JESSIE
An hour or so later, three women walk into a bar.
“I came here with the lowest of expectations,” Nat mutters, sounding almost shell-shocked. “And I’m still a bit disappointed.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen men drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon who didn’t also wear skinny jeans a size too small, lots of plaid, ironic facial hair, and a fedora or newsie,” Holly adds.
I, on the other hand, am oddly intrigued by this brave new world we have fallen into. This! This is different. How many women can say they’ve been at a bar at ten in the morning, hanging out with a clientele whose average age is about a million and two, with Methuselah tending bar?
“Ladies’ room is out of order,” Methuselah growls at us. “Everyone has to use the men’s room.”
“Oh. No, sir,” I begin cheerfully. “You see, we are thinking about buying your lovely establishment and wanted to come by—”
BOOM!
Nat and I both jump a foot, then quickly turn our heads to the sound of the minor explosion. Holly appears in the doorway of the back room. “Okay, so apparently if you plug in the refrigerator back here, it blows a fuse.”
“Circuits,” the grizzled bartender says, shrugging.
I don’t even know what that means.
I walk up to the jukebox, which I assume is busted, judging from the axe cleaved in the center of it. Just as well, as judging from the vinyl forty-five records I can see underneath the axe, all it would have played was honky-tonk from the 1970s. The floors are covered with a combination of ancient, ripped linoleum and something sticky. So sticky that Nat’s Converse sneaker pulls up an entire eight-inch square.
As I run over to Nat to try to help her get the square off of her shoe, Holly politely asks Father Time, “Mind if I get behind the bar to inspect it?”
“Be my guest,” he grunts. “Just make sure you don’t make any sudden movements. Ralph hates that.”
As Holly bellies up behind the bar, she smiles flirtatiously at an eightysomething dude wearing an old flannel shirt and jeans so ancient they may have been Levi Strauss’s prototype. “Ralph, you’re not afraid of me, are you?”
“That’s Bob. Not Ralph,” the old bartender tells her, making a show of checking out her butt as she bends down to see what we’re dealing with.
As I unsuccessfully try to tug the linoleum piece from Nat’s shoe, she asks Holly, “Well? How’s it look back there?”
Holly pops back up, then leans on the bar. “The drainage back here is nonexistent…”
Methuselah shrugs. “So, be careful and don’t spill anything…”
“… the wells for the bottles all seem to be covered in maple syrup…”
Methuselah chuckles. “That ain’t maple syrup…”
“… and I’m pretty sure I saw a Chupacabra under the soda jet staring out at me suspiciously.”
“That’s Ralph.”
As Holly reacts to Methuselah’s piece of information, Nat lifts her nose in the air to sniff. “What is that smell?” she asks.
Holly takes a whiff. “I’m going with Eau de Retirement Home for the Neglected.”
“Can we leave now?” Nat asks.
“Not until you say we’re taking the place,” I tell her firmly. (Good for me! I have no idea where this backbone came from, but I just need it for five more minutes.)
Nat opens her mouth, but I cut her off. “Fuses can be fixed, walls can be painted, smells can be bleached away, and Ralph can be…”
I turn to the bartender. “You can find a home for Ralph, right?” I ask him hopefully.
“This is Ralph’s home,” he says sternly.
“Ooohhhh … you do not want to let Holly near Ralph,” I bullshit. “Did you hear about that pig in Silverlake that was reported missing?”
He turns to Holly, visibly surprised and horrified. “That was you?!”
It wasn’t her, there was no pig, and I totally made it up. (Who am I? I don’t know! But I’m so loving me right now!) But Holly smiles wickedly at him, shrugs, and confides, “I like bacon.”
“I’ll take Ralph,” the bartender assures me quickly.
Point. Match. Game. “So what do you say, guys?” I ask, my heart jumping around in my rib cage like a pinball. “Should we do this?”
I watch Nat look over at Holly. Holly shakes her head, but she’s smiling. “You know what? Why not?”
“Why not?” I repeat. “Really?”
“Really.”
I then turn to Nat, put the palms of my hands together in a prayer sign, and silently beg.
Nat looks up and to the left. That means she’s thinking about it. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon …
Finally, she nods. I grab her in a hug, nearly knocking us both over. “Yay! Okay, what do you think of the name ‘Keep Calm and Carry a Big Drink’?”
“What a stupid name for a—”
“Okay, okay. That’s okay, I have others,” I tell her quickly. “You guys, take a moment to absorb everything around you. For this is our eciah.”
“Our what?”
“Our eciah,” I repeat. “You know, the point in your life when everything changes in a heartbeat.”
The three of us share a moment of silence, in honor of the passing of our former lives and the beginning of our new ones.
Until one of the patrons interrupts our moment by telling Holly, “You know, you remind me of a hooker I used to date in Korea.”
“Really?” Holly asks in irritation. “Was she half Japanese, this hooker?”
“No,” he concedes sadly. “Actually, she wasn’t even a she. I miss her.”