“Gin martini, straight up, heavy on the olives.”
“How many’s heavy?”
“I don’t rightly know. Three. No. Five.”
“Let’s agree on four, then. I gotta watch the inventory on
garnishes best I can. Gin’s a-whole-nother thing.”
“You know what they used to call gin?”
“What?”
“Blue Ruin. And beer was Heavy Wet.”
“Have another, will you?”
“Well, you know, these things probably ain’t cheap. And
besides, I’m going steady with another bottle of gin. Don’t want to make it
jealous.”
“Gosh bless you.”
“Gesundheit.”
“Nobody sneezed.”
“I’m preparing for an unknown future.”
“Settling in, no?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps the mood’s defunct, or at least deficient in airy
wonder.”
“All I notice is all I got.”
“Cherries are all picked. Better back that rig up.”
“Hedge all the bets, too. Fearlessness backs up worry’s
tough-guy stance with cashless transactions of kill-or-be-buried-alive
politics.”
“Hell, put the artillery away, will you? Somebody’s going to
get an accidental bullet to the chops. Besides I’ve got a heavy date coming in
here in a bit.”
“How’s that?”
“I don’t know. It just happened. She’s a tiny wisp of a
thing, just under a bill, and she dresses like a Russian Peasant. The kind of
girl you wouldn’t think twice about hefting up over the threshold.”
“I’m getting in of there.”
“Trust me, it’s a bargain to be born this late into things.
A real inert reaction to medicinal motivation. I just can’t get myself to
believe that it’s butter, or whether it makes a difference, or if butter’d be
better, or if not believing that it’s not butter is the better option to
retreat with. And guffawing’s all I’ve got to show for it.”
“Don’t let the NSA catch you crying. Hold your phone at
arm’s length. Place all the trinkets of your past in recycling containers. Be
false to all senses of self, or selves, or others who categorize your
delicately applied indifference as being a sucker for a girl in cowboy boots.”
“But just think of all the displaced citizens currently
residing in a tent city beneath a freeway overpass who go batty with waiting.
Are we blaming the right structural fixtures for the complacency of the
passed-over many?”
“I’ve got to just start being more daring.”
“Therein’s the rubric we are too shallow to follow. All the
whimsy’s in the getting. And we get by with it for the satisfaction of appeased
appetites and unruly sight-setters.”
“I’m in desperate need of a guru.”
“A watchful, mindless grace imbues your lackluster spirit.
Keep rummaging around in the red. Empty’s just a clear-cut in the forest of
glum, aspirational, dance-move gestation. So, go ahead and shortchange yourself.
What’s the point of all this itch-scratch-scratch-itching that you’re plying.”
“Better get a refill, here.”
“Who’s babbling?”
“I left this conversation a good while ago.”
“Who?”
“Another necktied bastard with his thumbs up.”
“Is that bartender ever coming back?”
“The chances are extremely unknown. Maybe we should take
matters into our own fists.”
“I’m giving myself a standing ovation.”
“Who?”
“Not you. Does it really matter after that?”
“Praise be the holier momentum of these wishy-washy times we
abide in.”
“I’m back.”
“I’m front.”
“Well, competition’s the gray day’s wane, and I’m none for
it, any of the ways. Been beaten down too much to care what I’m being kept
from. Get me another and another, and then another two, too.”
“Thought you split with that bowler from Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.”
“Nope. I left him for a bottle of Pernod and a rack of
flashy gowns.”
“Play it perilous, kid. We’re all from not-around-there. And they're playing craps in the drained fountain on Boardner's patio again.”
“The sky’s sweeter than a bagful of jelly doughnuts,
bursting apart all pink and orange flames, scratches of bright streaking
through baleful tatters of cloud, and we’re stuck in here discussing and
ordering our own demise. Misery loves its own kind.”
“Well, the water pressure’s been downgraded to low in my
building. Showers are a sad affair again.”
“Nobody lives the magic long.”
“I’ve just become a stock character witnessing these live
events of my life unfold.”
“Where’s Lady Addendum?”
“Not far off, I figure.”
“Or left, or rights away, too. Maybe the culled stoicism of
reformed lunatics will assuage the guilt of grumbling through the years. Man’s
inhumanity to God and all that blowharding. Fellows, we should all take that
drink now.”
“That last long swim.”
“To cash-hungry rapscallions on a scarecrow’s diet with an
easy touch.”
“To last laughs and later loves.”
“To be restless moonlight resurrected by daylight.”
“To fishy love: an old relentless song a drunken fiddler
plays.”
“To air-conditioned cocktail-lounge songs and more foes than
any honest man could count.”
“Patch it up. Down the gullet. To triumph and broken chains.”
“Playing quiet?”
“Another hard night to get through.”
“A voluptuous crucifixion: the featherweight burden and
bitter beauty of being alone.”
“Did you hear the one about the nihilist who found meaning
in nihilism?”
“He imploded with importance, with…mattering. It was all,
well, not enough?”
“One is always, at best, alone.”
“Where’d that old blonde girl run off to?”
“Some place sadder. Somewhere more kind and gentle, and less
human.”
“To outrun a few more devils before injuring any more of God’s
creatures.”
“Just more betrayal of despair. Blanched sky and all, we get
the least out of it, not so courageous now, are we?”
“One of these days we’ll stop running at our loosest ends.
We’ll rest well and often. We’ll scrub the mud from our worst deeds and get set
free.”
“A woman’s presence is required.”
“Of course. Of course. Of the most casual and complacent course.”
“You know what I say?”
“Too much.”
“I say this: dance with beautiful girls. The rest works
itself out.”
“So you say.”
“So I do.”
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