Table For Two…Er… Make That Three

Last night Liz and I went to the Flying Fig to enjoy the incredibly cheap and delicious happy hour they serve in the lounge. We thought it would just be the two of us meeting to catch up, but we had an unexpected guest.

As we were sitting there enjoying a pre-dinner drink and talking, a woman came out from the back of the restaurant area and sat down at the table right next to us. (When I say table next to us, I actually mean the table only about a foot away. It is one of those setups where the person at the table next to you is closer than the person sitting across from you.) As she sat down, she looked familiar but I couldn’t place where I knew her. I also noticed she was crying hysterically as she sat her glass of red wine down and kept smoking her cigarette. At this point we let her use our ashtray when we noticed she was just ashing on the table and laughing hysterically but then would start crying again. It made things a little uncomfortable as we tried to carry on our conversation. Actually the point when things got really uncomfortable and weird was when she asked me to buy her a Bud Light. I looked at the full glass of wine in front of her with a confused look on my face and then I realized where I knew her from. She was the homeless woman who hangs out by the West Side Market. As I was putting two and two together, the bartender came up and took the glass of wine from her and said: “you have to stop stealing people’s drinks.” Yet he didn’t kick her out and when he walked away, she proceeded to light the wrong end of her cigarette. Instead of putting the cigarette out, she tried to smoke the wrong end while holding a big burning flame, and telling everyone at the bar to turn around and mind their own business.

When our food came, she moved over closer to us to see what we had ordered and commented on our food. At this point the smell from her clothes was more than I could stand. I motioned for the waiter and he came over and asked us if everything was ok. We looked at him and wondered if he actually thought this woman was with us and told him that in fact she was making us a little uncomfortable. The manager then tried to remove the woman but she wasn’t going quietly. She finally agreed to leave but still kept asking for a Bud Light. The whole experience was surreal: from the way she stole somebody’s full glass of wine and acted like it was hers, to the bartender taking it away from her, to her refusing to leave. After she left, Liz and I wondered out loud if the bartender just added some more wine to the glass and gave it back to the customer. They don’t call it the cheapest happy hour in Ohio City for nothing.