Nearly Departed, Max Schlienger [the gingerbread man read aloud txt] 📗

half a page. The so-called spiritual world was apparently a popular topic, especially amongst individuals with a religious devotion to black clothing and gaudy jewelry. Despite his best efforts to keep an open mind, he was still having a difficult time believing that Evy would be affected by a few verses of bad poetry and the waving of a stick. Feeling frustrated, defeated, and fairly grouchy, Dennis decided to take a break from his inquiries and visit Thoreau’s.

As usual, the tavern was sparsely populated. A lemony scent of wood cleaner added to the usual spicy aroma, making Dennis feel oddly hungry. An attractive blonde-haired girl named Christina, with whom Dennis was casually acquainted, scrubbed at the bar with a stained cloth. She was humming an upbeat tune to herself and didn’t look up when Dennis slid onto one of the barstools.

“Is Luke around?” he asked.

The girl continued to polish the wood. “Who?” Dennis rolled his eyes and tried to stay patient. Christina was nice enough, but her brain often seemed about as functional as a cardboard lifeboat.

“Luke Colby,” clarified Dennis. “Blonde hair? He’s worked here for something like six years.” Christina looked up with an expression that teetered between confused and absent-minded, the wheels in her head clearly working in high gear to process this new and complex information.

“Oh,” the girl replied. She looked down at the spot on the bar she had been polishing, made a thoughtful noise, and then jerked her head back up with a bright, triumphant smile. “You can ask the manager! He’ll know!” She dropped the rag and skipped through a doorway behind the bar.

“He is the manager!” Dennis called after her. “Oh, never mind…” He drummed his fingers on the bar, and received an annoyed frown from an obese man in a sweat suit. Dennis gave him a humorless smile before turning his attention back to the doorway, just as Luke came sauntering out.

“Hey, Luke,” Dennis greeted him. Luke said nothing, but looked his friend over with an expression of detached scrutiny. “I could use a drink, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“You look like you’ve had enough,” muttered Luke. He pulled a squat glass from a cabinet and splashed some brown liquid into it from what looked like an opaque beer bottle. “Seriously, dude, I’ve seen suicide victims looking less depressed than you.”

“I’m not depressed,” Dennis countered, pulling the glass towards him. “I’m incredibly frustrated, rather tired, and a little bit irritated, but I’m not depressed.” He took a tiny sip of the chocolate-colored fluid and let it roll down his throat, rather than actively swallowing it.

“Gosh, and here it is, almost two in the afternoon. What a horrible day you must have had.” He picked up the rag where Christina had left it and set himself to finishing the task of polishing the bar. Dennis ignored his friend’s sarcasm and regarded his drink suspiciously.

“Luke, what is this?” he asked.

“Root beer.”

“It’s not bubbling.”

Luke looked up. “That’s because it’s flat.”

Dennis sat for a moment with an arched eyebrow. Then, despite Luke’s indignant protests, he climbed over the bar and pulled down a bottle of expensive rum.

“Damn it, now you got the bar all dirty again!” Luke complained. He threw the cloth at Dennis’ head, where it landed with a happy flopping noise and filled his nostrils with the smells of lemon and dust. “If you want free drinks, you can work for them.” He turned his back and rummaged through a drawer at the opposite end of the shelves, muttering audibly.

Dennis peeled the cloth from his head with a smirk, well aware that his antics had caught the attention of everyone in the tavern. Despite there being only half a dozen or so people present, he felt a psychological spotlight pointing at him, and kept the performance going. With a look of feigned seriousness, he removed the cap from the rum and dumped a liberal amount onto the bar. Luke turned at the sound of the liquor splashing onto the wood, and made a noise like a choking foghorn. Dennis fought to keep a straight face as he started rubbing at the sodden area with the rag, sloshing the spilled alcohol across its entire surface.

“Hey!” Luke yelled. He rushed over and snatched the bottle from Dennis’ hand. “Do I come in and mess around at your job?” he demanded. “Oh, wait, that’s right, you don’t have one.” He replaced the cap on the bottle and gingerly returned it to its place on the shelf. “Some of us have to work for a living, you know.”

Dennis continued to suppress any traces of amusement from his face as he scrubbed at the bar, sopping up the rum with the already dripping cloth. “What about that time that you glued all the pages of my manuscript together?”

Luke went slightly red in the face. “That hardly counts.”

“Or the time that you changed all of the characters’ names to ‘Carlton’?”

“Hey, that was funny…”

Dennis leveled his gaze at Luke. “Of course, there was also the time that you replaced all of my notes with excerpts from –”

“Alright, alright!” Luke exclaimed, throwing his hands up. “Jeez, you’re completely intolerable sometimes, you know that?” He jerked his head towards the spot where Dennis had been seated. “Go sit back down, you’ll get your goddamn drink.”

Dennis responded with a polite smile and a nod, and then went back to his stool, although he walked around the bar this time rather than climbing over it. By the time he arrived, there was a second glass waiting for him, this one filled with an amber liquid. Luke snorted dismissively, and went back to cleaning up Dennis’ mess. Dennis waited until there was a dry spot on the bar, then placed a small stack of bills down on it. Luke eyed the money suspiciously.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

Dennis shrugged. “Adding insult to injury, I suppose.”

“Fine,” Luke growled. He swept the cash into his hand and dumped it into the old-fashioned register.