There Was This One

She went off into the parking at Rite Aid almost the last of her lot to go. Trailing after her there was only the dude she was with and, answering his cell, he walked slower. Danielle's gait was easy and right along, then, and she held her two hands up, out from her sides and moved them left-right rhythmically as though finger popping. Her head, her whole upper body was back leaning, too, nearly in the attitude called trucking though it's unlikely she'd ever have heard of that. It seemed Danielle was quiescent - not done yet but only between outbursts of pure pleasure.

The word must be oout around some campus, or maybe it was just out on Monroe last night that, of all places Enright's Thirst Parlor ws the place to be, I thought.

After Danielle, the last of her lot, departed, I started into Rite Aid myself and met the two up-front clerks stepping outside. As we passed, I asked,

"Since when is Enright's a college bar?"

Both wore smiles nd I didn't have to explain a thing to them.

"We were just figuring the same thing!"

Maybe the word was only that there was getting to be a good crowd, a young and college crowd there at Enrights, I, myself figured, then, and that there was this one chick.... At times it can take just one having a good time to begin to attract and, then, hold such a crowd in some one avenue bar.

When the crowd that was gathered emptied out on to Monroe at Closing in that mass way peculiar to Enright's at 2 a.m. there must have been something like fifty turned out and nearly to a one they had a sophomoric look about them.

That's not an Enright crowd. An evening crowd at the Thirst Parlor is a Harley Davidson, Tattoo Parlor crowd mingled with some long standing drinkers from the neighborhood. The daylight crowd hikes themselves on to their stools and finds their booths early in the morning and they spend the better part of the day in place. Then, too, Enright's being the only Monroe bar that opens early, they are among the few that closes religiously at two a.m. so they can swamp out, sweep up and be ready for the new day. Beer trucks have been parking on Monroe in front of Enright's first thing in the morning as long as I've been coming in to Rochester - a long time.

The crowd that turned out on the sidewalk last night wasn't old enough or local enough to even remember a few years back when the trees in front of Enright's were still festoon with shamrocks made of tiny emerald lights. It was a crowd, too, that hung around and was Fun Times loud a good half hour longer in another fashion uncommon to the place. They revved no bike engines at the curb for show before roaring away. But, instead, there were fake kng fu fighters, bowers with skinnyarms and scattering, laughing sudden pacifists in and out among the mob for a time and the whole lot seemed to "WHOA!" and "LOOK OUT! LOOK OUT!" in unison when such antics broke out.

Maybe the one they called Danielle took her cue from them or, as likely, her own moves got them going.

Undersized for most of those around her and compactly built shewould go in to a crouch-over with her arms up like a defensive back when she found someone to assault, shout out the bigger person's name and take off running at him with all her enthusiasm. Ten feet on the dead run and she would throw a kick at his flank or a shot at his shoulder or for him. She landed on the chest of one friend and half staggered him back till he swung her about with Danielle biting at his neck vampire fashion. Another she hit from behind and attempted to piggy back ride. Grabbing hold around his lower back, she rode his seat as long as she wanted to stay on with him holding her legs awkwardly, legs encased in skintight light blue jeans.

The crowd was laced through with a suspicious number of half-pint, slight and lovely girls all having the time of their lives. They didn't stay all together and they may not have all been of the same party but a number did seem to know of one another. Danielle was only a little taller and a little less slight than those others but shared, too, their shape and appearance - good asses, no tits to speak of and pretty but not spectacular faces. Danielle was all of that and just a little more of everything than those other girls.

Traffic on Monroe got heavy with the after hours crowd arriving in the zone from out and about and Danielle spotted a boyfriend across the Avenue. He was coming up with others from Goodman along the front of Rite Aid.

She hollered out his name in her fashion and nothing would do but she would get to him, get to him latest. Pound on the front of a cab starting up from picking up a fare and she charged by it and into the street. Amid warning shouts and laughter she started and stopped and started again and made it safe to the other side to make her trackling run at her tallest target yet, her Everest. Her leap at his neck was spectacular and, if he was nearly overwhelmed, she landed it ten.

That stunt drew after her her gang of some half dozen, boys and girls together. They came grinning and trotting out daring the traffic with less unconcern but behind her example and, with them, the most of the enthusiasm finally went out of the crowd in front of Enright's.

For a time the lot remained on the sidewalk at the front door of the drug store. There was talk among them of where they would go next and what they would do later. Danielle was little part of any of that. Fun, for her, was now and a single-minded, kinetic moving about, a meeting and greeting strangers and acquaintances on the sidewalk and out in traffic with all the energy and joy in her. Those forays out in to the lanes drew the others' laugher and concern and, eventually, made some go smiling along with her only with more care and less assurance.

At last it was the automatic sliding doors of the store that drew her away from the side of the street. They sprung open together and she charged through them on sudden and unexplained impulse. Once again, to a one, the loyal guard followed in a string with half exhausted and wondering titters of delight.

Among the last to go after, one voice asked,

"What are we going in here for?"

And a second laughed,

"I don't know but we're going!"

When they emptied back out some ten minutes later the dogged talk returned to whose house they would go to and how they would party.

Danielle, now, was more quiescent and, when her friends strung off into the parking lot for their cars, she was among the last of her crowd to leave Monroe. She was listening to music in her head and looking up at the roof tops and into the overhead lights.

She was by no means extinct but only dormant with eruptions yet within her.

After they went, a dude who'd been making a call on his cell at the corner of the store, met up with two friends and they, too, went off into the lot. As he went with them, the cell dude asked in some awe,

"Ju see that girl; the one they called Daniella?"