The Woman at the End of the Bar
— From the Archives: A 1920s Article by Lanie Price —
“She was sitting right here … Pretty, mid-twenties maybe. Dressed real sexy, but … well, something was off. Something was wrong.”
Sometimes a man comes into the newsroom with a look that says he’s seen something he can’t explain. Not the shock of a fresh murder scene or the grief that comes after—no, this is different. It’s the quiet kind of fear, the kind that eats at reason. That’s how Hank Judd looked when he stumbled in that Halloween night of ’26. Rain streaked the newsroom windows. The streets below were cold and empty.
He dropped into a chair, breathing hard, and wiped his face, hand shaking. Now, Judd’s a Chronicle photographer, solid fellow, ex-military. Spent the war in France, came back with a limp. He’s not the kind to scare easy; he’s seen too much—war, crime scenes, Harlem at its darkest.
Like a lot of guys, he’d married in haste before shipping out. It wasn’t much of a love story—more a collision. He came back exhausted and traumatized and found out she’d been cheating. She swore it was over, but that night, she’d admitted that it wasn't.
He’d stormed out, angry enough to see the devil’s side of things. “Guess I wanted to prove I could be as wrong-headed as she is.”
I slid out my bottom drawer, took out two glasses and the bottle that needs no explanation. Poured two fingers for us each. Slid one glass over. He grabbed it, made it disappear fast. Wiped a hand across his mouth.
It was still trembling.
“Breathe,” I said. “Just breathe.”
Poured some more of the poor man’s cure. He took just one swallow this time, set the glass down half-full, stared at it. I sat back, ready to listen.
He’d wandered down Lenox, he said, rain starting to fall, coat collar up. He meant to get a drink, clear his head. That’s when he saw the light—blue and hazy through the drizzle, spelling out The Blue Hour. The place was open, music from a phonograph playing low, folks laughing soft behind the smoke. He hadn’t been inside in years, not since he got busy with work and marriage, but something drew him in.
He took a stool near the end of the bar. That’s where he saw her.
“She was sitting right here,” he said, pointing at my desk as if it was the bar counter. “Pretty, mid-twenties maybe. Dressed real sexy, but … well, something was off. Something was wrong. She was nursing a drink. Eyes all glassy.”
She said her name was Jeannie. She had a man at home, and a baby girl just a few months old. “He been stepping out on me. Said he was sorry. But you know what? Forgiveness don’t come that easy. I coulda been doing that, too. But I never did. So, I told myself if he can do it, then I can too. He’s gotta learn how that feels.”
She laughed when she said it, but it was the sort of laugh that dies on the way out.
“You come here looking for somebody?” he asked.
“No, I already had somebody in mind.”
So she’d already been thinking about cheating. Had managed to hold off. But now that her man had given in to temptation, she figured she might as well too.
“So, you still waiting?” he asked.
“He ain’t coming. I know he ain’t coming.”
Judd took out his cigarettes, offered her one. Their eyes met. She took the light and deeply inhaled. “So, tell me. You ever do something you can’t take back?”
He said yes, though not the way she meant it. She nodded, as if that made them kin.
Then she leaned in close, sly and coquettish, “So, tell me, mister, d’you wanna take me home?”
Judd’s throat went dry. To tell you the truth, he was mighty tempted. She looked like she was just what he’d been looking for—ready and willing, and so damn pretty to boot. But now, he realized, he couldn’t do it.
“I’d like to, ma’am. But I better not. I got a good woman waiting. She made her mistakes, but if I’m honest, then I got to admit I’ve made some too.”
She sighed, looked him up and down, and nodded. “You’re a good man Hank Judd. You know what? If I’m honest, then I got to say that, all in all, my man ain’t been that bad either.” She sighed, for a moment put her head down, then looked back up at him in a sideways glance. “I was all fired up. But I’m so dang tired right now, all I wanna do is go home. So I done called my man. Wanted to ask him to come and get me. But he didn’t answer. I been waiting and waiting. How’m I gonna get home?”
Even half-drunk and hurting, Judd’s eyes framed the scene the way a lens would—the lamplight catching the rim of her glass, the thin smoke curling between them like a fault line.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I can’t take you—but I’ll wait with you, till you get through to your husband.”
She gave a sad little nod. “That’s all right. I’ll make it on my own.” She gathered her purse and started to get up.
“Don’t go out there alone. Hold on a minute.” He turned toward the bar. “Another for the lady, Charlie.”
Charlie Freeman looked up from polishing a glass; his eyes darted to where Judd sat at the far end of the bar. “What lady, Judd?”
Judd frowned, jerked a thumb in her direction. “Why the one sitting right next—”
Freeman slowed mid-polish, eyes narrowing, shifting from Judd to the space beside him. “For who, man?”
“For her. I—” Irritated, Judd started to turn back but halted at the reflection in the mirror. The only face staring back was his own.
The stool beside him was empty. A cigarette still burned in the ashtray, curling smoke into a pale spiral. The air dropped cold, and her perfume—gardenia with a hint of gin—floated there a moment before fading to metal and dust.
Judd felt a ringing in his ears. Felt a brief pressure on his arm as if her hand was still there. Then the phonograph needle hissed, caught, and for half a second he heard two songs playing at once—one bright and new, one old and distant—as if the room couldn’t decide what year it was.
Freeman wiped his hands on a rag, uneasy. “You all right?”
Judd nodded, though he wasn't. He threw some cash on the bar and hurried out. Behind him, he heard Freeman mutter something low—might've been a prayer, might've been "Not again." But when Judd glanced back, the bartender was already turning away, busying himself with glasses that didn't need cleaning.
Outside, the street was dark. There was no sign of her. He stood there, hands on his hips, wondering. How could she have slipped out that fast, so silently?
“One minute she was there,” he told me. “The next, she was gone. And then Charlie—he acted like she’d never been there at all.” He paused. “But you know what? I had the feeling he knew something. Something he wasn’t telling me. But for the life of me, I couldn’t get him to talk.”
For a minute, I just sat there, thinking. Then I said, “Hold on.” I went down to the morgue—newspaper morgue, that is—and started digging. There it was: a clipping from 1919. Young mother slain after leaving the Blue Hour. Husband home with the baby, waiting. Name of Loretta Jean Bruce. She’d had an argument with her husband. Left to meet another man at the bar. He never showed. So she started talking to other fellas. Finally, some guy offered her a ride. Police found her hours later near the East River. They never found the man who left her there. A broken bottle lay nearby. The jagged edge had been used to slash her throat.
The bartender on duty that night—Charlie Freeman—told reporters she’d been crying, kept saying all she wanted to do was go home.
Hank listened as I read the clipping aloud. When I reached the end, he looked pale. “She said something else, before she… went,” he murmured. “Something I can’t get straight in my head.”
“What was it?”
He rubbed his temple. “She said, ‘Love’s like glass—once you break it, it cuts you coming and going.’ Then she said something else, but I can’t remember the word—just that it was the one thing that ‘stops the bleeding and heals the wound.’”
Judd ran a hand over his head, finished the drink, and got up to go.
“Heading home?” I asked.
“You bet. As my mama would say, the Good Lord showed me. Mama believed in ghosts. Can’t say I do. But after this, I can’t say I don’t either. Whatever this was, it taught me a lesson I’m not about to forget.”
“Your wife—”
“She said she was sorry.”
“You believe her?”
He paused, then shook his head. “Don’t know yet. Don’t know if I do.”
“But you’re giving her another chance?”
“Got to. After this? Yeah, I think I’ve got to.”
He started out, then paused. “One last thing. She said my name—my full name. How did she know it? I never told her.”
He didn’t wait for an answer, just turned to go. I watched him leave, mulling over what he’d told me—that last part, especially. It was proof in a way—proof of something I’d been a long time thinking.
I hadn’t really needed to get that clip from the morgue. If Judd hadn’t been so rattled he would’ve noticed that I’d gone right to it, hadn’t even needed to search for it.
I knew the story of Loretta Jean Bruce. She’d been haunting the Blue Hour for years now. They said you never knew who she’d appear to next. But over the years I’d developed a theory. She seemed to come to the men who were about to make the same mistake that damned her. If they understood the warning, then all fine and good. If they didn’t … well, they had a way of not making it home, either.
Outside, the wind rattled the windowpane, soft and hollow, like a song trying to find its way home.
I took another look at the clipping, at the photo of the shattered bottle found beside her, and wondered about that missing word, the one Judd couldn’t remember. Took me a minute, but I figured it out.
Can you?
—Lanie Price, Society Reporter, The Harlem Chronicle
*Editor’s Note: They say the Blue Hour remembers everyone who ever stepped through its doors. Some stories fade. Others wait. This was one of the tales that lingered. More will follow in After the Blue Hour.
© Copyright 2025. All rights reserved by Persia Walker.
