All Told by Kathie Giorgio

Author:Kathie Giorgio
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
Published: 2021-12-24T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

The Mathematics of

Communication

Willie was a communications major when he dropped out of college to attend bartender school. He fell in love with the colorful bottles, the colorful liqueurs, and the colorful patrons. He explained to his disappointed parents that he learned more about communication in a bar than in a classroom. “Nothing was ever really subtle in a bar,” he said – everything was larger than life. Laughter was louder, kisses were longer, and anger created red faces and purple language and tears. Willie anticipated seeing a live performance of that classic moment in movies and television where a woman tosses a drink into a man’s face. Each night was like waiting for a spark following a trail to some hidden dynamite. Willie himself couldn’t imagine feeling so – what? enraged? hurt? horrified? – that he would throw a drink. He’d never even thrown a punch.

Now, he’d been tending bar for fifteen years and that spark still hadn’t ignited. Willie kept waiting, from bar to bar, job to job, and, for the last five years, in his own bar, Willie’s Hole in the Wall. It used to be called Frank’s Pub, but Willie wasn’t Frank, and all he could think of when he first saw the place was a hole in a wall. It was dim, located below street level, smoky from years when cigarettes were still allowed, no windows except for a couple wavy glass-blocked slots looking blurrily out on the sidewalk. The pub was small, but the bar top itself was a dream – solid and aged cherry, rich in character and history and years of drinking and rubbing elbows. It was U-shaped, curving around a mirrored wall with glass shelves filled with bottles and bottles reflecting and reflecting.

The day Willie answered the real estate ad, the bar’s original namesake, Frank himself, sat on a stool, coughing into a handkerchief. Willie wandered around the room, silently admiring the paneled wainscoting, and the intact leather of the booth seats, wishing the old linoleum floor was already redone, wishing there was a little more light. The restrooms were passable, but would eventually need some updating, which, five years later, Willie still hadn’t done. The floor, he did in a repurposed hardwood Frank approved of.

Back then, Frank coughed and said, “I haven’t operated the business in about two years, so you’ll have to build the clientele again. Still, I bet some regulars will come back. This is a classy bar, William. No fights. No fall-on-the-floor drunks, though you’ll have to call a taxi for a few. Or an Uber now, I suppose.” He laughed and then coughed again, holding the handkerchief to his mouth.

Willie wondered who used handkerchiefs anymore. By the end of the week, he bought the place. Willie shook Frank’s hand and surreptitiously wiped his palm on his jeans while promising he’d take good care of Frank’s Pub. The first thing he did was change the name, with Frank’s blessing, and then he let in a little more

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