Tony

I stay where I am when I see Tony come into the bar, standing by the optics with a tea towel in my hand. Tom turns his back and starts polishing cutlery. He's worked here for longer than I have.
"Hello darling!" Tony wheezes. He never pronounces his h's or g's.
As he gets closer I can see the strange skin coloured growths that decorate his face, those fleshy moles that seem to multiply on old people.
He goes into his usual spiel about the post. This is what he always starts with, it's what comes next that I'm interested in. You can never tell what's going to come next.
"Six and a half years! Six and a half years I've been bringing this bar its post, and all I ask for in return is two coffees. Two at the start of every season, one for me and one for my lady friend... But I've been bringing the post for six and a half years. How old were you six and a half years ago?"
I tell him I was eighteen.
"Really?" he asks in a soft, surprised voice. He pauses for a minute, fleshy eyelids threatening to fall down onto his eyes as he looks down.
"Eighteen, eh? And where have those years gone?" he asks me gently, as if he's asking me how I am after the death of a parent.
I shrug and he picks his tone up, back to his usual noisy, blustery self.
"And did you know this one, back then?" he asks, gesturing at Tom, whose back is still turned as he polishes polished cutlery.
"I didn't even know he existed."
"What?" he shouts as he sometimes does.
"I didn't even know he was alive!" I say, much louder this time.
A couple using the wi-fi look over.
"And do you know he's alive now?"
"Just about."
Tony laughs at this, his big phlegmy laugh cracks out around the restaurant and I laugh too, glad to be colluding against the young fit Tom with the old, belly heavy Tony.
"If I'd have known you were working darling I'd have put my teeth in!"
I smile as if I have received a great compliment and tell him he looks just as handsome without his teeth.
"You see I've known my lady friend for fifty two years. Fifty two! And six and a half years ago you didn't even know this gentleman was alive!"
He starts telling me about a singer that he loves then, and when I tell him I don't know who she is, he invites me to his flat to listen, explaining carefully how to get there and which doorbell to push.
"It's just upstairs, the first buzzer that's me. I'll play you Julie Longfield and make you a tea or coffee, or a sherry. All for free!"
I smile, looking at the formations of fleshy moles guarding his face and avoid answering by telling him I've got to go and do some work.
"Of course you have darling, of course you have," he says, turning to leave the bar. "Don't forget where I am."
I smile non-commitally as he turns and shuffles out of the restaurant.
For the rest of the morning I keep thinking of Tony sitting upstairs by himself. I rememeber something he told me the last time he came in.
"I'm all alone in this life, you see, and whenever I get depressed, because we all do, don't we? We all get depressed, whenever I get down and depressed, I open up my front door, which is round the back incidentally, and I open up my windows, as wide as they'll go, and I play my music. I play my music and I remember my friends and I drink a bit of sherry, sometimes the whole bottle, and the music blares out into the high street, and I sit in my flat, remembering and listening."
Then a table of twenty comes in and I'm distracted by making drinks and replacing dropped cutlery.
At midnight, as I'm closing down the bar, I think about Tony sitting upstairs by himself, listening to the sound of life continuing all around him and I pour myself a drink.