Bar Flies and Zombie Fungus

Bar Flies and Zombie Fungus

By River Lethe

This is the story of the time I blew off my lit final and went day drinking with a homeless guy. All this shit actually happened. 

When me and Vince walk into the Bayhorse Tavern at 11 am, there’s a dumpy blond behind the bar leaning over a pile of cocaine teaching a Chihuahua to dance. She’s wearing a leopard print kimono, and her areolas are peeking over the horizons of her bra like little pink sunrises saying good morning to everyone.

“Up! Chimmy. Up!” She says in a shrill voice, holding a powdered fingertip over the dog’s nose. Chimmy stands up carefully on two legs, his toenails clicking on the bar top. 

“Ok, now dance! Dance Chimmy, Dance!” The dog follows her finger in a circle. “Good boy, Chimmy,” then she dips her finger in the pile of white powder and rubs it on Chimmy’s nose. 

“Good boy, Chimmy. Good boy.” He licks at it and sneezes and then stares up at her. The man on the barstool in front of her is hunched over a sad cocktail watching all this with a vacant look on his face. 

“Hey,” he says in a gloomy tone. “Hey now. You shouldn’t do that.” 

The woman’s eyes smile reassuringly through pools of blue eyeshadow. “Oh we’re fine, Denis. We still have half an eight-ball.” 

She looks up as we walk in—

“Hey Vince.” 

“Hey Loretta.”  

—and I know instantly they’ve slept together or smoked crack together or both. Vince picks up a rolled dollar bill and rails a fatty like the Bee Gees never stopped playing in his head. I look around realizing where I am. The Bay Horse Tavern is a seventy-five year-old dive bar in the middle of Tucson that looks like it was nailed together by ten-year-olds who got carried away building a fort. Looking down the bar at the cast of characters, I have to wonder if some of those same kids are still here after all these years.

“Who’s your friend?” Loretta asks.

“This is Red. He’s buying. I’m fixin to school this youngsta in the arts of bar room pool and the clandestine machinations of the novelist.” 

“Oooo,” she says with cocaine intrigue. 

“We’re gonna need two cans of your finest and the key to my office.” 

“Ok, baby.” She scoots around behind the bar like a child wearing high heels, and then hands Vince a janitor-sized keyring. He jingles through them until he finds one of those tiny circular ones and opens the plexiglass holding back the pool balls. Loretta slaps down two cans the size of tank artillery shells that read The Champagne of Beers, and it’s clear that we will spare no expense for this meeting. I take in a breath of the ashtray air, and I’m immediately overcome by a sense of profound emptiness; it’s as if we’ve all been abandoned in some quiet life-care center unbeknownst to the rest of the world. I wonder if there should be a term for this feeling: dope lonely? Brunch-time barfly blues? Anyway, it’s all very Bukowskian. I notice a man sitting alone in a dark corner clacking away on an old-world typewriter and think, perfect.

“Ok, first things first,” Vince says, lighting the bouncing cigarette on his lip. “The absolute bottom line here is you never. Ever. Under any circumstances. Bore your reader. You understand?”

I nod. 

Vince racks with the plastic triangle. “There’s three simple rules,” he says, dropping each ball in its right place. “Start with a bang. Run the table. And bank the eight ball. Got it?”

I look up from writing in my moleskine and nod. 

“Now what’s the first rule,” he asks, leaning way down on the green felt table top and letting the wooden stick glide between his fingers in front of the cue ball.

“Start with a bang,” I repeat back like a good student.

And—Crack! he slams the cue ball into the others, and they go clacking all around the table.

“Start with a bang. Now, we need an example to get us going,” he looks over at the bar. “Something we can pick apart.” 

“Loretta baby what’chu been reading back there lately?” she looks up from the chihuahua half surprised. “You know I read, baby?” She asks too demurely. 

“I know you be reading when it gets slow in here and you get lonely.”

Loretta makes her best shy face. She puts the Chihuahua on the floor and shimmies to the far side of the bar, then holds up a bright yellow book, “Gillian Flynn,” she says.

“Can you read us the first line there, baby.”

“Okaaaay,” Loretta takes her time flipping open the book, basking in the attention. Some of the barflies park their drinks and look up at her like toddlers at story-time. 

She clears her throat. “I didn’t stop giving hand jobs because I was bad at it,” she reads, “I stopped giving hand jobs because I was the best at it.” 

Sniggers and scoffs fill the room. Vince taps his pool stick twice on the linoleum, and raises it over his head like a battle spear. He is vindicated. “Now there ya go!” he shouts. “You see, that’s how it’s done. I didn’t know nothing about no Gillian Flynn befow, but now I want to read every got-damn word she got to write.” His eyes are the size of pool balls, and there’s a sheen of sweat over his face. The coke is pumping fiercely through his entire being.

“Now what’s rule two?” he asks me, scanning the table for his next shot.

“Um…” I’m stammering, flipping through my notes. “Run the table,” I say, placating confidence. 

“Run the table,” he affirms. “When you run the table in pool, you want to put a little spin on the ball.” He leans over the table and shoots. “Like this,” he hits the two-ball into a side pocket, and the cue ball instantly comes backward toward him and settles where it’s perfectly aligned with the eleven and the opposite corner. He knocks in the eleven effortlessly, and the cue ball cuts left where it settles in front of the fifteen. He pockets the next fifteen, and then the next ball and the next until the table is nearly empty. 

“It’s called running the table. Kinda like telling a good story. Each sentence leads fluidly into the next one. Each cause has an effect that becomes the next cause.” He leans over like he’s telling a secret and I can smell a year’s worth of cigarettes on his breath. “See, the best writers don’t always tell good stories, but they always keep you reading, and they do that by crafting sentences that fall like rows of dominos. You want to mimic the reader’s stream of consciousness. Like it belongs in their head already.”

I ponder this like it’s a Chinese riddle. “Infiltrate their minds?” I say half to myself.

 “Exactly. Readers want their inner voice hijacked. Don’t nobody want to think their own thoughts.” He spins the little blue chalk on the end of his cue. “So write like you think, and they’ll invite your words in like a Trojan Horse and let it take control.”

“Take control?” I repeat.

“Take control… yeah, like a Taylor Swift song, maaan.”

 “Or a zombie fungus,” I add, suddenly understanding perfectly. 

“Same difference,” he says sinking the seven ball in the corner pocket. 

Vince lets out a foamy belch. “Alright, what’s next? What am I about to ask?”

“What’s the third rule,” I say.

“Exactly. What’s the third rule.”

“Bank the eight.” 

“That’s right,” he confirms. “Finish strong. Stick the landing. And always call your shot. In other words, your ending needs to be unexpected but perfectly forecasted.”

“Ok, but wait,” I insist. “So what if the plot gets boring though? Like what if it’s just two guys talking in a bar and nothing’s really happening?”

“Then you play around a little. Try a plot device. Throw in Chekov’s gun for instance and see where that gets you.” 

The front door swings open and the sounds of CB radio chatter echo in. A uniformed police officer clicks the mic on her shoulder and leans her head to one side. 

“Ten four,” she says casually.  

She has long blond hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, ebony skin and a tattoo under her eye that says Lil 50 Cal in delicate calligraphy. Every head in the bar turns and the place goes deadly quiet. Loretta and the white-nosed chihuahua freeze mid dance. All the eyes at the bar watch as she strides passed the coke. She’s flanked by a German Shepard on a short chain, and she has a heavy brown paper bag under her arm. She never takes her hand off her holstered Beretta. When she gets to the table where the man with the typewriter is sitting, she casually sits down beside him. He doesn’t look up from his work.  

Perfect silence.

Me and Vince stand there blinking at each other.

More silence. The purest silence ever. 

Vince takes a long pull off his giant beer, gulping like he might have to make a break for it any second. 

“Seems like an good time to talk about character,” he says, setting his beer on the green felt. 

I nod nervously and we both take a deep breath.

“Now everything in writing has to be working two jobs and that goes double for characterization. When you’re describing a character’s exterior, you really want to be describing their interior. That way you’re foreshadowing to the reader how they’re going to act.”

Vince looks around. “See that old shell-of-a-man at the bar stacking peanuts into little log cabins like he’s been trying not to contemplate suicide for the last forty years?”

I nod.

“You can tell everything about him in one glance. He’s more a part of the setting than anything else.” 

Vince comes over and stands next to me. “Now take a look at me,” he says. “What can you tell about me,” he says taking another huge drink, and I know that as the beer begins to lube the hinges in his jaw, his native ebonics will seep into his academic diction resulting in a kind of highfalutin jive.

“See those crow’s feet at the corners of my eyes.”

I nod, remembering Vince is a combat vet with a purple heart.

“Don’t describe those as lateral canthel lines. Them’s permanent motha fuckin blast marks. From all the crazy ass shit I seen.” I just stare, realizing there is nothing figurative about what he’s saying. “Crazy and beautiful, that is. Don’t sell me short, now.” 

He opens his eyes real big. “See all that muddy gray shit in my eyes,” he asks, and I see that he has these light-colored haloes circling his irises. I immediatly remember that Vince held tenure as an English professor for years. “Don’t call that arcus senilis. That’s all the bullshit leaking out. I been filled up with so much it’s coming out the holes.”

Vince turns back to his game, and I can’t help but sneak a look at myself in the mirror behind the bar. Dopey t-shirt and pajama pants. Bed head. Stubble below the collar line. I look depressed. I realize I am depressed. My phone vibrates. I reach for it like a man reaching up for a rope at the bottom of a well. It’s a Netflix reminder to finish season six of LOST. I’ve been binging and sleeping more than I’ve been awake and moving. Mixing up memories with daydreams, and nightmares with wakemares. I don’t even know what day it is anymore. Haven’t cracked a text book in recent memory because I’m re-reading fucking Twilight. How did I not see the signs? Now I’m daydrinking with homeless Samuel L. Jackson over here? I have to get it together. I have a lit final to write. Suddenly a brilliant idea begins growing in my mind.

“Ok,” I say, finally ready to jump in. “We got characters and setting, foreshadowing and a gun. What are some of these other plot devices I can use to avoid violating rule number one?”

“Good question. I knew I liked you. Ok, well, when it comes to literary devices, you got all kinds of good shit. There’s macguffins, honey pots, plot twists…but you need a good inciting incident first and foremost. You want to pull the pin on that grenade as early as possible so your characters go crazy, you feel me?” 

In the back corner, a chair scrapes across the linoleum floor. The lady-cop gets up and walks towards us. Vince is fidgeting with the chalk and his cigarette, getting more uncomfortable the closer she gets. Her boots reverb on the linoleum, getting louder and louder. The dog chain jingles in one hand, the brown paper bag crinkling in the other. It’s shaped like a brick and looks equally as heavy. She stops in front of Vince and sets the bag upright on the pool table, but it teeters over and hits the table with a thwack. 

Finally, she sets a hand gently on his forearm. “My friend over there tells me you’re a writer,” she says in a soft voice, blinking impossibly long eyelashes at him. “The best around as a matter of fact.” Vince looks around avoiding eye contact as if he’s hearing a voice but can’t tell where it’s coming from. “I was wondering if I could hire you to write a story for me.” 

Everyone in the bar is trying not to stare, especially Loretta. 

“I, uh, know some things, ya see.” Her eyes go beady and she lowers her voice to a near whisper. “Some things that could, uh, blow the lid off Tucson PD, but I need someone to help me get it out there. To the press.” 

Now she’s yanking on her blond ponytail over and over, and Vince looks like he’s ready to explode. His eyes catch her tattoo and fixate there. He’s mesmerized. I can see in his eyes he’s back in Nam, a trip wire taut against his shin bone. 

I look at the brick of cash on the table, then over at the writer in the corner, and I see exactly what’s going on here. Whatever this woman has gotten herself into, she’s way over her head. He must have agreed to meet her to discuss a press release and figured out she’s more trouble than she’s worth. Then having overheard Vince talking about writing, sold him down the river as the best journalist ever to walk into a dive bar. 

Loretta is all sorts of agitated. She’s all over the place fiddling with glasses and bottles, fussing with the tv remote and the microwave. The peanut stacker has halted construction, and he’s leaning off the edge of his stool staring at us, not at all discrete about working his own special ops reconnaissance mission. 

Finally the microwave dings and Loretta walks over holding a paper plate with a microwaved pizza.

“Excuse me,” the officer says abruptly, and Loretta’s fluffy slippers scuff to a halt. “We’re in the middle of something here.”

Loretta looks appalled. “I’m just bringing my man some pizza,” she says waving her head, and the officer looks down at her chest. 

“I think we’ve all seen enough pepperonis for one day, miss. Now you need to tuck your girls in before I shut you down for operating without a stripper license, and we increase the homeless population by that much,” she points at the row of barflies. “Now please. If you’ll excuse us.”

But it’s too late. Loretta is melting with mortification. Her face bunches up and she stutters out a long wine, then sobs until she’s crying. She lets the pizza slide to the floor. Chimmy must sense something’s wrong. He comes bounding around the bar like Underdog and bites the officer’s pant leg, tugging and growling uselessly. The police K9 sits there staring but doesn’t budge. At the bar, some of the opportunists are taking pot shots at Loretta’s pile of coke. 

Somehow Dennis-the-peanut-stacker has snuck up and grabbed the brown paper sack off the pool table. When he sees the cop notice him, he panics and grabs the pistol on her belt. They wrestle over it for half a second before she slips on the pizza, hits the floor, and the gun goes off. The bag tears open and cash spills everywhere across the floor. Loretta screams, reaching for Chimmy and her girls burst free into the open air. Denis loses whatever semblance of focus he had and falls backward. The cop gets her gun free and points it at him and shouts, “Freeze!” and gets to her feet. 

When the smoke clears, Chimmy is laying on a bed of cash, bleeding out with coke on his nose and Loretta’s girls in his face. It’s a beautiful death. Glorious some might say. 

There’s perfect silence.

Me and Vince stand there blinking.

More silence. The purest silence ever. 

Vince leans over the table, banks the eight-ball and says, “corner pocket.”