Troubles
Angelo named the bar Troubles. Turned out he was an optimist. The stuff this bar had seen made whatever squabbles went on in Belfast look like a slap fight.
It was what before I became an old man I would call an old man’s bar.
The only thing Irish about it was Angelo. Apparently, he was named for an opera singer.
It was one of those long skinny bars like a big city railroad flat. Just an entrance and a scuffed oaken bar that ran the length of the joint. Stools. No other seating. A tiny dormant kitchen in the back. The only food was a few lonely bags of chips clipped onto one of those little wire stands like shrunken wash hung out to dry. There was a TV up in the corner above me, but it didn’t work. If it had, nobody but me would be old enough to know how to turn its dial. The loo was another museum piece and gave root to really the only rule that anyone in the bar ever observed. Number one only.
The bar had seen more ivory knocked loose than a Zimbabwe poachers convention. More than the Tooth Fairy would put in his prospectus if he were raising private equity money. More blood spilled than a bulimic leech.
Every bar needs a captain, to sit at the end by the server station. To dispense wisdom and bon mots. To moderate disputes. That captain was I. Like the guy at the Wedding in Cana who presided over the feast. Was the patsy for the very first miracle. No turning H2O into wine for Angelo. He went the other direction, watering down his already bottom shelf bill of fare.
Angelo got over his skis with some lenders who were unknown to the FDIC. It looked like he and the bar would be foreclosed, in that order.
I never went to med school, but I had played a lot more poker than my doctor, so I read his tell right away when he tried to tell me it was hard to put a firm number on my use-by date.
I had the answer for Angelo’s Troubles.
He often would let me close up for him after everyone was gone. Let me delay my nightly wrestle with the mirror.
Nobody would suspect anything. Cancer patient nods off. Ignites his oxygen with the stub of his Camel.
What kind of arsonist uses himself as the fuse?
I was glad to do it. The captain always goes down with his ship.
Don’t care what he does with what’s left of the insurance loot after he pays back his itchy “investors”. He might rebuild. Might scoot to Baja. But Angelo, if you put in a widescreen or a karaoke machine, I will find you and haunt you down.
Scott MacLeod is a father of two who writes in Central Florida. His work has appeared recently in Punk Noir, Rmag, Micromance, Free Flash Fiction, Every Day Fiction, Underbelly Press, Bristol Noir, Havok, Witcraft, NFFD Write-In, Coffin Bell, 10 By 10 Flash, Frontier Tales, The Yard: Crime Blog, Yellow Mama, Short-story.me and Gumshoe, with more forthcoming. His Son of Ugly weekly flash newsletter can be found on Substack at https://scottmacleod1.substack.com, on Instagram @scottmacleod478 and at http://www.facebook.com/scott.Macleod.334