The Characters of Kelly’s Sports Bar and Grill Character: Kelly

Workday Roulette

I walked into Kelly’s Sports Bar and Grill at 12:15 in the afternoon, hoping to beat the 1:00 Sunday game day rush. My plan was to sit at the center of the bar and enjoy a panoramic view of the nine NFL games playing simultaneously on the dozen televisions Kelly’s Facebook page claimed to offer.

Instead, most of the stools along the dark brown bar were occupied, and I had to settle for the last seat against the far wall, next to the kitchen door. Turning to my left, I counted six T.V. sets mounted high on the vertical wood-paneled walls behind the bar and adjacent to the entrance I had just walked through. The remaining televisions were over my right shoulder, forcing me to swivel around on the stool and strain my neck upward. All twelve televisions were programmed to ESPN’s Sunday NFL Countdown.

Next to me, a man and woman were engaged in a competition over who had the wildest Saturday night. Both looked to be in their mid-40s, and dressed in jeans and flannel shirts. The man, who donned a black moustache and thin frame, had spent the previous night as the de facto bartender at his friend’s house party, and hoarded the top shelf booze for himself until he passed out a little before dawn, only to awake a few hours later for 10:00 a.m. Bloody Mary’s at Kelly’s; the woman, whose central part of her obviously dyed black hair lined up symmetrically with the gap between her two front teeth, bragged that she closed down a new brewery downtown despite only paying for her first drink, and that the only elixir for her morning-after headache was Kelly’s peach mimosas.

Throughout their stories, the man and woman slapped the bar to emphasize their points, and spoke over one another until their uproarious laughter filled the narrow room. None of the other patrons seemed to care or notice. They also appeared to be recovering from their own Saturday night revelries, many of them resting their elbows on the bar as a means to uphold their heavy heads. No one paid attention to NFL Countdown. No one wore a jersey.

The man and woman clinked their respective drinks and finished them. On cue, Kelly entered from the kitchen, wearing a v-neck Odell Beckham Jr. jersey. She grabbed both empty glasses and poured ice into them.

“Hey Kell,” the man said leaning over the bar. “Come out with us tonight. Marissa and I are gonna play some workday roulette, and we need a third party observer.”

Kelly looked up from her work. She was tall and wore her hair in a messy bun that sprouted dirty blonde strands in every direction. Her thick, black-framed glasses gave her an air of approachability, and the landscape of freckles that covered her face, arms, and chest made it difficult to determine if she was in her early thirties or forties.

“What’s workday roulette?” she asked, as she poured champagne into Marissa’s glass without looking at her measurements.

“Well,” Marissa chimed in. “The game is that we go drink for drink all night, but both of us need to be at our jobs by 8:00 tomorrow morning. If either one of calls out sick, they lose. So tonight we need someone to referee and make sure everything is even. We’ll pay for your drinks…”

Kelly placed the peach mimosa on the bar and began work on the Bloody Mary.

“I don’t think so,” she sighed. “I’m pretty tired.”

“Bar open late last night, huh?” the man asked.

Before Kelly could answer, an elderly man across the bar cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “And she stayed up long past closing too! Offered up free tasting of her private stash! She may have had a few herself, if memory serves me right!”

The man and woman to my left immediately began teasing her, clearly trying to elicit a response, but all they received was a sideways smirk as Kelly turned her attention toward me.

Fantasy Connection

She asked for my order, and after I gave it, she leaned her hip against the bar.

“I haven’t seen you in here before,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “If you don’t mind me asking, what brings you to my humble establishment?”

I explained to her how my father raised me on Yankees baseball and Knicks basketball, so those were the sports I played throughout school. Those were the two sports I cared about. But over the summer my work buddies roped me into a fantasy football league, so I had to keep tabs on my roster.

I don’t know why I told her so much. She was the lone bartender, and I could sense the anxiousness of the other people at the bar as they awaited her attention; yet, I kept talking. I told her how I didn’t have a favorite NFL team. I told her how after the first round, I never even heard of anyone I drafted for my fantasy team. I even started listing the players on my fantasy roster. There was something about the way Kelly never broke eye contact with you and how the freckles on her cheek bunched up each time she smiled that made you feel like you were the only two people in the whole place.

Suddenly, her eyes widened.

“You have Gronk on your fantasy team?! I do too! He better get a touchdown this week.”

She pushed herself off the bar and casually surveyed the waving fingers trying to flag her down before nodding toward a frail, grey-haired woman who was drinking Dewar’s on the rocks.

As I watched Kelly saunter away from me, I noticed how drastically the bar’s atmosphere had changed. The middle-aged, Bloody Mary and mimosa clientele, gave way to a platoon of 30-something men, nearly all of whom sported thick beards over their double chins and hefty midsections. The lighting in Kelly’s Bar and Grill had not been adjusted, but the dusky room was now brightened by a cluster of dark blue and hunter green jerseys that featured names like Namath, Manning, Kelly, and Taylor. The noise had steadily risen to a volume where those standing had to shout their Corona and Bud Light orders over the heads of the men sitting at the bar.

The Games Begin

The clock turned to 1:00, and a middle-aged man with light-grey stubble and a NASCAR hat grabbed a remote from behind the bar and switched to all the games. Someone from within the standing mass shouted,

“Over/under on how many are gonna kneel during the anthem?”

The bar sputtered with laughs and condemnations, hollers and jeers.

Next to me, Kelly laid my hot wings on the bar and whispered, “I don’t care what they do, as long as I win my fantasy league this week.”

She tossed me a wink threw those dark-rimmed glasses, and delivered a cheeseburger with fries to a short, dark-featured college kid who was more interested in convincing the man on his left to bet against him on the Falcons game point spread.

The following three hours confused the hell out of me. I expected that the bar’s mood would rise and fall with the performances of the New York region’s teams. As for me, my eyes were always glued to the screen during Yankees games. I wouldn’t even wash my hands after I pissed between innings so I didn’t risk missing a pitch.

But that wasn’t the case at Kelly’s. No one seemed to care about the games. Before halftime, the Bills and Jets were both orchestrating two-minute drill drives, but most of the bar wasn’t paying attention. Instead, the men who stood around me continued to exchange stories of their Saturday night debaucheries and their work-day complaints, only pausing to flirt with Kelly as they ordered another round. Even a last-second Giants touchdown didn’t deter the boisterous conversations that surrounded me.

How could these so-called fans, seemingly so proud to wear their team’s jersey, even with their team’s low win percentage, act so dismissively to their team’s performance?

At 4:15 the early afternoon games neared their end. I had a slim lead against my fantasy league opponent, but a lot was dependent on the Sunday night game. The Jets and Bills were being blown out. The Giants, however, were down eight points with 1:27 remaining and had just recovered a fumble. I swiveled around to see the reactions of the Giants fans who had congregated by the entrance, but someone apparently had just told a joke so funny that the entire group was doubled over in laughter.

The bar at this point had grown so loud that I couldn’t even hear the commentators from the television above my head. I made an effort to count the number of people in the room, and discovered that despite everyone being squeezed together, shoulder to shoulder, there were under twenty-five people total here. The place didn’t seem so small a few hours ago.

Drinks On Me!

Suddenly, a loud roar of cheering erupted across the bar.

I strained to see the television, but saw the Giants threw an incomplete pass on second down. I didn’t understand what the commotion was about.

A broad-shouldered giant, wearing a McCoy Bills jersey, shouted over my head, “Hey Kelly! Get your pretty ass out here!”

A second later, a disheveled Kelly shoved open one of the swinging double kitchen doors. She raised both palms up in confusion.

The giant swallowed a massive swig of beer and pointed at a different television. “Gronk just scored a touchdown!”

One cue, the television featured a replay of Rob Gronkowski spiking the football after catching a touchdown pass that pushed the Pats’ lead to double digits.

Kelly clapped and jumped in the air.

“YEEEESSSS! Free shots for everybody!” she yelled, as she marched her way back behind the bar.

The crowd answered with a thunderous cheer, and a large huddle formed at the bar center where Kelly frantically poured Jagermeister into a row of shot glasses.

She began handing them out, individually naming each shot glasses’ recipient.

“Here ya go, Bobby…Teddy this one’s for you…Joe, you’re up!”

With each named called, she looked less and less like a bartender filling drink orders, and more and more like the fun aunt holding court at the family holiday party.

After doling out a dozen shots or so, Kelly abruptly stopped and called for everyone’s attention.

“Hey! Hey! Wait a second!”

I looked up and saw Kelly pointing straight at me. She was smiling.

“Let’s not forget the new guy at the end of the bar there! He’s got Gronk on his team too, so he deserves to celebrate with the rest of us!”

Before I could even respond, a firm hand grabbed my shoulder, and pulled me off the stool. I was passed from one beer-breathed man to the next, each one exclaiming, “Get over here!” and “Fuck the Pats!” and “Get this man a shot!”

A moment later, I held a glass in my hand that was overflowing with black liquor. A repeating chant of “Kelly! Kelly!” circulated around the bar, and amidst the clinking glasses, and back-patting, and joyous declarations of camaraderie, I too lost sight of the televisions, and my fantasy stats, and who won and who lost.