Impostor

Most who darkened the doorway here, belonged; he did not...Too young, too clean, too smooth, too quick to try to engage. What ever his angle was, it stuck out and didn't fit. Amid the sad lushes, angry hicks, and disgruntled cops who haunted the joint, he was all wrong if that could even be said in such a situation...

He often appeared during the rare rushes, after 2AM, and would cozy up to this or that cluster of drinkers. Most seemed to know him and accept him, though there was always a distance or remove. He'd buy a round of shots and laugh louder than the rest at their tired quips. Most of'em had known one another for decades, their banter well-worn and instinctive as breath, while his attempts at conviviality rang false, grating...

Why did he come here? This wasn't the spot to make friends or find love, unless scraping the bottom of a barrel was one's idea of romance. It was mostly a closed society, unwelcoming and unbending in its customs and rites. His presence had to be in the service of commerce, selling some sort of oblivion unavailable from the dusty bottles behind the bar. No proof at all to support this idea except a rock-hard gut feeling. A bartender's sense that someone else was profiting from their unquenching need to forget...

While it wasn't in the job description to ascribe motives to the clientele, seeing the same types night after night encouraged and often necessitated all kinds of speculation. Most were easy to pin down: the everyday joe who needed two shots and a beer to get a kind word out, the over-the-hill party girl desperate for just one more night as Belle of the Ball, the old duffer who'd seen it all and told it all the same way over and over and over again, the ugly couple who took their bedroom quibbles out to the tavern to make them seem more interesting than they really were, the angry alkie looking to focus his anger at a fixed target, and many many others...Encountering one that didn't fit was rare and a little unsettling, so this particular intruder demanded more attention than the rest...

To say that our interactions were unpleasant would overstate it, though an undercurrent of mistrust certainly hovered in the immediate vicinity. His forced mirth and chumminess was hardly valued or reciprocated. For the most part though, all the misgivings and suspicions could be tolerated, until the night he had to be cut off...

That evening it was round after round and he got louder and louder until it became necessary to make the good times go away. Apprised of the situation, a new side of him appeared. Seething, threatening, dark eyes flashing fury, he refused to believe his fun could be halted so abruptly. He hung around another half hour casting his death stare my way, then left promising to be back...At closing time, he was lurking in the shadows across from the door, in the underpass. Forty five minutes later though, with the dishes clean, garbage tossed, chairs up, and bar gleaming wet, the coast was clear. The grudge would wait, the anger apparently not great enough to cohere into action. He'd be back and so would I and we'd play this thing out another night...

Riffraff

There were a few recurring characters at the Blue Light, who wouldn't merit top billing, yet probably deserve some mention, so here goes...

The Captain

This one'd burst through the door like a house on fire. Well-lubricated elsewhere, he'd show up mostly to hurl abuse toward anyone in his path. This turned out to be the bartender more often than not. As scotch was overtaken more and more by soda in each successive pour, he couldn't tell the difference and would continue to rage against all who had wronged him. His name's lost but the maritime cap, peacoat, and scarf makes the monicker a no-brainer...When taking a break from cursing, he'd boast of great riches, of mansions and high-performance automobiles, of gorgeous lasses begging for his kindness...When it would inevitably come time to invite him to leave, he'd act hurt and would linger far longer than anyone with any dignity ever would...

The Boxer

A close personal friend of The Captain, who'd introduce him as the World Champion of Poland, he never had too much to say. He seemed to be there much more for companionship than inebriation. The solid pugilist's build was still evident, though gravity and age were certainly taking their toll; he often wore wife-beaters to show off the muscles and in the dim light of that tavern there perhaps were those that were duly impressed. He apparently had some small role in local politics, behind the scenes if one were to hazard a guess...

Rocky&Bullwinkle

These two always sat together. The little one's name really was Rocky and the big one's wasn't Bullwinkle, but his vacant gaze was more than worthy of a moose's...The subject was usually women. Rocky spun tales of his past conquests and his friend would take it all in with that blank stare of his. The way the fairer sex was represented in these tales certainly left a lot to be desired and explained why no actual living female had ever spent any significant time conversing with either of them. Common as it was to hear hateful things said in that bar, it would still give pause to listen to two men who obviously loathed women, go on and on and on about them. It often set the mind to wondering why it was that these guys even bothered when they obviously preferred one another's company, but that's probably one of those mysteries beyond understanding, or at least beyond this barkeep's pay-grade to explain...

Mom & Dad

They were Sharon's parents. Separated for years yet wearily aware of one another's presence, they rarely crossed paths here but made clipped, often snide references that made clear that the claw marks had yet to heal...

Her appearances were rarely announced. The door would open and she'd drag in cases of soda or a bag of limes. Dispatched to do errands, her anxious bird-like countenance cut through dreary afternoons like a jagged rusty blade. Eyes darting about, questioning this and that, her nervous flitting about made me feel like something hadn't been done and she was gonna find out...

Her main job was to watch Sharon's kid. The bar sometimes served as their play area; the little girl running up and down the line of barstools, followed by Grandma's watchful eyes...She'd ask about her former husband, an undercurrent deep and dark in every innocuous remark, yet still unable to let go, to become unconcerned with his comings and goings...

He'd often show up when I was closing, hours early for his shift. He opened up the place at 7AM five mornings a week...His left side, paralyzed by stroke, dragged behind the right at a snail's pace. This hardly hindered him as the few hardened souses he served were in no hurry and hardly moved about themselves, preferring to conserve their energy for the task before them...

Ashtrays up and down the bar held his abandoned butts, Marlboro 100s gamely flickering with more fight than their standard-sized brethren, yet succumbing eventually to his neglect. His limp left hand would hold a lit one while he worked the buttons of the poker machine with the right, ash collecting on the linoleum below before being scattered by the readjustment of the barstool's legs or the wheezing efforts of the over-worked fan...

He'd bitch about her from time to time, "That woman's crazy, always sticking her nose where it don't belong, glad to be rid of her," he'd say. Then it'd be back to the spinning cherries, grapes, and dollar signs sucking his meager earnings out of his pockets. Hoping beyond hope for the big score that the machine was rigged never to pay out...

Sue

We worked together on Friday nights when there was a crowd. Hair dyed blond and permed to curl, brows plucked and painted, she'd come in after parking the Chevy in the underpass. Cheerful and inquisitive, a wiz at small-talk, she was a natural, the kind a dive bar needed to keep the gloom at bay...

Sue's day job was pouring beer to the Wrigley faithful. Oftentimes, she'd blow in in full Cub regalia to unwind at the poker machine for a bit after an afternoon game. It was a testament to her good nature that we never quarreled over baseball allegiances; being in enemy territory occasionally led to testy moments even in that woebegone hole-in-the-wall... Although, in truth, working at the park probably didn't make her bleed Cubby Blue. Her tales of over-served oafs and general loutishness were told with the good humor and matter-of-factness borne of a worker's forbearance. This was her place to cut loose, so even behind the bar it was more time off than punching the clock...

She'd been in the neighborhood for years, had raised her kids here, and knew most anyone that chose to abuse their liver in the place...She liked to sing along to that song that asked, "Where have all the cowboys gone?", which, like many of the musical selections at the Blue Light, was played with such soul-sucking regularity that eight years on it still haunts the darker recesses of my skull...

She had a thing for one of the cops, the one with the greying mustache, and some nights they could be found in the corner, kissing and groping sloppily in that way that only hours of boozing can inspire. More times than not though, he'd act like there was nothing but a passing acquaintance between them, and she'd hide the hurt in a way that showed that she was an old hand at that particular dance...

No matter how blitzed the night before, she'd burst in the following day, not much worse for the wear; her jaunty gait a testament to a life lived rolling with the punches...

Bill

He was a mountain of a man. Getting off his Harley with the side storage containers and ornamental chrome mud guards, a hulking machine dwarfed by his bulk, he settled it across from the tavern door in the underpass and came in...Pulling the red-backed barstool away to accommodate his epic gut, putting the Marlboro Light 100s next to a clean ashtray, he was ready for his first...

The first Miller Lite half emptied in one greedy gulp, ash sullying the black plastic of the tray and scattering on the varnish of the wooden bar, he'd scan the empty room before returning his attention to the waiting bottle...The beads of condensation wouldn't have time to settle when the dead soldier was pushed forward to be replaced by another from the cooler; an operation repeated at regular, short intervals over the next two hours or so...

He'd ask about other regulars, but otherwise respected the silence, content with his own ruminations...Some mention would be made of his job, maintaining heating and cooling systems in large downtown office buildings, his idiot underlings and supervisors; he was here to wipe their memory from his mind...The gleam in his eyes became more watery and abstracted as the beer slowly worked its magic...

Every fourth or fifth was on the house and he'd get bang for his buck, hitting the free round at least four times in an afternoon...A case of light beer seemed an inefficient way to obliterate the worries of the day, but I wasn't being paid for such insight or any other for that matter...The job demanded a lack of judgement, an ability to look the other way to indulge the vices of others...Words weren't necessary for this tacit acknowledgment and appreciation could be shown in a similarly unspoken way; a silent communion not easily described or understood...

A man of average stature might not be expected to walk, let alone well, after such a heroic session at the trough, but Bill would saunter out, not much worse for wear, back onto the Harley...A slight wobble or misstep from time to time, but the bike inevitably roared away down Western, trailing smoke from the exhaust in its wake, hanging in the air before dissipating into nothing; a promise that the whole thing would be repeated, no later than a week from that moment...

Matt & Laura

They'd come in every week or two...Always pitchers of Old Style and games of pool...They were both in their mid-twenties, significantly younger than most of the regulars, and for that reason, more conspicuous and worthy of attention...Laura was one of the few remotely attractive women to grace that little corner of Heaven, Matt was unremarkable and of interest only by association...

They insisted, he insisted repeatedly, that they weren't a couple. Yet, as the evenings progressed, they'd steadily become more affectionate. Not in any vulgar way, but when brushing past around the pool table there'd be a touch or two, and between games they'd sometimes lean on each other in a corner, deciding whether to go another round...

Maybe they came here because their friends or significant others didn't know the place; a secret trysting spot or a respite from dull relationships...Whatever it was, she looked at him in that way that women look at the men they want...He was the one that seemed more ambivalent, yet when you spend time with a woman every week, meeting at the same place, there's gotta be something there...

With every successive pitcher, Laura's smile would grow wider and would leave her face less often...This tavern served as her place to dream of the guy that wasn't hers away from the pool table and the Old Style...

Tommy

Tommy would walk his old bike in through the door, leading it like a worn-out nag...He had a winter coat over five or six layers on, year-round...After stabling his steed, he'd fit himself onto a barstool and wait for the stein of Old Style to arrive...

The twenty years of city life didn't rub out that Kentucky lilt from his voice; a sound so many country singers worked at or over-emphasized, flowed freely from his wind-seared lips...There were fragments of stories about country poverty, ex-wives, and the migration North in search of greener pastures...

Stray strands of Top tobacco would collect around him as the afternoon turned to night; sometimes lit butts flickered out, forgotten, in the ashtray after the sixth or seventh beer...He'd rest his elbows on the bar and stretch his back and drowse, waking occasionally to confirm that everything was as he'd left it...

It wasn't ever clear where he lived, but odds are it was some underpass away from the wind that so often whips this city's streets...Offers of food were usually rejected with a low-key politeness; despite being in a bad way, there were still lows he wouldn't sink to, some shred of pride to maintain...

He'd leave as the late-night crowd filled the place for what passed for a rush, returning after closing time...After the empties were thrown in the dumpster, the beer restocked, and the bar wiped down, he'd go get the mop and bucket from the ladies' bathroom...Passing it's gray threadbare head over the chipped and worn black and red linoleum tile earned him tomorrow's bottomless beer stein...Night after day after night...