Her sculpted blond hairdo glimmered in the late afternoon sun. The shoulder-length locks hardly moved, despite the fairly strong waterfront breeze that was sweeping through the Island Bar of Jackson's Bistro last Friday. The woman looked French, with fair skin and a cute ski-slope nose. A thick coat of red covered her plump (perhaps unnaturally plump) lips. It was the same shade of candy-apple red you see on midlife-crisis, post-boob-job Mercedes convertibles.
The Frenchwoman probably was in her 40s, but she had the chest of a 22-year-old. She chain-smoked and talked with her hands, making big circles to emphasize a point. She laughed a big showy laugh, as if to make sure everyone in the bar knew she was having a good time. From my position at the giant, three-sided bar, I couldn't make out exactly what the Frenchwoman was saying: I mostly only saw that she was talking to two women who could have been her daughters. I took another pull from my Heineken bottle ($5 plus the dollar tip I left the suave male bartender).
Jackson's Bistro is on Harbour Island in downtown Tampa. It's a well-known meat market, and last Friday the happy hour set was rife with men and women looking to hook up — the whole canopy area reeked of infidelity. Lust was in the air, and no one was trying to conceal intentions. I appreciated the sincerity of it all.
Only one or two empty stools were available when I arrived at Jackson's around 6 p.m. The outdoor tables were pretty packed, too. The crowd seemed split between locals and out-of-towners staying at the Wyndham Harbour Island or the nearby Marriott Waterside. Both hotels cater to the Tampa Convention Center, which is only a block away. Three guys in their early 20s approached the three women to my left. They talked about the day's seminars and office gossip, and I tuned them out.
The Frenchwoman lit another cigarette and took a sip of her cocktail. It was pinkish. Maybe a Bay Breeze. A land shark seated a couple stools away eyed her. He looked like a pro: dark shades, gold chains, slick black hair going gray, the kind of 40ish bachelor who sells insurance by day and woos randy businesswomen and bored housewives by night. I wondered if he had a chance with the Frenchwoman. She reminded me of a woman I had met years back at a swanky bar in downtown Sarasota called the Silver Cricket. The Sarasota woman and I met at closing time, as the valet delivered her rented Beemer. She was visiting from Manhattan to look at real estate on Siesta Key. What was the Frenchwoman's story?
"Remember at Green Iguana last Wednesday?" squawked an unfamiliar voice. It was a woman in her 30s with short, spiky blond hair, talking to a darker-haired friend in a polka-dot dress, a thrift-store-chic type thing. They squeezed in beside me.
"I told that guy I could be his mother," the noisy blonde continued. "He said he didn't care."
She asked about specials and ordered a Grey Goose screwdriver. Her friend went with house chardonnay. When the suave server returned with the vodka, she held out a crinkly bill.
"It's 10 dollars," he said, with a smile. "Or nine dollars."
"Make it nine," she said. "That way you have a tip."
The brunette wore sunglasses with thick plastic rims. She looked a bit frumpy, but cute, with matching moon and stars crudely tattooed on the tops of both of her feet. I finished my $5 beer and slid off my stool.
The inside bar is a dark, mahogany-lined room with leather furniture and a big-screen TV. It's called Backjacks. The free happy-hour buffet (from 4 to 8 p.m.) featured veggies, little pastry things full of meat, chicken wings and a kid in a chef cap slicing up roast beef, turkey and ham. None of the food was especially tasty but I was hungry and, well, it was free. I ordered a Stella Artois draft ($6.50) and hunkered down in front of one of the televisions placed above the bar. Outside, it was nothing but SportsCenter. But in here it was all music videos, classic stuff like Rick James' "Superfreak" and Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean." I half wished the Frenchwoman would sneak up behind me and do something tacky like hand me a room key. I would have had to decline, but it would have made for a helluva story. Maybe next time.
Jackson's Bistro, 601 S. Harbour Island Blvd., Suite 100, Tampa. 813-277-0112.
This article appears in May 23-29, 2007.