more reason he's never had a girlfriend, even in his mid-thirties.

ooc: The atrocious spelling in the third paragraph was intentional. I indulged myself.

"Booker's Reserve, twelve year," she says, savoring a long slug. She doesn't grimace; southern girls never do. Especially when they grew up drinking Rusty Nails at pasture parties.

"But you'd probably be better off with ameretto," she continues. Most people don't quite realize it, but the short-siblant Tidewater accent is spectacularly condusive to contempt. It's a regionalist insult, but Colquitt is quite confident is confident that even in his inebriated state, he'll figure it out from her tone.

But if he doesn't, she can always hammer the point home.

With a practiced gesture and no words, Colquitt orders one of what she's having for the gentleman down the bar. "More flies with honey," she mutters to herself.

The nice thing about being a cook is that you develop a really, really good sense of taste, without the accompanying urge to grimace and go 'eww'. If Jeff could taste anything of the alcohol he was drinking (The point, after all, was to drink it, not taste it. Very different goal.), he would probably think something like 'needs to sit another year' or 'shouldn't have been kept in damp conditions'.

"If you say so, m'm." Politeness is hidden somewhere in the slur, obvious in a very non-obvious way.

He drank what was given him. He looked at the glass for one long moment with blue eyes that gleamed with redeye, and then finished the drink. It was a drink. That was all he really needed. "Thanks." Not thanks, it tastes great. Thanks, it looks like I'm going to be unconcious sooner.

"Just doing my part to try to civilize the infidels," she says, allowing a little of the nectar to dribble onto her tongue.

"If you're going to slaughter brain cells, you might as well do it in style."

She looks at him. "What's your problem? You look like Eugene McCarthy who's been left in a dryer for three weeks on 'high'."

So she's not Winston Churchill. She's hardly addressing World War Two Londoners -- though, if she squints enough, this one could be Joe Stalin.

What a joke... what a fine joke. "Girl prblms."

She was being nice. Too nice. Girls, ladies, women, weren't nice. "Why?" Monosyllabic. Simple. Cryptic.

He's not being a complete idiot just yet. Still reasonably polite, if suspicious. Thus the cryptic.

"You're part of a sociology experiment I'm conducting. Can I ask a few more questions for background? Do people as pathetic as you literally crawl out of the woodwork, or do you have a home to go to?"

Well, that's better, but just a little. She's a little rusty, but she is pretty loaded; it's close enough to wit to pass. She sips her drink and waits for the answer, hoping for an explosion.

"'ve got an apartment." Not the question.

"None of your business, nywy." He knows he's pathetic. It comes of having gone nowhere in life for the past decade.

Denial is not the key to career success. Just a tip.

Brushed blond hair out of his eyes, glaring at her with half-drunken stubborness. A wavering glare, but a glare nontheless.

"I see, I see," she answered mock-seriously, pretending to take notes on a cocktail napkin, though her gaze never moves from his.

"And are you the God-hating flag-burning faggot you look like you are?" she asks in a conversational tone of voice, the malice glittering in her eyes. She grabs the wine and sips it, but never loses her aggressive posture. "Did you serve in the war, or did you spit on our troops when they got home?"

He looked at her for a very long moment, and then looked down. One thing Jeff isn't, and that's good at standing up for himself. "I probably served 'em dinner." Knowing people. Knowing him.

"Are you the undead witch y'sound like?" From Jeff, that isn't quite an insult.

Okay, so it is, but not for the normal reason.

Maybe we should take back the part about not standing up for himself, eh?

"No, I'm a God-fearing woman."

On her lips, God sounds like a partisan. But that hardly makes her a rarity.

His failure to rise to her insults annoys her. "Get out of my bar," she says, almost thoughtfully.

"'f it's your bar, whyreyou buyin drinks?" Confusion, but who knows. Jeff could have stumbled upon the bar's owner.

Still, on the bright side, he hadn't payed yet, so if she did throw him out he'd be very drunk without a lighter wallet.

Was Jeff religious? Aside from certain precautions involving ornamental religious symbols, no. Not at all. He had no reasons to be, after all.

His words, beligerant. His tone, not so beligerant. She can choose which to hear as the truth.