Walking home at the end of her Wednesday work day, Carla paid more attention than usual to the sights along her route on this, her last working day before leaving town. The trip from the bank where she worked to her apartment was as simple as could be; turn right after clearing the front door and walk three blocks, crossing the street somewhere along the way where traffic allowed. Finding a convenient place to cross was all too easy these days; the historic business district of Ardmer, Oklahoma had long ago lost most of its customers to newer shopping centers and office buildings on the outskirts of town, making crossing the main drag no problem. Still, she thought it was a pleasant enough stretch, with a few fun shops and restaurants, "nice, but not enough to keep me here," she thought as she came to her building.
She had given her manager two weeks' notice two weeks ago. She told him she wanted to move back to the Pittsburgh area, to be closer to her family. Her explanation was true but incomplete. She didn't mention that the only reason she had ever laid eyes on this town in the first place was her decision to follow her boyfriend Ethan as he returned to his hometown when they both graduated from college. With the relationship now definitively ended by Ethan's decision a few months ago to get back together with his high school sweetheart, Carla was more than ready to end the Ardmer chapter in her life. Other than finishing packing up her stuff in order to be out of her apartment by December 1st, she was basically done with this town.
Carla would rather have moved earlier, but since she hadn't lined up a new job yet and her lease ran through November she'd delayed her departure. With a deadline now looming, she planned on spending a good part of the four day Thanksgiving weekend packing for her move. Before getting down to work boxing up her belongings, she decided to stop by at what had become her favorite place in the town, a bar a few doors down the street from her apartment.
Named, for no obvious reason, "The Whistlestop," the place was not quite a dive but had clearly seen better days. She often wondered how it could stay in business at all with as few patrons as it had; seeing more than eight customers at a time was highly unusual, and usually half of that number was all you were likely to find chatting with the bartender. All the regulars knew each other and apparently had done for years, probably for decades.
Carla stood out from the Whistlestop's longtime customers in every way imaginable; she was almost always the only woman in the place, younger than the average customer by at least a decade or two, was usually the only college graduate present, and was just generally Not-From-Here. Being an outsider hadn't prevented her from being warmly welcomed into the joint's barfly society; she generally stayed for two beers, maybe as many as three on a weekend visit if she had a meal and was watching a football game. However long she stayed, she never seemed to need to buy herself more than one round. Anything more than that was usually covered by one or another of the regulars.
Being a very nicely proportioned young woman with a pretty face certainly helped keep her spending down, but she quickly learned that though her middle-aged fellow barflies liked to flirt with her, they didn't expect buying her a drink to lead anywhere. She wasn't sure if they were too worried about their wives finding out to make a play for her or if they were just genuinely well behaved. Whatever the reason, other than the occasional mild comment when she was wearing something shorter or tighter than one of her typical workplace outfits, the men she hung out with at the Whistlestop treated her more like just another drinking buddy than a possible conquest.
The outfit Carla was wearing as she entered the Whistlestop this particular evening was more or less her regular weekday look as the days were getting cooler; a white button-down blouse over somewhat heavy leggings, with a long lightweight sweater, partly for the slightly chilly walk to and from work but also good to provide coverage for the lighter weight leggings she sometimes wore. Despite today's leggings being conservative enough for work, she knew she could count on a comment or two from some of her fellow customers, nothing particularly rude, just their weird way of letting her know they thought her butt looked good. Right on schedule, Keith, one of the regulars, welcomed her as she stepped up to the bar, "Well hello, Carla! I see you forgot your skirt again, not that I'm complaining."
"Well, Keith," Carla replied as she took off her sweater and draped it over an empty barstool, "I don't expect you to be up on the latest fashions, but no, I'm not wearing pantyhose, these are called LEGGINGS, and they're perfectly respectable work wear, especially with the tails of my blouse being long enough to keep perverts like you from staring at my butt." Carla's smile let Keith and his usual drinking buddy Tim know they were all in on the joke.
"I don't know, Carla, I'm not sure that blouse is long enough to cover as much as you think it does," Tim chimed in.
"Honestly, I don't see what all the fuss is about," Carla replied, taking her beer along as she stepped a few feet away from the bar. She lifted the hem of her blouse up, probably a little more than she intended, revealing for a few seconds not just the waistband of her leggings, not only her toned abs, but also the lower half of a lacy white bra, "See, they're heavy enough and dark enough to not be very revealing, even without the blouse."
"Without the blouse, you say? Now that I'd like to see!" chuckled Keith. Tim nodded in agreement.
"Dude, I'm NOT taking my shirt off for you guys. So, how're you all doing today?"
"Okay, I guess," Keith said, "but I heard a disturbing rumor this morning."
"Oh, it is something scandalous?" she asked, hoping for some juicy gossip.
"Not scandalous, just unfortunate if it's true. My wife has a cousin who works in the bank where you work. She said the word in the bank is that you're leaving town, is that so?"
"Suddenly choked up, Carla admitted, "Yes, I've been meaning to let you all know, but you guys are about all I'll miss about this town, so I've had a hard time telling you."
Keith looked down at his shoes and said, "We'll surely miss you, but to be honest I've never understood why you stuck around here after you and Ethan broke up."
"Just wanted to not feel like I was running away, I guess."
"Once you're gone, Tim and I will need to find some other girl to class up the joint; you'll be hard to replace, not to mention how long it will take for us to train the newcomer."
Keith and Tim each bought her a couple of rounds to accompany her bar meal as she filled them in on her plans. Much later than she'd planned, Carla bid her two favorite barflies good night, saying, "see you guys sometime this weekend," as she put her sweater on.
