Bad Luck When the Bartender Doesn’t Drink
by Daniel O'Leary
When you say you’ve quit smoking, they smile and nod.
When you say you’re trying to drink less, they buy you a beer.
Maybe they think it’ll be the last slippery pint you’ll ever have. Doubtful.
All the same, bartending is lucrative so I don’t quit my job at Zebo’s when I drop the sauce. It’s easier when I’m dried out: I rouse them when they sleep in the booths, I point when they drop their wallets, I go deaf when they scream at their husbands.
Some days I’ll open at noon and stay till close without breaking a sweat. There were days (gone) when I’d open early to drink monkish in the quiet: not long ago, but the fresher days are sometimes harder to recall.
Today is effortless. Already the early afternoon when he walks in and orders three easy cocktails: ice, mixer, rum, lime. While he scratches at patches of dry skin on his chin he tells me he’s waiting for his boyfriend and his best friend. He tells me to mix one for myself.
“I’m not drinking.”
“It’s bad luck when the bartender drinks water.”
“For who?”
He lifts his eyebrows, carries the three drinks to a table in the corner then sits facing the window. I imagine him sulking, drinking the way a lizard in the zoo might – automatically, sadly. I wish him the worst cause he’s beaten me.
Bad luck? Bad luck for who? I drink my water near the taps hoping to catch their hoppy aroma, hoping to scam my brain. No luck.
Drifting into the storeroom, I grab a bottle: coffee liqueur. I twist, drink and swallow, drink and swallow, twist, and before the shame warms my face or the black booze hits my belly I’m back in the barroom praying he hasn’t spied me but he’s gone.
I stalk to the table and see him in the street – in the crosswalk – yelling at two men holding hands. He shouts, slams his phone against the asphalt then balls a fist but a bus honks and the two men holding hands leave without looking back.
He stoops to collect the pieces of his phone and I fight the urge to tap on the glass. I hope he walks back into Zebo’s so I can look at his reptilian eyes but he disappears down the street.
There’s the two unfinished drinks. I finish them. I ferry all three empties to the bar then locate my water and pour it into the sink. I fill the glass from one of the taps and the beer has the color and warmth of suntanned grain; the bubbles within are orderly and quick. I think this is the last drink I’ll have for a good long while but it’s ten hours to close so that’s doubtful.
Daniel O'Leary is a recent MFA graduate from the Creative Writing program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. He lives and writes in Santa Cruz, CA and spends an unsustainable amount of time penning and sending nonsensical postcards which can be found at SixInchNonsense.com.