TAKEN BY THE BARMEN

AN MMM SHORT

SUZANNE A. NEWMAN

 

 

 Life is meant for the living.

It was something his college roommate had said an almost irritating number of times before this day, and goodness knows how it had become a cliché. But in that very moment, nothing could have been more apt, and the innocuous phrase echoed in his mind like a missive from his very conscience.

He wasn’t sure when he started packing, but over time a small pile of socks, briefs, shirts and neatly folded jeans found their way into the bag under his bed. He hadn’t used that bag since their last trip together, and it still had a damp smell from the bottle of coke that leaked inside it as it flew with then across continents. They were happy then, he and Paul. With that smell, feelings came washing back over him in a way that stung his eyes and made him feel ill.

His hands were shaking as he opened the driver side door to his car, one of the few things he was actually very proud to own, and the night air chilled the sweat on his palms.

He had to do this, he told himself, and a deep breath stretched his lungs and crystallized in the winter air. He winced as his ribs protested. Paul had really laid it on thick this time. Leon considered himself a fairly robust man. He worked out and people always complimented him on his surprising amount of strength but whatever they thought he had in him, he couldn’t find it when he needed it most. His body was paying the price for it.

Slinging his bag into the passenger seat, he watched his staggering breaths steam onto the windscreen, before switching on the wipers and head to clear his vision of the road ahead.

It would be the last time he looked at that street where he lived, and as the mist cleared he felt a pain in his heart that was less to do with bruises. All of his hopes lived and died in this place.

Putting on the radio, the cheesy 80s Christmas jingles clouded the direction of his own thoughts. He couldn’t afford to think for now.

Releasing the hand brake, he pulled away from his driveway, as something he felt deeper than anything else, lamented the life he let die.

***

“Five,” Chris said, boredom apparent in his voice as he wiped another glass clean and put it back on the bar.

The man doing the books next to him scoffed, appalled. “Five? I’m not sure how many in a pack exactly, but there’s a nice even set of abdominals underneath that monstrosity of a shirt and I intend on counting.” Jack, ever the pragmatist, went back to jotting down notes into his accounts book. Just because he wanted to go primal on the loner in the corner booth, didn’t mean he didn’t have checks to balance.

“He’s a five, Jack. He’s a ten minus two points for the shirt, two for the lumberjack vibe in general and one for whatever smell that is coming from his bag.” Chris was apparently in a foul mood, Jack noted with a reminder to keep it in his pants when they settled in that night. Rustic guys were exactly his type, and he knew it. He even had a pine air freshener in his car.