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Last Call
(Written by Thad Brown and submitted on 12-21-01.)
How will I handle tomorrow?
How am I going to handle tomorrow? I roll the question around inside my head like an ice cube inside my mouth, but an ice cube can be spit out when it loses its flavor. I won't let myself think of the next day or the one after. Too many tomorrows stacked on top of each other can make a man lose hope.
I drain my glass and clack it back down on the worn wood bar. Johnny is there to fill it again before the amber drop I had missed finishes its solitary descent to the bottom. Johnny and I go way back. Friends, if friendship is one man watching another sit and poison himself. Maybe that's as close to friendship as this world gets anymore.
Johnny comes here because it's the closest thing to not working he can find that keeps his wife from nagging him to get a job. He was cursed in his youth by a strong libido and a round-heeled girlfriend, now his round-shouldered wife. He claims the only solitude he gets from her and the kids is here, wiping the bar. Johnny didn't use the word solitude.
I take another gulp and try not to gag on the stuff. It isn't so bad if you can get past the smell. Cheap, but effective. After the first couple your taste buds run for cover, along with the rest of your senses.
Sitting at the dark end of the bar in my usual spot, I can see the rest of the weeknight crowd. A dark haired woman and a man who appears to be all hands and urge have fed the jukebox enough money to play every love song that should never have been written. She's wearing enough makeup for a woman twice her age, which tells me she probably is. Now they're in a booth doing things they shouldn't be doing in public. Her giggles and repeated demands to "stop it", neither of which sound sincere from here, have become the
sound track of my evening sulk.
The only other customers are getting ready to leave, two blue-collar boys working cleanup out at the nuclear reservation. They're just about the only ones who ever come in here anymore. The high brows that work out there doing
some kind of special research are too good to come into a dive like this. That's why I come here, so I can be alone with my thoughts.
Since the reactor had shut down, most of the businesses this end of town have dried up. Johnny once told me the owner of this place only keeps it open as a tax write-off. Now I always half expect to show up and find a pile of rubble and cracked blackened glass smoldering inside a cage of charred timber.
A gust of wind as the door squawks open peels the top two cocktail napkins off of a stack turned corner to side, and sends them flailing to the floor, useless. Watching from deep inside myself, it all seems as distant as my pleasant memories.
He's hard to miss when he comes in; he stands out like a drumstick in a scrambled egg. The stiff gray suit he's wearing is worth more than my aging Chevy. His shiny black shoes alone would probably pay my rent. I know he's never been here before, but he doesn't look around when he comes through the door, he just makes a beeline right back to me.
Not back to me, I guess, cause about three steps away he starts like he's just noticed I'm here. It doesn't stop him, though; he sits down right next to me and glances up at the door. You can almost hear the introduction as his suit meets vinyl for the first time. He must be looking for someplace dark to hide, like me.
He fumbles with his watch for a second, one of those fancy ones that does everything but make coffee and kiss you goodnight, then he produces a hundred-dollar bill from an inside pocket and lays it on the bar. "What are you drinking?" he mumbles as Johnny makes the 'hundie' disappear as quickly as it had appeared.
"Bushmills," I say without a second thought. I'm no fool. If he can smell the gasoline fumes coming from my glass he doesn't say anything. He just holds up two straight, manicured fingers to Johnny and tells him "Keep the change."
Now, I don't know whether to lower my opinion of this guy because he throws his money around, or raise it 'cause of the fresh glass of Black Label Bush sitting in front of me. So I just drink, and keep my mouth shut.
When my glass comes down empty he lays out another hundred and glances up at Johnny, who has been paying real close attention you can be sure. I motion for him to bring over the bottle. Johnny looks a little pissed that he is only going to pocket a fifty instead of the eighty or so he had off of the first round. Like I said, we're friends, so he brings it. I have him pour one for himself to take a little of the sting out. Besides, he's already had a good night thanks to our new friend, and now I'm set to as well.
We could be drinking lukewarm grape kool-aid for all the golem like stranger would know. I don't think he's touched his glass other than to nervously twist it on the bar, which he does pretty much anytime he isn't looking at or fiddling with that expensive watch of his.
Finally he picks up his glass and empties it in one swallow. He takes off his watch like he's tired of it touching his skin, and places it on the bar next to his glass. After rubbing his wrist for a moment, he pours himself another.
Then he turns and looks at me as if he is seeing me for the first time. Actually, more like he's sizing me up. Like he's dying to say something to somebody but doesn't know if I am the right person to say it to. He turns back and takes another swallow of his drink. While staring at something a hundred miles the other side of the bottom of his glass he asks, "Hypothetically speaking, what would you do if you knew the world were coming to an end?"
"No hypothetical about it," I empty the bottle into my glass, "it IS coming to an end." He looks at me real sharp then, startled like. I grin at him and say, "Eventually." He doesn't seem to get the joke.
"Let's just say you knew that the world was going to end in, say, seventy-two hours and there wasn't anything anybody could do about it." He glances at the door again.
Johnny, who is still paying real close attention, speaks up and says, "I'd tell everybody, that way they could all make their peace and spend their last time with family or doing whatever it is they want." He adds, "I sure know what I'd want to be doing." His lecherous grin leaves little doubt as to what he means.
Well, it was far from the strangest question I've ever heard in a bar, and he sure as hell has earned the right to ask it. "No, Johnny, that's no good, if you did that it would just cause a panic." Johnny looks none too pleased to be disagreed with in front of the well-paying customer he so badly wants to impress.
I sit in thought for a few minutes, my glass warming in my hand, before I finally say, "I suppose I'd just keep it to myself and let everyone get by with whatever little amount of happiness they manage to squeeze out, mister." He nods slowly without really looking at me. Then he looks me right in the eye and nods again. He seems satisfied with my answer. Almost grateful. He pushes his stool back, gets up, and walks out.
Johnny and I look at each other for a moment; he shrugs and goes back to wiping the bar. I reach over and empty the stranger's glass into mine and see a gleam off his watch, on the bar where he'd left it. I pick it up thinking I can run out and catch him before he leaves. That's when I notice the timer is counting down toward eighteen minutes.
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