A room with a brew #3: Blondiage bye-bye?

This is the third in a Sunday serial. Read the first and the second.

The day after Blondiage was publicly crying in her tequila because of the shabby way The Mustache had treated her, she was back at the bar brandishing a brochure for a new Pontiac she said she was buying. In other words, too bad for you, Mustache. See what you will never ride in.

As usual she had the blue trivia game console on the bar in front of her. And also as usual she called to me for help, in this case, with the answering of a round of “match the artist with the art form” questions involving the likes of Henry Moore, Thomas Mann, and Anna Pavlova.

Blondiage had no clue as to the correct answers. She had never heard of those people, which doesn't make her a bad person. But as soon as the game confirmed the right answers I had given her, Blondiage claimed she would have come up with those answers herself, given a bit more time to think. Yeah right. How does that work? If you don't already associate monumental nudes with Moore, haven't read "Magic Mountain," and have never been inside an opera house, how is more time going to help you figure out the right answers?

But Blondiage insisted loudly she had known all that stuff. I rolled my eyes and shrugged. Nobody else even cared or was listening. Poor Blondiage. She was was the type of woman who attracted lost drunks and stray animals. And what drew them to her was her nonjudgmental openness. No one expected Blondiage to be a wealth of cultural knowledge. But the more vodka tonics she drank, the greater her need to break out of that mold. Perhaps in that regard she was just like the rest of us.

Anyway, as it turned out, Blondiage was moving away. She had recently returned from a vacation to Key West, a much publicized trip through her own word of mouth and even more so through jealous gossip. Now she was moving down there for good, she said. I had to admit she was a perfect fit for Duval Street, sexy and thirsty and no worse yet for wear.

Of course, Blondiage had also found in Key West her dreamboat as well as a dream job. According to her, and despite Jojo's long demographic odds, which she had acknowledged as fact, namely, seven babes for every hunk, Blondiage told us she had a new beau waiting for her in the Keys. And a good job, an actual career. And don’t forget the new wheels. Yep, I guess the message was pretty clear: Eat your hearts out, losers.

Well, take 'er easy, Blondiage. I never tried to make you, but you never wanted anything from me anyway except the right answers to questions that didn't really matter, a trivia game. Why should I miss you? You never even thanked me once for helping you win all those games or for making your scores look respectable so others wouldn't think you were a complete ditz. You tumbled for The Stache and for Jojo. You never thought about trying with me. You knew you could count on my answers but you couldn't see me in any other light. Hey, wasn't I a regular, too? Sometimes sitting at the bar right next to you. Well, if you didn't want to know, forget it.

Blondiage wasn't mean, just self-absorbed. And after all, wasn't she just like all of us, that is to say, lost in one way or the other but unable to see precisely where we have gone astray.

So maybe I will be eating my heart out -- just a little.