-30-

Walked into the bar about 3 p.m. That damn Eddie Money song “Baby, Hold on to Me” was playing a bit too loudly from the jukebox. My eyes peeled about the place to see who the most likely candidate for plunking down a quarter to play this monstrosity was, and they settled on the 40-ish blonde woman wearing a flannel and jeans in the most lit-up portion of the place.

She had a smile on her face and a pint of Guinness in front of her.

“I can appreciate that,” I thought to myself while forgiving her from her musical sins.

I looked up at Joey the bartender and pointed at the whiskeys behind him.

“A double,” I said bluntly.

“You got it Randolph,” he said with a grin. We both knew what kind of a day it was going to be if I was sitting on my personal barstool at 3 in the afternoon.

He handed me the glass and tapped the bar with his finger.

“It’s been two years now, hasn’t it?” he asked knowingly.

“Yeah, almost to the minute now,” I responded before taking a shot swig of whiskey. It felt good in my mouth for that moment before it burns the back of your throat. I needed that burn right now, hopefully by the end of the night, it wouldn’t burn anymore.

Joey turned a walked over to the lady in the flannel. I watched as he sauntered over, said something to her, sparking a laugh from her tired face, then went back to watching some soccer match on the television.

She looked at me and smiled. I returned the favor the best I could. I really wasn’t in the mood for a bar conversation. It’s why I came to Joey’s on a Thursday afternoon at 3. Well, I came here because I didn’t want to think about anything else. I wanted to get away from the ghosts of my house. Everywhere I looked they watched me back. They screamed at me like Tom Keifer in a Cinderella ballad.

So I got out of bed and came straight here. Didn’t write a word this morning even though my column with the local newspaper is due in about three hours. They’d figure out that I wasn’t going to write one and pluck in one of my “pre-written” pieces. I made a deal with the editor a year ago when I started to slip. He came to me and said they were going to fire me for missing deadline so much. Even though my column had a following, and I didn’t ask for much money, they needed it to be “ON TIME!”, he yelled.

In my mind, an idea popped up and like I usually do with everyone but the ones I love I blurted out that thought immediately – “I can write you a gaggle of columns in advance to keep in the hopper. Just so you can have a backup for when I fuck up!”

I was a little too proud of that line, and it showed. My editor looked at me and shook his head.

“You’re a real prince, Randolph,” he said. “A fucking prince.”

“It’s why ya love me, Deno,” I replied. He hated being called Deno. It was his dad’s name, he always said. Not his. Even though he was a Junior and all. But damn if anyone ever called him Junior, other than his mom – who happened to own the paper and love me.

That night I wrote 17 columns for the “emergency” backup plan.

So far, 11 of them have run in a little over a year.

Deno turned a left the building after I got out my laptop. Not a lot of folks carry one of these things anymore, but I love mine. It’s seen me cry. It’s seem me smile. Hell, it’s seen me cum, though luckily never on the keys.

I typed up some words and got distracted by the jukebox again. This time it was Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.” This song reminded me of middle school. Of having a huge crush on a waif-thin black girl whose mom worked with my mom at the school board office. She had braces and eyes that would kill, if she’d been old enough to know.

My buddy and I tried to get her to hang out with us a couple of times. She lived really close to him for a while. But she’d never go for it. By high school she was cool, we weren’t and it was just accepted.

I decided to write my column about her. It ended up being 23 inches long by the end. “Guess they’ll have to jump this one,” I thought to myself. Deno hated jumping columns. Thought it was “Poofy Stuff!” he’d yell. I tended to agree. If you can’t get to the point in 18 inches, get out of my way. But sometimes, hell, most of the times, it had to be longer.

I marked it with a -30- and pushed send. I knew the 22-year-old who would open this always stared at the markings at the end of the stories. He asked me one time what it meant.

“Death of Journalism, my man,” I said with a tip of the hat. A fedora? Hell no. An ironic Lucero trucker hat.