2.

"So she just left me, just like that. I mean, do you believe it?" The bartender returned my question with a slightly cool silence, perhaps not wanting to wager his tip on a response. "Yeah, I don't get it either. Oh well. Hit me again."

He picked up my glass and reached for the bottle of whiskey, but it was empty. "It'll be a minute," he said, and disappeared into the stockroom. I took the break in conversation as a chance to look around the bar and take in the crowd.

The place was filled with the usual midday patrons. Just down the bar from me, for instance, sat a large black man in a trench coat. He never said anything to anyone, and as far as I'd known, no one had ever tried to talk to him. I unhesitatingly attribute this to the fact that his eyes point in different directions and he constantly wears a demented smile with a pipe emerging from the garbled mess that was once his teeth. Some say he was once a pirate, and I can verify that if you were to look at him at just the right angle you would see the tip of a pegged leg emerging from his trench coat. Aside from the trench coat man, few of the evening regulars had shown up yet. One table in the corner was full of students drinking beer and watching a game on the bar's last functioning television, and another half-dozen anonymous patrons were scattered throughout the bar. Nobody else was near enough to ensnare in conversation.

The bartender returned and made my drink, then retreated to the sink at the other side of the bar, where he pretended to wash glasses.

A few more drinks and a few more hours later reality started to fade away but the problems waiting at home seemed to bear down on me with an even greater weight than before. "It's bullshit man," I said, partially slurring my words, to the bartender. The happy hour crowd was beginning to show up and the bartender seemed to be wandering from customer to customer ignoring me. I continued anyways, "One of these days I'm going to get published, you know... I'll be famous. Then what'll she think." People were beginning to fill the barstools beside me, and I turned to one of them, a short black woman in a denim jacket. "What about you, are you a publisher?" She gave me an inexplicably offended look and turned back to the bar.

I was trying to decide on a response when something in the corner of my vision grabbed my attention. It was a white-haired, bearded man wearing what looked like a very fancy bathrobe, walking through the front entrance. I immediately swung around to look at the bartender, but he didn't seem to acknowledge the man aside from a quick, impassive glance. The man cast a discerning look over the bar and just as he took a step in the bouncer, who had only recently showed up, noticed that the man had slung over his shoulder a battle-worn single barrel shotgun.

"You're going to have to leave that puppy outside, sir," said the bouncer. By this point everyone had turned to watch silently while the man made no indication of understanding what the bouncer had said.

Finally after a few more seconds of awkward anticipation the bartender called over, "Joey, he's cool here." The bouncer stepped aside and the man walked to the opposite corner where he sat down at a small table. Gradually conversations began to pick up again and soon it was as if the event had never happened. My attention lingered on the man for a moment, but he seemed to be just sitting and drinking some kind of beer of which he had bought a pitcher. My money was beginning to run out even though it was barely evening, and I began to feel the dread of going home creeping up on me through the drunken smog.

I stood up to leave but I hit an obstacle on the way up and fell back into my seat, finally realizing how intoxicated I had become. I squinted my eyes to make out the figure in front of me to be tall and slender with long brown hair. Just as I started to recognize her as Rachel, Nicole's best friend, she slapped me so hard that I fell off my stool. "You're a dick, Paul."

I struggled to my feet, took out the last remaining ten dollar bill from my pocket and slammed it on the bar before I left. "Buy this bitch a drink," I said.

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