Old Friends
She sweeps into the bar on frothy skirts that don't suit her. He watches as she winces, stepping into a particularly offensive fluid, hiking them up a bit.
Those skirts are rented, like the limo waiting outside. Maneuvering herself onto a stool, he knows she can feel every rip in the green vinyl scraping the skirt and seems to worry it.
The dress was her Mom's idea, too; she had wanted something to dance in, like a pair of jeans. But Marge was always one to go to war with a sense of tradition, and thus her youngest arrived in a turquoise dress of tulle netting that was not perfectly flattering nor had any of the qualities her youngest had asked for.
"Cold one, Mags?"
She nods her head, and he opens the taps. She watches, as she has done most every day since her infancy, chin propped up against an open palm, swinging the tip of her high-heeled shoe by her big toe.
"Where's your date? Sos I can, you know, give him a look-see."
She shakes her head. "I didn't pick him up yet." Moe's brow sinks even lower, and she says, "The party's at his house."
"Yeah, well, Midge and Homer've met him, right?"
She rolls her eyes. "Duh! Mom did. She never lets me do anything fun."
Moe smirks. He may have gained a lousy memory, thanks to a few concussions from countless brawls at his fine establishment, but he can recall the many escapades a younger Maggie had participated in. Yeah, some of those stories he's heard are so outlandish that he blames them on her father's drunk talk, but he has seen her halt a mob war with his own eyes. Anything, in truth, is possible.
"Ya didn't have a good time at the inauguration?"
Maggie smiles a little. "I met Branton Marsalis at the ball after. He was cool. I WANTED Lisa to invite Dale Earnhart Junior, but she said too many celebrities would be 'unseemly'." She made air quotes around those last words and rolled her eyes again.
"Yeah, Lisa was too smart for her own good a long time ago."
"Well...she is the President now. That's way more important than anything I've done yet."
"Hey, don't get rough on yourself there! You're eighteen; only thing I ever did when I was your age was get scabies from a wharf hooker."
"Eww, TMI." He hands her a beer, somewhat abashed, and she blows upon the froth before taking a drink. "That's good stuff." She remarked.
"Yeah, it's the new Duff Ex-Rageous. Has all the alcohol of Duff Regular with a 'kick 'a lemon', whatever that is."
"Nice." She remarks. A belch bubbles up, and, typically, she forgets to excuse herself. Instead, she changes the subject. "My dad said you used to be in the movies."
"Uh, yeah...I don't like to talk about it."
She knows him too well to press the subject, but the curiosity om her face remains. He won't chase the subject. She's taking a minor in film studies at her college, and will known soon enough of his minor fame.
College; he can't deny that he had been about as proud as Homer when he learned that Maggie had been accepted to a school in Washington. She seems less than pleased; at this point in her life it's just a thing to do to get Midge and Homer off of her back.
Later, for Moe, the anxiety had set in, anxiety she had never shown. For it meant that she and the rest of the Simpson family would be uprooting to Washington, and he wouldn't see her every week as per usual.
The limo's horn sounded, a few bars from 'Spanish Flea' filling the air. She makes a sour face and finishes the rest of the beer. "I've got to go." She places her fee on the bar, and he can't help but notice that she's the only person today to have paid their tab.
He pushes the dollar across the bar. "Keep it."
She frowns. "Moe..." She seems to think she can see more clearly than he does the shabbiness of the bar, a rat skittering across the floor. But he knows too well the filth he walks among, the dregs he gives service. He is, after all, one of them.
She watches Moe's haggard face, lines running deeply around the patch covering his lost eye, and he is ashamed. He remembers so clearly the day he lost it to one lousy bum with a pocketknife. Her father told him that she had cried so harshly that her mother had kept her home from school that day.
"You need it." She says firmly, "More than I do."
"Moe Szyslak don't take charity, toots."
She shook her head. "I know. Just take it, cause, It's, like, a thank-you."
He wants to ask her what he should be thanked for. He's done reprehensible things, things that had ruined his reputation, had allowed his temper to rule him at all of the wrong times.
He wants to tell her that she deserves the money; she's the one who kept him from jumping off of a bridge seventeen years before. She's the one who showed him that life could be fun, could be happy, and could have a spark of joy.
But he's never been a man of words. "I'll see you at Christmas, Mags."
While he folds the bill, she clatters out the door, her heels too big on her growing feet.