Despite its quaint title, “After Hours at the Almost Home,” by Tara Yellen, does not take place in Mayberry. In fact, it takes place right here in Denver, at a fictitious bar in Cherry Creek North.
The Almost Home doesn’t seem to resemble any type of operation that could afford the rent in that neck of the woods, but no matter. The setting is Super Bowl Sunday, in an unspecified year when John Elway was still quarterbacking, the Broncos were still winning, and the Almost Home, like every other bar in Denver, was brimming with drunken business.
This is when JJ, a new female waitress, begins her first shift, and becomes a reader’s de facto ambassador into the netherworld of bar work. The entire wait staff, a motley crew of a lonely hearts club, doesn’t take kindly to strangers and doesn’t exactly welcome JJ’s presence.
At the same time, they need her because they are short-staffed, so JJ is grudgingly accepted as the night wears on. A reader might be forgiven for believing that the story of this odd little place will unfold through JJ’s eyes, through which we think we will eventually see through hardworking people’s tough exteriors to their hearts of gold. But, alas, this book, like any other sordid tryst, is but a one-night affair — quick, dirty and confused.
As catalytic as JJ’s presence might seem at first, it becomes readily apparent that all of the Almost Home’s employees are aimless, pathetic and firmly stuck in their ways. Night after night, they are losing their looks, their spirits and their souls, and they are all either unable or unwilling to do anything about their circumstances.
There is Colleen, a waitress, a former radiology technician and the middle-aged mother of Lily, whose father recently died under mysterious circumstances, forcing them to give up their house and move in with Lena, also a waitress and a thrice-divorced sexpot. Lena is sleeping with Denny, a 30-something bartender who is considered attractive, has issues with his Bible-thumping father and whose girlfriend (Stephanie, whose side of the story we never hear) recently moved out.
Later, readers are also introduced to some Almost Home regulars who congregate after hours (get it?) and help the staff consume the contents of the bar as they smoke pot, play cards and speculate about each other’s sex lives. Oh, and there is also Marna, a phantom character who apparently used to work at the Almost Home but failed to show up for this Super Bowl shift and is therefore presumed by the Almost Home contingency to have left town.
Described as a free spirit, Marna is referenced frequently throughout the story, and we learn that she is 28 and befriended the wayward 15-year-old Lily, allowing her to drink alcohol after Lily and her mother are forced to move. “Lily unscrewed the top and sniffed. It smelled like old lady perfume. It tasted like old lady perfume. Marna smiled and took back the bottle, drank from it. It’s kind of an acquired taste, she said.”
Yellen has developed Lily’s character tragically well. It is obvious that the girl is on a path to self-destruction, and there is little hope that her mother or any of the other adult influences in her life will save her. As with most teenagers, Lily is curious about sex, and in her awkward way she finally manages to seduce her longtime crush, Denny, in a backroom storage area at the Almost Home. They are both almost immediately sorry afterward, but to what end? The girl’s innocence is ruined, and Denny confirms his pathetic downward spiral by having sex with a minor.
“After Hours At the Almost Home” reads like a poor man’s soap opera. While there is no denying that blue-collar reality is sometimes very cruel, Yellen seems to go out of her way to condescend with her sweeping portrait of an amoral, uneducated, shiftless working class, clawing at the very vilest fringes of human existence. It is never made clear whether they become this way in her book because of, or in spite of, their employment at the Almost Home.
Andrea Berggren is a Denver-based freelance writer and former Denver Post staffer.
Fiction
After Hours At the Almost Home, by Tara Yellen, $14.95
