MODE 5 was founded on the
shaky premise that ludicrous interpretations of real-life happenings
inevitably beget ludicrous fan-fiction penned by chronically-bored
Englishmen. For those of you operating a social justice mind-set, who
find the distinction between fact and fiction blurred, fiction is the
one that didn't really happen. If you are confused or triggered by
this distinction we strongly advise you to Google “Courage Wolf”
for photos of adorable puppies.
~
(SATIRE) The continuing
adventures of Christina Sommers: Secret Bartender
To her friends and her
colleagues it was academic: Christina was a woman of rare
sophistication and boundless intellectual means. A college professor.
A mannered yet hardened debater – certainly no pushover. The author
of a number of books and numerous journal articles and papers. If her
contemporaries occasionally noticed a certain steeliness creeping in
from the corner of her eye – a thousand yard stare that clouded her
otherwise welcoming expression – the kind of look that would stop a
chain-swinging biker in his tracks at 20 paces - they were polite
enough not to mention it.
By night Christina would
close the door to her study, leaving her books and her student's term
papers shrouded in darkness. In the back room of some waterfront dive
bar she would don a work apron that, within fifteen minutes, would be
damp with beer suds; the elongated, bowed front pocket lined with
broken peanut shells. She told no one of her secret double life as a
bartender but got down to the business of dispensing beers,
dispatching trays of jello shots to the off-duty dock workers,
delivering devastating roundhouse kicks to unruly patrons, and
adjudicating party fouls.
I first laid eyes on her
at The Nelson Shorehouse Tavern in Greenwich – a misnomer
since the establishment had been constructed on sinking foundations
and would find itself completely submerged every high-tide, only to
emerge from the ebbing surf draped in seaweed and crawling with
shellfish. The locals had another name for the place: They called it
'Crabs'.
Christina was the first
person I saw as I pushed open the warped door at the bottom of the
staircase. She remains forever freeze-framed in my memory, laying
down the law to a new patron:
“When I say 'consume'
the first words out of your mouth had better be 'What?' and 'How
much, ma'am?'”
Her vocal chords had been
seasoned over four decades by whiskey of dubious provenance.
A controlled blow from the
flat of her palm sent a two-litre pitcher of absinthe, with a wedge
of lime bobbing incongruously on the surface, sliding the length of
the wooden bar, following a well-worn groove in the varnished oak,
coming to a gliding halt a few inches from a trembling young man –
a college student I later learned when the paramedics fished the ID
out of his wallet.
“You're swimming in the
deep end now, boy,” remarked some wise-ass, whose ample buttocks
were in the process of enveloping the maroon leatherette of the
adjacent bar stool.
“SHUT THE FUCK UP,
NORM!” yelled a chorus of barflies in ragged unison, suddenly
roused from their private stupor by an inside joke as worn and
threadbare as their clothing.
In a distant corner I
noticed a gaggle of hipsters writing down snatches of overheard bar
conservations with a studied glumness. One held an iPad up in front
of him panning it back and forth along the row of hunched-over
drunks.
Sommers glanced in their
direction.
“They don't drink much
but the city planning office says they function as good as a
supporting wall so I'm happy.”
She peeled a long uneven
strip from the label of an empty beer bottle; rolling the smooth,
then grainy, torn paper between her thumb and her forefinger;
inserting the resulting tube between he lips where it dangled limply
from its wet end, like an unlit, home-made cigarette. Her gaze had
drifted over to a narrow ribbon of stained glass that traversed the
far wall a half-foot from the ceiling, the leaded multi-coloured
panes filtering the muted orange glow of the street light outside
through a veneer of grime that was older than the Obama Presidency.
“Had a biker gang in
here last night. Called themselves The Shitlords or some such. Nice
guys really, once you get past the front. Their leader, Milo, has
facial tattoos, bleached blonde hair. Kind of a real stoic guy, like
monosyllabic conversation was too much for him.”
A dishevelled man dressed
for an office job that he had evidently failed to attend deposited a
handful of small change on the bar.
I watched Sommers make a
quick mental calculation before shaking her head.
“Larry, I already called
time on happy hour.”
“Jeez. Christina, I need
this.”
“If I make allowances
for you then I'll have to do the same for everyone.”
Defeated, the man scooped
the change over the lip of the counter. A small silver coin ricocheted off
the ball of his thumb joint and bounced onto the flagstones where it
was lost in the gloom among a thicket of worn chair and table legs.
The man swore under his breath. Fascinated by his badly chewed nails,
I watched his vain attempts to claw a quarter off the bar where it
had become glued to a translucent film left behind by the swipe of a wet
dish cloth. Having at long last retrieved the errant coin, he
retreated to the door, muttering under his breath.
“Say, you speak
Italian?” queried Sommers.
There was an awkward pause
before I realised that she was talking to me.
“Well, I've seen the
first two Godfather films.”
“There's some Italian
graffiti in the men's john. City says if want to keep it up we need
to put up an English translation next to it, so it's accessible. I'll
pay you in Coors.”
I nodded.
Across the room, one of
the hipsters had located a Godspeed! You Black Emperor single
on the aged jukebox. The cavernous empty space reverberated to the
sound of droning cello.
~
Like any academic, Sommers
had enemies on campus. The most dangerous of these were the people
who lacked the intelligence and wit to confront her work head on,
but who did not consider themselves above a bit of anonymous
character assassination. Somehow one of them found out about her
secret bartending. The ensuing drama was blown out of proportion by
the campus press. Reluctantly, I think, but to keep the peace, she
called time on her nocturnal double life; returned to the respectable
world of academia; sublimed into leafy quadrants and wood-paneled
offices; never again set foot behind the bar at Spikey's or
The Buffalo Whirlitzer.
The last time I visited
Crabs I was served by a guy who looked a bit like the
novelist, Martin Amis.
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