It was several weeks ago that I first noticed Blind Betty in the bar, as she nursed a martini while sitting alone in a booth by the abandoned stage. There was something about her that intrigued me right from the start, but I couldn't quite put my finger on exactly what it was. Perhaps it 'was' her resemblance to that pinup model of long ago, whose pictures I had been so attracted to and not infrequently aroused by ever since the age of eighteen, when I first discovered her provocative image gracing the pages of certain men's magazines. She wasn't in the bar every night, but when she did put in an appearance, I would watch her reflection in the stained mirror that hung over the bar. She always sat in the same booth, quietly staring into her drink, never really noticing what went on around her, and I would frequently wonder what it was that she was so lost in thought about.

A single woman sitting alone in a bar is a natural magnet, and over a number of nights, I watched as the male regulars would, one by one, try to strike up a conversation with her. The attempt never seemed to last more than a few minutes and afterwards the men would always find their way back to their stools at the bar, appearing confused and somehow lost within themselves. I tried to speak to a few of them after their aborted conversations, asking what they had talked about with Betty, but I never got a straight answer from any of them and surprisingly, not one of them ever attempted a second conversation with her.

For myself, it had been many years since I had tried to approach a single woman and initiate a conversation outside the workplace, but eventually my curiosity got the better of me, so one evening I picked up my courage and then my beer, and walked over to Blind Betty's table. "Excuse me..." I started, but then realized I didn't know what her name was. I had almost called her 'Betty' and covered myself by saying, "Do you mind if I join you?"

She looked up toward me, her gaze resting somewhere over my left shoulder and slowly shook her head, then lowered her eyes back to the half-filled glass.

I slid into the booth next to her and got my first good look at her by the glow of a neon beer sign that hung on the wall over our booth. She might have been a dozen years older than myself or for that matter, a dozen years younger. Her face still seemed somehow youthful beneath the wide sunglasses and her lips were full and pouting under their crimson covering, while lustrous, dark hair cascaded thickly over her shoulders and down her back. Tearing my gaze from her face, I noticed that there was a half-moon shaped imprint of red lipstick on the outside rim of her martini glass, wherein the olive bobbed slowly, still impaled on its wooden toothpick with the colored, plastic fringe. Moisture had beaded the outside of the long-stemmed glass, and she slowly twirled the stem between slender fingers which ended with long, red-lacquered nails.