I’m sunny by nature. Built in and hard-wired into my system is a naturally positive disposition I usually take everywhere. “Hey guys,” is all I can get out as I see that my closing time just reached another hour.
“How much are your fries?” asked this bulging man to my right.
“About a buck and a half, would you like an order?” Thinking maybe these cheap fucks will eat the fries, pay to the penny and get home.
“Hmmm, how much is your Budweiser?” Squawked the anemic little guy to my left.
“Three-fifty a bottle,” you fuck nut. Would you like Jana over there to shove it up your ass for you, it’s only phity cent more? ‘God how I wish I could do that…….’
“three-fifty a bottle,” as he breathed a mist of camel light smoke melded with sardine oil onto my now smoldering face. “I could get a twelve for that!”
My empty smile tells him I suppose he could in hazle-fuckin-tucky, but then again, why not just have your wife / sister go get you a 40, meet her back at the trailer park, slap the shit outta her, fuck the dog, and call it a night.
But not tonight, as I’ve yet to hear the crescendo of this evenings symphony.
As I look up from Bud Boy to the older women I realize these two are her sons. Something about the texture of the crows feet that each of them share about their eyes. The folds and shape of their jowls just below their ear-line to the jaw also says related, somehow.
She meddles, stirs a bit in her seat, and generally seems uncomfortable being here with these two. “I’ll have the fish and chips.” Her voice is old, matching her face. Her cloths hang on her frail frame, and I see her hands; utterly absent of energy or life. A twinge of sadness hits me.
“Drinks?” I feel weird now for some reason, almost guilty.
“Just waters.” This from bubbles the cracker-clown on my right.
“Be right back!” As I peel away from the table to get the order in, them out, and me home.
You know, sometimes you hear stories about things that you think must be thought up or contrived just for the pure enjoyment of it all, but what happens next put me into a bit of a silent, non-responsive mode I rarely, if ever find myself.
I return to the table with the 3 waters, and as I’m setting them down, bubbles starts to mumble something about an ashtray when the slender, dying mother of these two ding-dongs slaps bubbles on the shoulder and exclaims, “Donny, Donny,” in a voice scratched and frayed from years of filter-less Pall Malls, “look! What is this?”
As I look up, straight into her crinkly, yet gentile face, I see her pulling something from her mouth; a mouth with nothing but darkness in it. I follow her bony, lifeless hand as it extracts this blackened pearl from her mouth, and she tosses it lightly, staring with interest, onto the table. The tooth, obviously dead a long time ago, bounces once, twice and spins a few times before it settles neatly next to Bubbles crumpled paper napkin, now smeared with a mysterious substance.
For the first time in decades I am truly stunned and mortified. Usually I have a good line or a solid distraction from the horrors of a situation like this in order to make everyone ‘Seem” ok. But not here, not tonight, not with the check average on this table.
Bubbles the ass-crack clown breaks the now very long silence. “Damn Ma, I guess the dentist missed that one.”
“What the fuck,” I shout to myself!
Bubbles looks to me as he says this, as if I’m suppose to laugh or chortle or add something fresh and new to the insane situation. Instead, I look at him with a twisted half “It’s OK smile” mixed in with a contorted, ‘Th’ kind of lip-lift across my disbelieving face, and all I can utter is a peep or two from the back of my throat in the half-ass form of a laugh.
I walk back to towards the bar and can hear the shuffling of chairs as they rise and walk out of the Tavern.
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