“Tre, would you ask Trish if she’s still going to meet me tonight for a drink? Please? Thanks!”

Tre set the phone down and stuck his head into the bathroom where his wife was showering. “Hey hon, Jeannie wants to know if you are going to meet her tonight for a drink?”

Trisha washed the soap off of her face, then called back “Tell her ‘Yes!’ Tell her right after work at that new place across from her work.”

Tre picked the phone back up. “She said ‘Yes, at the place across the street from where you work right after work’.”

“Okay, thank you!” Jeannie hung up, but not after Tre heard her mutter “About time she went out with me!”

Tre wondered briefly what she meant by that, but was in a hurry to head off to work, and quickly forgot what he had overheard.

It was not until nine that evening that he started wondering where his wife was. Normally on a Friday night, she was home by 7:30 or 8:00 at the latest, even on the nights she went out for a drink with her girlfriends.

The football game ended a bit late, about 9:45. Tre looked through the refer but found nothing that looked appetizing. He was getting dammed hungry. It was not like his wife to not be home to eat dinner with him.

After a little more fruitless rummaging around in the kitchen, Tre decided to drive down to the local Shari’s and eat. Inexplicably, the restaurant that never closed was closed. “Just my fricking luck!” muttered Tre. As he drove past, he realized he was only a few blocks from Trish’s place of work. And as luck would have it, when he drove past, there was a parking place right across the street from her office. It was directly in front of a bar. ‘I wonder if that is the one they were referring to,’ mused Tre. He decided to see.

The lighting in the bar was muted, but Tre could see well enough.

“Just one?” the waitress asked. Tre always hated being asked ‘JUST one?’ as though there was some sort of stigma attached to being alone while one was eating. Consciously setting his irritability aside, he asked if they served food and was delighted to find out they did. The waitress set him at a table that gave him a great view of the dance floor and the bar area.

Search as he might, Tre could not find his wife anywhere in the crowd as he waited for his food. He called home several times, but the phone was never answered, going instead to their answering machine. Famished, he bolted his food when it finally came. There was a lot of it, thank god, and he was soon full and feeling better.

When his waitress brought his ticket, he asked her if there had been a couple of women in earlier. He described them to her.

“Oh! You mean Jeannie and ….lets see what was her name ….. Trish!?”

“YES! Were they here, or ARE they here?”

The waitress looked at him for a couple of seconds. “So who’s asking?”

Tre blushed. “Oh sorry, I am her husband, I mean Trish’s husband.”

“Can I see your ID?”

Tre dug out his wallet, then pulled out his driver’s license. He handed it to the cautious woman.

“Can’t be too careful these days,” she said as studied his driver’s license photo, looking at him then the photo several times. “Take off your hat!” she ordered him.

Tre did, showing off his bald head.

The waitress giggled, then handed his driver’s license back. “They left here about a half hour or so ago, just before you got here, and I think they said they were going to go over to check out the ‘Hanging Tree’. That seems to be Jeannie’s favorite haunt anymore.”

“Is that like a bar or something?”

The waitress stared at Tre for a few seconds. “It’s a specialty night club.”

“What’s that? Have you been there before?” Tre asked, becoming frustrated again at the way the waitress would not fully answer his questions.

Her face took on a dreamy look. She shivered slightly as she opened her eyes and again looked at his face. “Yeah, I’ve been there. Best time I ever had in this town!”

Tre stared at the waitress. It was almost as if she had had a mini orgasm. Tre didn’t like the way the waitress’s face had changed. He sensed that perhaps something was amiss. “Where’s it at?” he asked, feeling more and more desperate to find his wife. He began to sense that time was critical.

The waitress eyed him for a bit, then ventured, “You probably shouldn’t go over there. Can be kind of a rough place.” Then she added “For you.”

“What do you mean, ‘For me?’”

She popped her gum, then smiled brightly. She looked him in the eye and said, “You’re white man. White guys can get in trouble over there.” With that, she turned on her heel and left.

Tre swallowed hard as he grabbed his coat and headed for the phone booth to look up the ‘Hanging Tree’ in the Yellow Pages.