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The Cursed Man’s Toast
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It was midnight at the bar.
Frances had three more hours on shift and then it was home and sleep.
She’d been a bartender for three years and found she didn’t mind the work because it was an autopilot gig. Once you learned your drinks you were paid from all directions to show up, turn off your brain and spend the night on an endless assignment of quick mindless chores.
Easy.
Now both hands on the clock touched the twelve. One day ended and a new one began. No one in the bar took notice. Outside rain fell on the sleeping town in torrents. There was a strong El Nino out in the Pacific, and a series of atmospheric rivers sped inland from San Diego to Seattle. Tonight the bar was the only place in town still open. In the silence between songs from the juke rain pounded the tavern’s roof.
Frances was keeping an eye on two sloppy ass drunks planted at the bar. Other than them a few loose groups sat at tables. The two at the bar had outlasted perhaps twenty since they’d come in from the rain, some four or five hours ago. Real heavyweights, these two. They both appeared to be in the 12th round. Of the two it was the guy on the right who Frances thought was just about done.
The door opened and let in a fresh draft of cool stormy seaside air. A man hurried through the door. She had never seen this man at the bar. There was a determined look about him: a man on a mission.
He shook drops of rain from his coat before sitting down between the two battered heavyweights.
He looked at Frances with an odd grin and said, “I need to get drunk.”
“Whiskey?” she asked.
“Yes, that’ll do,” he said, “and a little ice.”
So Frances scooped ice cubes into a glass and splashed fresh Seagram's. When the glass was half full of the copper liquid she set it in front of him.
He eyed the glass and smiled.
He spoke endearingly, “The glass is half full, but it would be sweet of you to fill it all the way.”
Frances leveled her eyes at him but said nothing. She couldn’t quite read this guy, but it never took long. She proceeded to fill the glass all the way.
So with the glass not half full or half empty but full to the brim, the newcomer hoisted it and studied it carefully. He held it up to the weak tavern light. He turned it this way, that way. Ice cubes clinked off glass. He looked into its thick honey depths as though expecting to find a dead spider or fish hook at the bottom.
When he saw there was nothing but alcohol and ice he hoisted the drink a final time and repeated the first thing he had said, only this time it had the feel of a toast: “I need… to get drunk.”
He gestured as though touching glasses with an invisible companion. Then he upended the alcohol, and in three huge swallows the glass was empty. He slammed the glass onto the bar and leaned over it as if to vomit. Instead, the ice cubes fell from his mouth and into the glass with a bright chime.
He slid the glass toward Frances, ice cubes dancing, and said, “Would you repeat that for me?”
Frances wasn’t sure what to say. He had just downed an enormous amount of liquor.
She went with, “Do you… want a lemon water first?”
“Funny girl. Not water, a refill. And I think I’ve changed my mind. No ice.”
She said, “I will in ten minutes.”
“What, serious?”
“Serious.”
“You’re going to make me wait ten minutes for another drink?”
She stood her ground behind the bar and said, “Any idea how much alcohol you just absorbed?”
“One glass??” He stared right back, baffled.
“Let’s do some math,” she said. “A glass of whiskey every sixty seconds is alcohol poisoning in five minutes.”
“Oh,” he said flatly.
“I’ll phone a taxi for any shit faced fool,” she said, “that’s just my job. But please, let’s have no 911 tonight.”
Then, perhaps feeling the cold of the outside storm she threw a jab: “Looks like you’re not the Thomas Edison of booze you thought you were.”
But the newcomer perked up, and the determined look was back. Frances thought something was a little off about that look.
He said, “Ok, let’s do it. Five minutes? How bad could that be? I can think of worse ways to go.”
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked. “Are you crazy?”
“Ah,” he sighed tiredly. “Sure, I’m crazy. Look, it’s just that I… well… things are such that I must cease to exist.”
He shrugged as if to say, shit happens.
He added, “But I need to get drunk first because I’m terrified of death.”
“Okay my man, whatever you say,” Frances said, and flashed her on the job smile. Now she had him pegged: the class clown who never grew up. She had served plenty like this guy, grown men approaching their fortieth year with all the depth of eighteen.
“You guys are all the same,” she said. “You're really not funny, but if I pour another drink will you at least keep quiet?”
“Sure,” he said, “yes, absolutely. Just keep them coming and the silence will be golden!”
So Frances poured as she had known she would. She poured straight whiskey after straight whiskey, and as agreed he drank in silence. She thought again that something about the guy was a little off. He did not approach his whiskey by the sip or shot, but it wasn’t just that. He inspected carefully each freshly poured glass. Once inspected, he chugged the stuff the way someone might chug from a pitcher of ice water on a hot day.
The two drunks had taken notice of the new guy. They watched every huge glassful with stupid drunken concentration as he made each one disappear in three or four swallows.
By the time he had an entire fifth of Seagram’s in him, it could finally be heard in his speech.
He killed yet another glass and said, “How ‘bout another for me…. wouldja?”
“I don’t think so,” Frances said. “That was your last one.”
“Wha….? Why??”
“Hey, keep it down.”
“Sorry, sorry.”
“Fine, one last drink. Then it's tab and taxi time," she said. "I’ll have to crack more Seagram’s if that’s what you want.”
His face lit up, “Rejoice!”
She couldn’t help but laugh at this goofball. “Remember," she said and held up an index finger, "last one." She saw the way he was swaying on his stool and reconsidered. "Maybe I shouldn’t even give you that.”
“Yeh, yeh, yeh,” he flapped a hand. He was slumping onto the bar now, much like the two heavyweights.
Frances poured the man a final glass and went about the bar, debating which taxi company might arrive quickest for these model citizens. She kept an eye on the latecomer and watched him dig around in his coat pockets looking for a pack of gum or his phone or his wallet to pay for the booze…
But that was when this whiskey chugging man on a mission removed from his coat not a phone or a wallet… but a handgun.
And then a second handgun.
The two guns were identical, both black as coal. He set them down on the bar with heavy thuds and closed his eyes.
Of all the strange shit Frances had been privy to in her three years at the bar, all the small talk, big talk, arguing, lying, seducing, yelling, all the many shades of human behavior imaginable—none of it could have prepared her for the sight of those guns. What exactly was she supposed to do?
They were real guns.
The man opened his eyes, picked both guns off the bar and held them barrels to the ceiling. He looked at the weapons in his hands with terrible resolve.
Frances was frozen.
The drunk on the left was squinting and blinking at the guns.
“S—Say,” the old drunk said in a froggy croak, “where’d—where’d ya get the shootin iron?”
The man with the guns looked warily to his left at the croaker. “Where?? Fuck duzzat matter!”
The drunk said nothing.
Frances found strength to step forward. “You should put them away,” she said softly. “Please.”
“Guess what,” he grinned at her.
Her lips were numb: “What?”
“Something I have to do.”
He then placed both guns underneath his chin, barrels pointed straight up to his brain and pulled the tr—
“Wait!” she screamed.
The man waited. “Yesss??” A trifle impatient.
“You can’t just…. You can’t just….” But her heart was slamming and she was unable to say the rest of the words.
Then something occurred to the man.
“Oh!! Sorry!!” he shouted. He set one of the guns on the bar, and from his pants pocket he removed a wallet.
“Man!!” he bellowed drunkenly. "Swear I wasn't gonna stiff ya. How much?"
Frances frowned. She said, “Um... How much what…? Oh, that. Free! It was free.”
Swaying in a circle on his stool he plucked three twenties from a hefty fold of cash in his wallet. He held the twenties out toward her, clutched in the same hand as one of the guns. He grinned and said, “For alla whiskey ya ga’mee.”
“It was free!” she fought back panic. “It… it was a gift, just for you! Just please put away the guns. Please.”
He flung the twenties in her direction. It was a bad throw and the bills landed halfway across the bar.
“Nothing’s free,” he said. “There’s a price for everything. In fact...” He squinted at the roll of cash in his wallet. “Even this damn wallet wasn’t free!!” He pulled the rest of the cash and held it out to her. “You can have it, I don’t need it.” He let the fat roll of bills spill onto the bar. Then he flashed the crazy grin again, “Best tip you got all night! HAH!!”
She could think of nothing to say. Her heart was beating so hard. It seemed that time had utterly stopped.
Then the drunken smile fell from his face. He looked her square in the eyes with sudden spooky sobriety and said this: “There’s only one way to break a curse.”
His lips formed a hideous crooked smile. Slowly he shook his head. Then he said two more words: “One way.”
One second his blue eyes were looking at her and the next second those eyes disintegrated as the twin shots made one huge explosion inside the bar. The man’s headless body fell backward off the stool and crashed to the floor.
Nobody moved.
The clock ticked. That and the rain were the only sounds.
After a moment the drunks turned back to the bar and resumed their slouch.
Frances picked up the man’s empty glass with shaking hands and stared at it, horrified. Her eyesight doubled with tears, and the glass appeared to become two.
She set the glass back onto the bar. She wiped wetness from her eyes and poured more Seagram’s. Not half full or half empty, but full to the brim. She lifted the glass of warm coppery liquid and gestured as though touching glasses with an invisible companion.
She spoke the cursed man’s toast: “I need… to get drunk.”
Outside El Nino continued to hammer the sleeping town.
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