‘Gimme another, please.’ Zander tilted his empty bottle at the barmaid and adjusted himself on his stool. He didn’t visit bars often, but this evening he’d left his grumbling wife at home and ventured into one. He’d needed to go out, despite feeling lousy. His goddamn cold was playing havoc with his breathing, making him want to throw up. Yet, despite this sense of illness within him, he’d a strong desire to drink until morning.
The young woman behind the counter smiled and said, ‘Of course. Would you like the same again?’
‘Sure. Whatever.’ In his experience, most of the beers served in places such as this were interchangeable, with one being as dreadful as the next. But he wasn’t drinking for the taste. He studied the barmaid as she bent low to open the cooler. She was a pretty girl, but he wasn’t in the mood to flirt. Besides, she was far too young for him.
She brought out a bottle out and flipped off its metal cap. How long had she been serving drinks in this bar? Long enough to be trusted to work alone for sure, but not that long, either. She didn’t look long out of school. ‘What a marvellous career choice,’ he said sourly, then chastised himself. Her reasons for working the bar weren’t known to him. She might be working to some future goal. She might be a student, a musician, or a cleaner. She might have any number of ambitions. It wasn’t for him to judge her and he shouldn’t let his own melancholy cloud his opinion of her or her motives. Someone needed to work the bar, after all, and tonight it was her.
‘There you go, sir,’ she said. ‘Shall I put it on your tab?’
He forced a broad smile, ‘Please. Just for the hell of it, hey? This man should live a little dangerously.’ He hadn’t planned to remain in the Olympus all evening, but then again, he might. The barmaid was pleasant and the place was as good as any to get drunk in.
‘Say,’ he said as he lifted the fresh beer to his lips, ‘what’s your name?’
She presented him with the badge pinned to her breast. ‘Mary. They wrote it down in case I forgot. See? My name is Mary.’
He took that in good spirit. ‘Well, Mary, I wanna tell you that you’re doing a fine job.’ He slugged his alcohol.
Mary bobbed a little theatrically. ‘Thank you. I aim to please.’ Her smile appeared genuine. A moment later she was off, busying herself cleaning glasses, leaving Zander to contemplate his drink.
Beer spun around the bottle in slow circles as he rotated the glass, the movement causing the liquid to slosh inside and froth towards the bottle’s mouth. Zander stared at it, absorbed.
‘I will take your memories from you.’
He’d failed to spot the smartly dressed stranger approach and sit on the stood beside him. The newcomer had olive skin and the darkest eyes Zander had ever seen. ‘You’ll do what? What d’ya mean?’
‘Forgive me,’ the man said, ‘My English is not so good. But I am learning.’
‘Your English is fine,’ Zander said. ‘My father and my mother, when they arrived in America from Greece, they spoke barely a word of English. Ha! Actually, after forty years in this country, right until their deathbeds, they still barely spoke a word of it!’
Greece. Yes, the stranger had the complexion of a Greek, which was fitting given Zander had chosen the Olympus Hotel as the place to drown his sorrows. Perhaps the hotel name drew Grecian travellers to it like some sort of magnet. Zander hadn’t meant to land there at all, at least, not consciously. He didn’t have any particular affiliation to the country of his parents, never had an impulse to learn, let alone recite, the legends depicted on the freezes painted on the bar’s walls. It was a random coincidence that he’d wound up where he was. His parents would be laughing at the irony had they been alive. ‘So, my apologies, mister. You startled me a little, is all. I didn’t see you come in.’
The man clicked his fingers at the waitress. It was an arrogant gesture. ‘Some iced water here.’
‘Sure.’ Mary bristled, but Zander respected the speed at which she hid her displeasure and the way she set herself the task of preparing the drink. He liked kids who weren’t phased by assholes and Mary had obviously worked the bar long enough to learn how to navigate around one.
What was more concerning was the man’s predatory expression. The stranger appeared to appraise the girl as she worked, his eyes tracking her every move in a way that made Zander uncomfortable.
The taxi driver fiddled with his bottle’s label some more, the tacky glue gumming up his fingers a little. By god, he hoped the man wasn’t making plans for the barmaid. Zander had met a number of dangerous men in his time and his instinct told him this guy was as dangerous as anyone. He was suddenly wary and took a swig of his liquor. Perhaps the guy would sit elsewhere once Mary brought him his drink. Zander snorted in derision, an act half-hidden by the bottle he held under his nose. As if the man would leave them alone. Even though the bar was deserted, the guy would stay exactly where he was and it would be Zander who would need to find some new place to brood. He smiled thinly at Mary again. He’d need a quiet word with her before he departed, a few sentences to warn her to be on guard, something said out of earshot of the man.
‘You are lost in dark remembrances,’ the stranger told him.
Zander slugged at his beer. Christ, the guy wanted to chat. It was time to drink up and move on. Nevertheless, something compelled Zander to explain what was on his mind, to confess to what the man rightly guessed were dark musings. He checked himself. The turmoil in his mind, his hurt, his remorse, those things were all his, and he cared to share none of them with this stranger. Instead, he drunk from his bottle again.
‘You will tell me.’ It wasn’t a request.
And Zander spilled the words out of his mouth even as he tried to remain quiet. ‘Today would have been my parent’s wedding anniversary. Sixty years they’d have been married. Sixty years. And my mama… today would have been her birthday, as well. Ninety she’d be today. Ninety. Imagine that, hey? Ninety years old…’ It was distressing that the tingling sensation had returned to his arm and was increasing as he spoke. ‘I’ll never reach ninety.’
‘I know.’
Zander didn’t care how the man knew, or whether the guy’s response was down to his limited understanding of English. Oddly, he wasn’t all that fazed by the man’s acknowledgement that he wouldn’t reach the nine-oh, either. All that mattered was his own desire to spew his conscience out to the stranger. ‘So, this is an occasion for a small celebration, a small reflection. A toast raised in solitude. My wife reckons I’m crazy to be so hung up by my parents’ passing. After all, life goes on, as she says.’ Zander paused while Mary set the man’s water on top of a small paper mat she’d placed on the bar. She smiled at her new customer before giving Zander a reassuring grin, and retreating to her duties. ‘But a man remembers happy times growing up,’ Zander said. ‘Happy times with my parents and my brother. Such happy happy times.’ He stared at his beer, ignored the stranger, and sighed. ‘You know, I’ve worked hard. Too hard, perhaps and… and…’ he hesitated. He didn’t want to off-load all this baggage, but it was impossible to stop. ‘If I’m honest, I’ve not been whiter than white all the time; I haven’t played by the book; I’ve stretched the rules a little… but look, I’ve built up an honest business and become a husband along the way. I’ve lived the goddamn American dream. The goddamn dream, I tell ya.’
‘I know,’ the man repeated.
The beer, in Zander’s next mouthful, tasted sour and wasted. He screwed up his nose and pushed the bottle aside, suddenly disinterested in its content. A stomach upset from ropey alcohol would not sit well on top of his other ailments. ‘I haven’t spoken to my brother in years.’ Tears well up around his eyes.
‘I know.’
Zander sniffed. ‘We were so close when we were young, Giorgio and me. A man needs a sibling to be close to but… he fell out with me because of some business deal I did that he took exception over. My wife said it was up to him to come back to me and make peace, but he never did and I… I was too proud to visit him instead. So, we… we drifted apart.’
There was a newspaper on the bar, folded in two. The smiling face of Jonas Windberg stared towards the ceiling from its front cover. Zander picked the paper up and thumbed several pages before spreading it open in front of the stranger. ‘See this,’ he poked an unsteady finger at a photo of a young badminton champion. ‘This paper is from a few weeks ago. That’s my niece. Do you know how many times I’ve met her? Yet, I see her in this paper, and she’s this big success at sports. How was I to know this? How would she know that I, her uncle, is proud of her even though she scarcely knows who I am?’
This time, the stranger didn’t reply or offer any clue that he’d been listening.
Zander sighed. ‘Zero times, I have met her. I didn’t know she played that sport, or any other. Didn’t know she was any good at it. Heck, I didn’t even realise she’d grown up so big.’
The stranger nodded but his interest in Zander’s tale had waned. He placed a thin finger on top of the photograph on the opposite page to Zander’s niece. ‘I have met this man,’ he said.
Zander emitted a small, sour laugh. Even strangers found the reasons for his brooding dull. Nobody cared how much it hurt to be estranged from his brother’s family. ‘Really? Now that’s a thing. Chance is funny, ain’t it?’
‘Why so? He drove me to this hotel from the airport.’
Zander examined the picture for a moment. ‘He’s one of the guys who works for me. Quite the coincidence. Says here that he and his girlfriend won a singing competition. I guess he’s got a passable voice when he chooses to use it.’ His business owner’s instinct kicked in. ‘I hope he treated you well?’
‘Well enough. Please, pass on my regards to… his name, please?’
‘Arthur. His name is Arthur Corbie.’
‘Ahhhh… Very good. Arthur. Corbie.’ The stranger smiled in a way that made Zander shudder. ‘That information is very welcome indeed. And he drove me here from the airport. As you say, chance is a funny thing.’
Abruptly, the stranger stood, scraping the feet of his stool against the floor. ‘I have taken enough of your time, enough of your memories,’ he told Zander. ‘I shall leave you to the rest of them.’ He offered a curt nod and retreated, leaving his water untouched.
‘Watch out for him,’ he told Mary when they were alone. ‘Make sure you don’t go home alone tonight. I don’t trust him.’
She nodded. ‘Thank you. I know what you mean. He seems like a sleazeball.’
‘Tell you what,’ Zander said, flashing her one of his business cards. ‘Call this number. Tell them Zander said to give you a free journey home. That should keep you safe.’
She blinked a few times even as her hand took the card from him. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ she said. ‘Erm, thank you. Thank you very much.’
‘It’s no problem. Gotta keep safe on these streets, you know.’ God, his arm was sore. He rubbed it fiercely. ‘Another beer, please.’ He’d stay a while longer.
As Mary went to retrieve a new drink for him his gaze drifted towards the door. Christ, he thought as the realisation struck him, she isn’t who the guy is after.
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