Muted light playfully languished over red Naugahyde, leaving corners and other dark spots to their mystery. Tinkling music played low over the concealed speakers — not that the couple noticed any of it as they slid into the booth. Sometimes all the accompaniment in the world is merely the backdrop for some tableau being played out interpersonally. Their slow, deliberate saunter over to the table and even slower efforts sliding in signaled something, it was just unclear as to what.

“I’m sorry, the booths are reserved,” said the host with a couple in tow and two menus in her hand.

“Nobody told us that,” said the woman who had slid in.

Then again, nobody asked.

The couple retreated to the bar, which in and of itself is unusual. Often when restaurant customers are told what they don’t want to hear, they leave immediately, especially if what they don’t want to hear is pretty obvious to everyone else. As someone once said, “The best way to alleviate personal shame is to go somewhere where nobody knows about it.”

“Two margaritas,” shouted out the man as the bartender walked by.

That bartender was holding two cocktails already and had a menu and wine list under one arm.

“I’ll be with you in a second,” the bartender said.

“One with salt, the other skinny, and both on the rocks,” continued the man, undaunted.

His companion nodded enthusiastically.

“You have to be assertive,” said the man to that companion. “That’s what Dr. John tells us.”

She nodded again, but, oddly, she was looking down when she did so.

Bars are made for adults. Sure, the laws are a little ambiguous about children and bars. As long as food is served, and as long as children are allowed in the room — permits notwithstanding — then children can be anywhere in that room, including at the bar proper. A restaurant can decide on its own that it doesn’t want children to sit at the bar and make a rule to that effect. But that rule has to be universally applied, or the risk of a lawsuit comes into play.

But the law and most restaurants don’t take into regard childish behavior.

The couple spoke to each other with psychological affectations.

“They must have triggered you.”

“Be your true self.”

“Ask the universe for what you want.”

It was after that last one that the woman snapped her fingers for the bartender.

“Please don’t do that,” replied the bartender.

“Well, you weren’t coming over,” she said.

“I was taking someone’s order,” replied the bartender.

“I can’t believe you are speaking to me like that,” replied the woman.

“How rude,” added her male companion.

The bartender looked at the man and then returned his gaze to the woman.

“I am simply asking the universe for what I need,” said the bartender. “That’s what my therapist says I should do.”

The couple looked at each other, confused. It’s not unusual for people who insist on things, or who assert themselves aggressively in social situations, to be completely unprepared for that exact same behavior in others. “How dare you do exactly what I just did” is an unspoken mantra these days. It’s punching down, because nobody is supposed to punch up.

And we all know that bars provide a type of therapy. Whether its comradeship, companionship or just a way to get away, it’s there. Who hasn’t seen the common trope of a person pouring out their troubles to their local bartender?

“You are in therapy?” they both asked the bartender in unison.

“Most bartenders are,” he said. “Or have been.”

“We met in therapy,” said the woman.

“In therapy?” asked the bartender.

“Well, actually in a therapist’s office,” said the man.

“Outside his office,” corrected the woman.

“That’s right,” said the man. “Outside of his office.”

“Couples therapy,” added the woman.

One of the things about people new to therapy, or new to bars, is the habit of oversharing.

The bartender nodded and finished making the drinks at hand, because as much as bartending is talking to people, it’s also about mixing drinks. The ratio defining the profession swings back and forth depending upon the bar, and the bartender.

The talking led to drinking and the drinking led to touching, and the touching eventually led to kissing: shy, unassertive kissing but kissing, nonetheless.

Eventually they left, kissing more assertively just outside the front window, making the typical nighttime mistake that just because they couldn’t see in, nobody could see out.

Leaving me with these thoughts:

• How does one meet someone at couples therapy? Asking for a friend.

• Red flags? What are those?

• All mixed drinks essentially started out as punches, eventually becoming individualized into cocktails. If that’s not a metaphor for our culture, I don’t know what is.

• That Dr. John sure has his work cut out for him.

Jeff Burkhart is the author of “Twenty Years Behind Bars: The Spirited Adventures of a Real Bartender, Vol. I and II,” the host of the Barfly Podcast on iTunes (as seen in the NY Times) and an award-winning bartender at a local restaurant. Follow him at jeffburkhart.net and contact him at jeffbarflyIJ@outlook.com