Thursday night, me and Buddy are tossing back a few beers at the Pink Elephant, when Buddy looks up from his half-empty bottle, and with that dumbass look he gets on his face after he’s been thinking about things for too long, says, “I just hate stories set in bars, don’t you?”
I said, “Yeah, why do you think there’s so many?”
Buddy cocks his head a little and looks at me like I’ve been to college or something, so I say “Maybe it’s so people in the stories can get drunk.”
Buddy orders me another beer, and before we know it, we’re ordering each other rounds and starting to feel pretty darn good.
About midnight, three guys—they sure aren’t regulars—walk in: a Rabbi, a Priest, a Pastor—which seems pretty weird, but me and Buddy don’t think too much about it. We just kept to ourselves, minding our own business, and drinking more beers. Pretty soon I notice both me and Buddy are keeping our eyes peeled—secretly looking over our shoulders every once in a while, in their direction. I think we both just wanted to make sure nothing really funny happened.
Appeared in Best of Boston Literary Magazine, Volume 1, Summer, 2016.
