AN EPISODE

A bright light in sore eyes, a kink in a stiff neck and a growl in an empty stomach.
I could tell by the cheap squeak of imitation leather that I'd woken up on my office couch, again.
At least it wasn't the bottom bunk of cell 4-b like the night before. 
Now if only I could deduce where the deuce the aspirin was.

My partner in crime lay on the floor right where I'd left him.
"Thanks for not letting me drink alone, Jack" I said.
I found his cap, picked him up, and dropped him into the bin with the others.

I'd had a lot of time to reflect lately, and didn't particularly like my reflection. It made my face appear dirty, and cracked - so I wiped the broken mirror with my sleeve and looked again.
The mirror looked better, my sleeve looked grubby, and a stranger's face stared me in the eye.
The parts of it that didn't need shaving needed sleep. The rest of it sullenly camped out under the brown brim of a weathered derby.

Things had been quiet lately, too quiet. Business was slow, too slow. My chin was itchy, too itchy. I scratched it - hard. Too hard.
By now, the growling part had teamed up with the farting part.
It was as good a time as any to find out if my credit was still good at Sandy's Shack. I went to investigate.

I could walk to Sandy's, which was good, because I wasn't allowed to drive anymore but that's another story, another time.
Sandy was ex-pro basketball. He'd killed a teammate with a slam-dunk, and never played the game again.
Sober long enough to buy his own watering hole, he'd renovated it to suit the B'ball crowd - meaning the rest of us mortals had to balance on stools that left our feet dangling.

The bartender was a dwarf named Rico.
The height of the bar, being relative to that of the stools, meant I never saw much of Rico - just his hands as my drinks materialized in front of me accompanied by a whiff of cigar smoke.
His calloused knuckles always lingered on the edge of the bar just long enough for me to see dirt under the finger nails, and slide two bits in their direction.

Rico was ex-pro midget wrestler, and a man of extremes.
Namely: his height, accent, sense of humour, and Latino temper. These insights had all come at me in a rush last Halloween.

The staff at Sandy's were all in costume that night. Rico; chomping on a stogie, was a hairy- legged Carmen Miranda. Tragically, as it turned out later, the only part visible above the bar was the fruit-laden headgear.
The clientele, assuming it was bar snacks, helped themselves.
Just a couple of grapes here, and a slice of watermelon there, but when Rico felt his banana being tugged he peeled furiously around the end of the bar spitting an obscene mix of Spanish and tobacco juice.  It was at that moment that a drunken ghoul, two stools down, chose the wrong time to make the wrong suggestion to the wrong high-heeled, floral-skirted, short guy.

Rico whipped out his weapon of choice - a sawn-off garden weasel. He waggled it menacingly in the man's face while his maracas, swinging loose, rattled their own threats. I stepped off my stool, muscles taut, ready to react but Rico's backswing caught me unawares, and square in the bongos. Doubling over I grabbed desperately at the deadly weed whacker - it's claws having snagged my zipper - while Rico, now incensed, yanked mercilessly on it.

My life, and the lives of future offspring, flashed rapidly before watery eyes.
The situation demanded a quick decisive action.
So I threw up and passed out.
A lot of free drinks have crossed the bar since that night, and a sort of quiet friendship, where one man can't understand the other, has developed between Rico and I.

And so it was, with that memory refreshed, that I arrived at the saloon - taste buds all set for a ham_on_rye, with cigar ash on the side.

I was confronted instead with a locked door and a hastily made sign.

It read:

SORRY, VE'RE CLOZED

OWNER DEAD

HAF A NIZE DAYS

I double-parked my dejected form on the front steps to contemplate my options.
I was about to add lunch to the list of things not going my way when, from inside the bar, came the unmistakeable sound of someone sawing the bottom 18 1/2 inches off bar stool legs.
That was too much for an empty stomach to take. I had to find out was going on.

I wasn't packing heat; but my pocket held a lint-covered licorice pipe that had worked for me in the past. 
With guts growling I gripped my bluff and got ready to kick in the door.
I wanted answers and I wanted food.
I only hoped I'd get both before I was forced to eat my gun.

.....sort of .. THE END..................................Copyright - Glenn Muller 1996

Vamoose!