Baltimore Nights

    It was a normal enough Saturday evening for Mary Bradford. She took a shower, put on her favorite little black dress, the one that was cut up the side, so you could see a good portion of shapely leg. She brushed her wavy, cornbread yellow hair until it was no longer tangled from spending the majority of the day in bed. She put on her makeup, some cherry red lipstick, and a generous helping of mascara and midnight blue eye shadow. She put a little bit of food into her poodle Fluffykins's bowl, and walked out the door of her apartment.
    This was Mary's Saturday night routine. She would walk down the block-past overturned trash cans and delinquent teens smoking pot on their stoops, past the outline of a human body, the only remnant of the previous night's murder other than the grieving old woman standing on the street corner, her face a mask of strength, only her eyes betraying the true depths of her hurt-to her favorite bar, this joint in downtown Baltimore called O'Finnigan's, and spent a few hours drinking, and trying to forget some of the shit that had plagued her during the work week.
    "Maker's Mark Hank," she said as she sat down at the bar. Hank was the bartender, a man of about fifty, slightly balding with weather worn skin and a bit of a lisp.
    "Of course Mary," Hank said, turning around to grab the bottle of whiskey. He poured a shot of the beautiful golden brown liquor into a glass and slid it across the counter to Mary.
    "I'll collect at the end of the night," he said.
    Mary brought the whiskey up to her nose, savoring the way it smelled, the strength of the alcohol, the aroma of the cypress barrels flirting with her senses. She sipped, rolling the drink around in her mouth, bringing out all the different combinations of flavor before finally swallowing.
    The first drink took care of her boss being a pervert, staring at her chest all day, and "accidentally" brushing his hand against her ass while walking past her, then turning around to wink one of his beady little eyes at her. Honestly, she really just wanted to kill that pig, but when she looked up into the mirror behind the bar, she could see where he was coming from. Her cornbread yellow hair shone a perfect shade of blonde, her blue eyes squinted together seductively glittered like sapphires, and when she pushed her tits together, they were ready to break men's hearts in two. She looked like a supermodel.
    Another drink took care of her husband trying to take everything she owned in the divorce process. He wanted everything: the house, the car, the linens, the good china, even the god damn dog. But he couldn't have her. He could take her things and ruin her life, but Mary was going to be damned if that scumbag and the whore he was replacing her with were taking Fluffykins away from her.
    Yet another drink took care of her son, a boy of nineteen, constantly going from prison to rehab, prison to rehab. She supposed he turned to heroin because of the divorce, but she could never really be sure. She could never really tell where she had gone wrong with that boy, she had taken him to church and made sure he had always participated in extracurricular activities through high school-he played sports, was part of the honor's program, even starred in the shitty plays the school put on-you know, things designed to keep kids away from drugs.
    "Mary, maybe you should slow down a bit," said Hank from behind the bar.
She looked at him foully, but set the glass down in front of her and pushed it away.
"Thanks Mary."
    But despite all the things going wrong in her life, right now Mary was feeling pretty good about herself, and was firmly convinced that she loved everyone in the bar, which included Hank, and a massively overweight woman with curly red hair doing everything she could to keep herself from falling off the stool she was sitting on.
    So as Mary sat on the barstool, looking at the pictures on the walls of the bar of the little league sports teams the bar supported through half shut eyelids and munching on peanuts, the hours went by. A few people came and went, nobody Mary found particularly important. Fat guy here, skinny guy there, a lonely old man that sat at the bar for several hours, drinking his sorrows away. Fucking alcoholics, Mary thought. Mary wondered what could drive someone to be like that, and ordered another beer. She never really got to think too far on that though, as the pictures on the wall drew her attention again. About ten minutes later, the bartender declared it was time for people to be leaving, and she shuffled out the door, leaving the old man to find his own way home, and the fat woman sitting on her stool, looking for some sort of assistance in getting up and through the front door.
    Mary, feeling a little more clear-headed due to the cool air, turned left and started to walk down the street toward her apartment complex. She continued to walk down the street, admiring the way the lights of Baltimore twinkled like stars in the evening. She loved the way the city looked every Saturday evening, how things were so much prettier, and the world so much more pleasant every time she walked home from O'Finnigan's.
    She wondered why things weren't always like this for her, and began to tear up a little bit. But then the lights of M&T Bank Stadium caught her eye, and she immediately cheered up. She loved Baltimore, and she loved her life, and she wouldn't give it up for anything in the world.