All My Goodbyes: Stories by Jacob Mendelsohn

Author:Jacob Mendelsohn [Mendelsohn, Jacob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781483507835
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2013-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Old Briar Inn wasn’t old, wasn’t an inn, and Len didn’t know what type of wood they used but was pretty sure it wasn’t briar. It stood in that deep abyss between neighborhoods, a place not quite Flatbush, not quite Midwood, yet not quite Kensington. The signage proclaimed that Bud and Bud Light were the elixirs of choice at the Old Briar Inn. Outside the smokers made their peace with the world.

It was a Tuesday, and Tuesdays meant Tani was working. Len liked Tani because she knew him from before but never brought up the fact that she knew him from before. She had skin of the deepest ebony and eyes of the richest brown. Just being around her, a man could fall in love with the whole wide world.

“The usual?” she asked him, because in the movies that is what a good bartender does. He nodded and wrapped his heavy coat over the corner stool that had been his home for the past nine years. She placed a Diet Coke in front of him: pint glass, two ice cubes, no straw. He sipped it while checking the news on his phone—a Hollywood power couple was splitting up, a war was either starting or ending in some far off country of dust and desert, floods were sweeping the South, and still no baseball.

The juke changed from The Smiths to Journey, and Len found himself tapping along to the tune. He put his phone down on the bar, grabbed the bowl of pretzels, and began to take the tiniest bites out of them.

He turned to Tani. “How’s your night been?”

“Lousy. Got league night early on, but those assholes never tip.” She paused a second, looked around, pursed her lips.

“Spill it, Tani.”

“Yeah, I know, an open book. Well, I figured you should know. Rosa’s here.”

“Ah.” He looked around but couldn’t see her.

“She’s in the back playing pool.”

“She’s terrible at pool.”

Tani nodded. “She’s really lit up.”

He nodded, stood, and made his way to the back room. Rosa sat in a corner drinking a rum and coke. Her cheeks were red, her hair was a bit messy, and her eyes darted this way and that and then back to this. Len sat down next to her, and for a while nothing was said.

“Where’s the kid?” he finally asked.

“At my mom’s. I needed a girls’ night out.”

“Uh huh. How is he?”

“Walkin’ and talkin’.” She didn’t look at him but at the pool table, her eyes rolling around as they followed the movement of the balls.

“And how about you?”

“I’m just wonderful, Lenny. Just fucking wonderful. I’ve got a job that pays me next to nothing and a second job that pays me enough to hire a babysitter to watch the kid when I’m at the first job. But you know what, besides that, aces baby, fucking aces. My apartment is falling apart, and the super keeps grabbing my ass and saying that he’ll fix the leak in the bathroom for a blowjob. The kid got tested for autism.

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