Written in The Missouri Diggs, Monday 4/11/2022

I took off the hoody, the windbreaker, combed the rats nest of a beard, and convinced the elevator to take me downstairs to the hall between the lobby and the bar. The small security man smiled and waved and pointed to the bar unseen, but heard, around the corner with a wink.

He went up a mysterious side staircase where he overlooked my entrance with a sly salute. The bar was on the right, manned by two women, a cutie and an eastern European predator, an athletic type but short: henceforth Bond Girl. There is a kitchen bar further down towards the kitchen manned by a Latino man in a chef’s hat.

The bar was a simple, chaired [not stooled] granite countertop, narrow and with a brief 1 seat L on the entrance side and holding 8 chairs down the long side.

To the left was a lounge, with various low cushy chairs surrounding drink stands like log round seats about a campfire. Half of these were occupied. Just to the left, paralell to the bar was a long narrow table seating six folks having a devolved business meeting, very handsome men, fine women and dominated by a lisping, aggressive, dad-body 45-year old man of obvious stature in whatever his field. A good looking blonde—a long suffering assistant of fifty years and still a 6.5—tried to keep him out of trouble along with a lantern-jawed handsome fellow of some 35 years, which was the age of most of his guests.

Two people sit at the bar:

-At the right, Daddy Whorebucks, a slovenly, whiteshirted sack of wine about my age and seemingly aspiring to weigh as much as possible.

-At the left end was Queen Karen, a frigid, good-looking, tall woman who could never be a babe, who was eating from a fancy plate, shoulders stiff.

I stood halfway between the two, not sitting and was given a menu by the shorty babe who was released from duty by the neck-tattooed Romanian Bond Girl [a 7.5, a 9 if she has an AK.47] who asked me, “What will it be?”

“A light beer and something to eat.”

She opens a Miller Lite bottle and places a menu before me and says, “Could I have a card please?”

“No cash?”

“We just need a card to get you started.”

I dug through the wallet and found the gift Visa card that the Captain’s wife gave me so I could buy food at places that didn’t accept cash. But I didn’t want to use it.

“Is this okay?”

“That will work.”

Returning full of perk and irritated with me she says, “What will it be?”

“Miss, I can’t read this small print.”

Queen Karen snorts to the left and Daddy Whorebuck’s raises his eye brow to the right, obviously deciding I was not literate.

She smiles, “Would you like something substantial?”

“A bowl of chili would be great.”

“Coming right up.”

I stand and knock back beer and the Bond Babe returns with the card and a pen and some papers.

“Do I sign something, how does this work—can I pay cash [not wanting to deplete the card]?”

“Just sign one for me, the others are your receipts. You are paid up.”

I sign one and lay down a $5 for a tip and she takes the paper and pen and leaves the card and smiles, “Thank you, My Friend,” in a way that convinces me that I am in much more danger from her than those grifting Chicongo Negroes prowling outside.

“How late are you open, miss?”

She smiles, fool on the hook, and huskily declares, “Oh, that depends on how the night is going,” and gives a mousy little half kiss and a wink as she asks if I want another and I finish the bottle, still very nervous, nodding ‘yes.’

The beers are $6, [$5 in Oakland and Denver, $4 in Portland, and I suppose $8 in New York] and I give her a $10 and nod for her to keep the change, because I am drinking for effect and am still so addled by Chicago that I won’t be able to sleep sober. I want to get tranquilized in a hurry, and after the enormous amount I drank in the Pacific Northwest my tolerance is up.

She tries to give the $4 back and I shake my head and she smiles with a wider kiss framing her lips, just working this stupid old coot for the contents of his thinning wallet.

The bowl of chili comes, and as I try to keep cheese from stringing down into my beard, a nicer woman comes between Daddy Whorebucks [who is feasting mightily and drinking white wine] asking menu questions. Asked about the chili, the barmaid says, “Ask my friend, here,” winking at me, that I might have company for the night.

I nod and say, “It doesn’t taste like Sysco.”

The woman thanks me, smiling skitishly, afraid of my appearance and orders chili, sitting a seat away from me and next to Daddy Whorebucks, who offers to buy her meal and drinks.

I finish the chili, the first food I have eaten in 32 hours. Bond Babe smiles as she glides to the bar before me and asks, “Another?”

“Yes, and a salt shaker, please.”

Her eyes brighten as she marks me for a backwoods drunk just crawn forth from some snow-clad cabin to spend his winter’s earning in a night [she was not far off.]

The bar begins to fill, and Dynao Homo and his bodyguard and personal assistant come up behind me, they to get him out of the bar, and him to kick start this party. Bond Babe knows them well, fawns on Dynamo Homo and looks seriously at his golden-haired assistant, off to my left between I and Queen Karen, for confirmation. The homos are behind me and Dynamo says to his bodyguard, “A Teamster—are you kidding me? This is like finding a tiger at the dog park [where they no doubt walk their adopted children as the woman fields phone calls]. Should I prod it?”

The other voice is calming and level, more masculine but less assertive by far, “Let’s not poke the tiger!”

“You’re no fun!”

I could not help my self and turned halfway towards the long-suffering assistant and admired her curves concealed under that white business suit-skirt and made contact with her harried, crow-footed blue eyes and she kind of melted as I nodded in admiration at her holding up as this money creature’s surrogate mother.

To this Dynamo Homo’s voice raises an octave, “The tiger smells meet, has a taste for ou—”

We are all saved by Bond Babe who cuts in, with a tray of drinks topped by a wide grin, “Ready to go, my friends. Feel free to be merry. I’m here as long as you need me.”

She winks at me and smiles knowingly at the assistant and nods in such a way as to indicate that this woman is not for me.

The faɡɡots and the lady retreat to their guests and I note the taps as Queen Karen leaves in obvious disgust. Fitter, less gay young men and finer younger women come in through a glass street entrance and Bond Babe gives me the nod that I’ll have time to get drunk, noting that the now three beers have had no calming effect as I still stand, yet to sit.

A good looking young babe with my kind of ready to breed shape walks down the mysterious stairs and sits next to Daddy Whorebucks who immediately asks her what she wants.

I pay and ask, “Miss, could I order a draft and use the bathroom?”

“Yes, up the stairs to the right there,” she nodded to the stairs were the little security man yet lurked, where this pleasingly curved late night arrival had come from. I left her with a $20, having ordered the 20 ounce draft, and headed up the stairs against the white walls and through a door, as the security man nodded wide-eyed and superstitiously up at me, “That’s where THEY go…”

I grinned down at him, a head taller than another yeti at last, and quite wishing we could have a Robert E. Howard style adventure together...

To be concluded in Cornfed.