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Bedtime Stories on a Barstool
Neat Little Endings
It happened at the Atomic Rooster
“I bet you can tell a story.”
Nick was gruff. Just my style. Wearing a shirt that was nice once, before it met him. Now the white collar was stained and limp, the sleeves rumpled and rolled up, the cotton coming unsewn at every stitch. He was my bartender. I was his entertainment.
“I only tell the old ones,” I said, “and I don’t tell them for free.”
Being a detective, I ascertained the direction of my evening. Better to bargain than to bicker.
“Good. I like the old ones. They’ve got endings.” Nick gave me two fingers of Dunrobin whiskey, and eleven teeth of residual charm. Receiving Nick’s smile was like eating leftovers. He’d wasted his pretty years shuttling lukewarm pints of the cheapest pull to men who didn’t have it much better than him. Some, indeed, were more deprived. I pitied him, until my reflection in the bar mirror told me that between the two of us, I was the vagabond and he was the prince.
There we were: two beasts on barstools, sharing bedtime stories.
“It happened at The Atomic Rooster,” I told Nick. “A bar, just like this bar. A real dump. Except the Rooster was popular — a who’s who of derelicts, doxies, and…
