Note:  This is in answer to Jungle Kitty's "first line" contest, to
wit: "So here's the challenge. Write a story that begins with the
words:  Kirk ordered another beer."  As it seemed absurdly easy, I
naturally leapt at it -- a mistake which cost me dinner out tonight.
:)



Bye-Bye My Baby Bye, by Mercutio (mercutio@europa.com)


Kirk ordered another beer.

"Staying you here the whole night?" asked the waitress in accented
English.  The universal translator worked well on translating
languages to and from English; it didn't work as well to translate
English to English.

Smiling instinctively, he lifted his head and looked around him.  The
emptied bar told him that he'd been there longer than he'd thought.
Thinking about Carol.  "Is it past closing time?"

"Not now.  Soon."  She smiled at him, provocatively, Kirk assessed.
"Why sit you here so long?  I hope that it not over a woman is."

"No... I... it isn't something I want to talk about."  For a moment,
he considered whether another beer was worth the price of this
conversation.  Maybe she wouldn't ask anything more.

She leaned over the bar, blue tunic creasing against the surface,
exposing a curve of her anatomy... that Kirk looked at and then looked
away from. 

"A man that is like you deserves no problems."

He felt suddenly weary.  Weariness had brought him here, away from the
Enterprise, and away from anyone who might ask why the captain chose
to drown his sorrows in drink.  He cliched himself by wanting to do
it, and hated himself for still having that want.  Drinking would not
resolve his problem with Carol, or his feelings.  "What do you know
about me?  How do you know what kind of person I am?"

"You are a Starfleet captain.  That means you must a good officer be.
You are young, and you are handsome.  That means you should women easy
find."

"Does it seem so simple?  It isn't."  His fingers clutched the empty
glass that she had not taken away.  Shadows filled the recesses of his
face, leaving his eyes hidden.

A hand closed softly over his wrist.  Kirk closed his eyes, tautly
holding in both breath and words.

"I'm a woman."

"Yes."  The word hissed out.  "You are."

"I could your problem solve."

"No, you couldn't."  His body urged him otherwise, having taken
inventory of the waitress' considerable assets, but Kirk ignored that
prompting.  "I--  Look,"

"I'm looking," she purred.  "And I like what I see."

Kirk released the glass, moving his hands away from it and her firmly.

She let him go, her lips settling into a pout.  "You men.  You have
your problems.  It's so easy them to solve, but you don't when you
could, and make them when you don't have them."

"Yes.  I'm aware of that."  Kirk reflected that the problems with his
relationship with Carol mostly stemmed from him and from his behavior.
She understood as much as she could, forgave as often as forgiveness
lay within her -- but eventually, his choices in life took him away
from her.  She bore no blame in that.  He could not ask a woman to
follow him.  As captain of the Enterprise, he would not see his wife
onboard.  A civilian would have no reason, and a Starfleet officer
would be a conflict with his responsibilities that Kirk could not
abide.  As a captain, he should not marry, and it was the only path in
life he wanted.

"I'll get your beer."  She grabbed the glass and flounced away, the
beaded fringe of her tunic jumping.

The question was, Kirk thought, what *was* his problem?  He loved his
career, although love was too weak a word for it.  He *needed* his
life as captain of the Enterprise.  He couldn't sustain a lasting
relationship, but nothing barred him from seeking as many short-term
relationships as he liked.  Such as the kind that the waitress just
offered him.

He contemplated a life spent traveling from starbase to planet to
outpost.  It belonged to him.  He just might have female acquaintances
among every race in the Federation, including Vulcan, although he
stayed away from the thought of what knowing T'Pring had almost done
to him.  A girl in every port, indeed.  Every size, shape, color,
personality... a sybarite's dream.

A pitcher of beer hit the counter in front of him, sloshing almost to
the rim.  A glass met wood with even greater force.

He forced himself to look up at the waitress.  "Excuse me.  This isn't
what I ordered."

"If you want your problems to solve, need you more beer than this."

He laughed.  "Probably."  *I need to change what I want in life and
why.  Or stop having a problem with the life I'm leading.*  "I don't
think you have that much beer here."

She scowled at him, a continuation of the same scowl she wore while
delivering the new pitcher.  "You make no sense.  First, you're
unfriendly, now you friendly are.  Is it me?"

Kirk understood the plaintive question.  He'd heard it before, usually
after embarking a new contigent of crew members who didn't realize
that the concept of fraternization applied to captains.  And he didn't
blame them.  Some captains, even in Starfleet, applied different
rules.  Kirk didn't agree, but he knew why they did it.

"You're fine the way you are," he said gently.  "I didn't mean to hurt
your feelings.  But I--" he stumbled, as his fraternization speech did
not apply here.  "Tonight isn't a night that I want that kind of
company."

Her expression softened as his words flattered the right places in her
previously wounded ego.  "Excuse me, please.  I thought that you that
wanted."

"Thank you for the thought."  He smiled at her.  The waitress blushed,
poured him a glass of beer from the pitcher and turned away.  So much
for his legendary charm.  He could get any woman that he wanted, but
when he got them, he didn't want them.

His thoughts strayed back to Carol Marcus.  Golden curly hair.  A neat
figure, neither slim nor voluptuous.  Not beautiful, but rather easy
to look at.

No individual part special or extraordinary.  But the whole
represented an ideal unmatched since.  She knew him, empathized with
his feelings and sympathized where she could not empathize.  He could
talk to her without feeling that she lived in a different universe,
one without the kinds of challenges and struggles he experienced
repeatedly.

He missed that the most.  Having a confidante of the opposite sex.
Exchanging ideas, as he did with Bones and Spock, but then following
through in an entirely different and more pleasurable manner.

Having someone of his own, rather than just something.

Kirk took a swallow of the beer.  It tasted bitter, not as good as the
first two had been.

His choice seemed to be between the two, though.  Someone or
something.  Not both.  Even his inevitable promotion would cost him
the career he held dear.  He would command groups of ships rather than
one ship.  He would fly a desk.  That wasn't a choice.  That was life
running down into nothing, with the decision forced upon him.

And he didn't know whether he would want to start a family with the
best part of his life dead to him.

No.  Probably not.

Kirk sighed.  Drinking alone resolved none of his problems.  It only
pushed them further away from him, and made it more bearable to
continue living with them.

Carol would have to wait.  It would all have to wait until... Until
what?  Until he could have it all?  Command a starship and still
somehow have a family?  Be able to be with that family every day, and
yet sortie through the far reaches of Federation space?

Yes, he supposed.  That was what he really wanted.  A smile quirked
his mouth.  He always wanted the impossible.  Achieving the merely
possible seemed somehow unworthy of the great James T. Kirk.

Kirk snorted, and pushed his stool away from the bar.  The waitress
moved back to him.  "I'll pay my tab now."

"Thanks."  She took care of the task efficiently.

He opened his communicator, preparing to beam back to the Enterprise,
then smiled widely.  Stepping forward, he kissed the waitress on the
cheek.

"Have a nice day," he said, then let the Enterprise take him back to
his duty and his life.

-the end-