Cindy Braxton tilted her glass back high to get the last of her vodka and coke from the bottom, enjoying the chill of the ice cubes as they pressed against her lips. She placed it, now empty of alcohol, down on the table. The cubes probably rattled, but it was impossible to hear them over the noise inside the bar. Frank’s was busy that Friday night, full of people out celebrating this or that, getting a buzz on to see them into the weekend, Monday morning nothing more than a background anxiety they would ignore until Sunday evening.
It was the usual collection of young and old, the former almost wild-eyed in their determination to enjoy the alcohol and the company, the latter a bit more subdued, this Friday night just another one to add to the hundreds that had gone before.
At 38, Cindy hovered somewhere around the middle of the spread of ages before her, but her mentality was definitely with the older folks. She had been coming to Frank’s every Friday night for close to twenty years. Her husband, Craig, loved the place. Loved that he knew half the clientele by name, and that some of them even knew his. So, at the end of the week, Frank’s was where they went once the babysitter turned up to take charge of their two kids, sit her fat backside on the couch, and drink some of their liquor.