Glass of water shows complex side of ‘easy’

‘I’M EASY,” she said upon sitting down — a comment that caused at least two other male heads to turn. Another man scooted one barstool closer.

I proceeded with caution, because many people believe they are exactly opposite than the way that they are. I took her comment to mean “easy to wait on.”

The thought faded with her very first order.

“I’ll just have water,” she said. Only adding the “no ice” part after I had already filled a glass with ice and water.

“Can you put it in a different type of glass?” she asked after I had filled yet another glass with just water.

“A different type of glass?” I asked.

“You know, a fancy one.”

“Sure.” It was early enough in the evening and not busy enough to make that sort of thing aggravating.

In most bars, water comes out of the soda gun, that little prop that looks like the arm of the robot from the TV series “Lost in Space.” Ironically, it is the slowest liquid a bartender is able dispense so “just a glass of water” can often take as long to make as the most difficult and expensive drink behind the bar. Doubly ironic, bartenders are not usually tipped on effort but on merely sales.

But then again, no one ever said that life was going to be fair.

“I’ll have lemon, too.”

Placing a lemon wedge on the rim of a different iceless glass, albeit a fancy one, I sighed inwardly at the long delayed completion of so simple a task.

I sighed too soon.

“Do you have lemon twists?”

“Of course.”

I started to wonder when the “easy” part was going to start. I also noticed the two head-turners were now clearly looking in entirely different directions and the stool scooter had moved back to his original seat.

“That’s quite an order,” said a man who obviously didn’t see the red flags waving.

“What do you mean?” she said.

Uh oh, I thought, moving away.

“I just meant that you had a very specific water order,” stammered the flag blind man.

“What do you mean?”

“I was just making conversation.”

I kept my head down, and the two head-turners didn’t flinch. We might as well have been ostriches with our heads in the sand. Safely in the sand, I might add.

“Hmph,” said the woman crossing her arms.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said, visibly shaking.

Too late. Umbrage had been taken.

Soon enough, an unwitting man sat down between the two feuding strangers. He was to become a pawn in a game only one person was playing. The water drinking woman took an immediate interest in the new arrival, she practically threw herself at the new man; all the while looking indignantly at the poor stranger who had commented on her water order.

After a mixed drink order that made the earlier water order look tame, she boldly leaned in to kiss the stranger. As she did so, she stared coldly at the earlier gentleman.

That earlier gentleman, meanwhile, looked bewildered.

When she suggested to the newest arrival that they depart for her place, she did so staring long at the poor earlier commenter. So long in fact, that the new arrival also looked.

When they left, the poor commenter looked at me.

“Didn’t she say that she was going to be easy.”

“She didn’t say that she was going to be easy. She said that she was easy.”

This encounter left me with four thoughts:

• When ordering drinks at a bar it is much appreciated when the customer mentions all modifications before the drink is actually made.

• “There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult,” said billionaire Warren Buffett. Incidentally I have waited on Buffett twice, and both times he was easy as pie.

• What initially seems like the best of luck can sometimes turn out to be the worst.

• Being physically easy can often be an attempt to make up for being psychologically difficult.