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"I'll just be going to the bar", the man hoarsely muttered as he passed through the heavy wood doors.  Words weren't necessary for this regular, but it had become routine for him to explain his existence all the same.  Even if the hostess wasn't so familiar with his dreary face, the damp packet of cigarettes he was gripping gave him away for the bar hopper he was.

Every night, right as the restaurant was coming to a still, this musty, middle-aged man would come in alone, desperately holding onto his smokes, and he would sit at the bar.  He never conversed.  Sometimes he didn't even order a drink.  He would just sit, staring intently at the redwood structure before him.  He had very deceptive eyes...one could always tell he was never really looking where his eyes where aiming.

Tonight must have been very important, for the man ordered a Smirnoff and it was lost inside of him within seconds.  He nervously turned the barstool...not out of energetic entertainment like little kids will as they wait impatiently for their meal.  He spun, more in a fidgety, wishful way-as if he was hoping that when he turned back around, he would be some place else.  In another world, another dimension, another time?  Maybe...when his chair stopped, he would no longer exists at all-or at least not as himself.

The accustomed stranger didn't order another round.  He didn't lift his eyes, though he did shift them awkwardly a time or two.

Once, on one of the hotter days of the summer, the hostess was able to catch a quick glance of a tattoo on the man's upper arm.  As he stroked back his dripping bangs, his sleeve fell slightly down, revealing a Celtic cross.  Almost fearfully, as if in a most urgent manner, the guest tightly pulled down his sleeve, buttoning it firmly around the wrist.

What was he scared of?  What was he hiding?  Surely it could not be his Irish heritage, because we all are well aware there is no such thing as an Irish person who is not proud of it!  So it had to be the cross...but why be so scared of such an emblem?  Why be it a secret?  Why keep it a secret?

A few tedious hours later, after a great amount of deliberate obscurity, the man slipped out the back doors.  The hostess shrugged her shoulders as her manager told her she could go home.  He had been the last guest of the evening.  She quickly gathered her things, clocked out, and left through the same doors as the man.  The moon gave the only hint of light to the deep darkness of the night.  The hostess searched the empty parking lot, and once she saw the older man's rusty truck turn around the corner, she let out a huge sigh of relief.  Quickly, her hand fumbled down her shirt until she grasped onto a chain.  She gently pulled it out, and smiled softly at her own golden cross.  Just as her fingers had began to memorize the gleaming surface, a closing waiter appeared calling out to her, "Hey, need a ride?"  Rapidly she tucked her sign away, smiled sheepishly at her coworker, and gracefully refused his kind offer.

She thought to herself...That was a close one...

For one more night, their secret was kept.