Burial of the Dead

LOVE

LOVE

Clive flips the lights twice as if intermission were over, as if there were a second act for the last three drinkers left behind by others, life or what had passed for their holidays.

Let’s go, fellas, time to close up, now.

What the hell are you sayin’ time to close? It’s New Years Eve. You don’t close on New Years Eve.

It’s time for closin’, Mr. Bucket, so you might want to notify your friend there that’s it’s time to wake up and go.

But how can it be time? It’s a national holiday, says Bucket, with his sunken growl and dark glasses set in tarnished circular rims, elbow-wise poking his drinking companion, Mr. Tubbs, till Tubbs raises his head, snorts, looks around with damp, rheumy eyes.

Bucket and Tubbs, Clive says, the two of ya’, like somebody’s Miami Vice nightmare.

What the hell’s he sayin? Tubbs asks Bucket.

Says it’s time to close.

So, close, what’s that got to do with me?

Bucket turns to Clive: He’s right, Clive. You can’t close on New Years Eve; it’s not right.

Wouldn’t be right if it were New Years Eve. Problem is, it’s not even New Years Day. You fellows missed a day. It’s two January and all the old rules apply.

Clive wipes the bar, sets bottles in their place, taps Bucket’s glass, noting the inch of bourbon remaining.

C’mon, now, Mr. Bucket, drink up before I have to toss it, and Bucket, reluctant, puffed up with litigator-shock, raises his chin and stares straight ahead, eyes almost blind behind black lenses.

I would like another, he says, and Clive reaches for the glass, and Bucket grabs it and downs the bourbon.

Good, Clive says, now if I’m not mistaken you’ve only got twelve hours till I serve you again.

Let’s go, Dwight, Bucket says, jostling the heavy guy who holds the end of the bar with one hand and waves to nobody with the other.

It seems, Bucket says, that the gendarme here’s not about to serve his most loyal customers on New Years Eve.

Shut-up, Tubbs says, it’s not New Years. It was New Years, but it’s not now.

The two guys grab each other by the shoulders until Tubbs’s feet start to move, and he rushes forward in the desperate hope of aligning his feet with an ever moving center of gravity.

Stand up, now, Bucket yells, and he grabs Tubbs’s arm and opens the door as they disappear into the cold night, though not before Bucket turns once to wave to Clive, to say goodnight.

Clive turns off the low overheads and the bottles behind the bar shine in the bar’s mirror. He grabs a bottle of brandy and two small glasses and crosses the room and sits in the booth with Manny Whitman.

We are officially after hours, now, Manny.

Crockett and Tubbs are gone?

Those two are a three act play in a two act theater.

Too much month at the end of the paycheck.

What? Clive asks.

I don’t know. Just one of those too much X for too little Y sayings.

Right, like a five dollar bird in a ten dollar suit.

There you go, Clive.

Thank you, Ms. Whitman.