A flash about making an entrance
It was closing time; even the quick boys in the back room were sagging. I had called last call at ten to two, bar time and was pushing a rag over the same clean spot on the bar. The door was locked and I let the patrons out in groups of two. George was sitting at the bar waiting for a cab. It wasn’t like that, he didn’t have a car. He had lost his job and his wife had kicked him out, maybe it was the other way around. That was four months ago. He came to watch me work, kept him from sitting at home and, I assume, thinking of places where he shouldn’t let him go. He’d gone through enough club soda where I had to change the tank.
I was letting out this couple that had been dry humping in a corner booth since midnight. They left me a twenty for two bar gin on the rocks. I opened the door and she pushed in. Four inch come fuck me pumps and a don’t touch me Black Hawks Jersey, manic come hither look and get thither pretty blue pistol. She backed me up, locked the door behind her without even turning around.
“We’re closed ma’am” I said shooting for authority, missing the mark, and coming across like a guy who really didn’t want to get shot.
“Jack and coke,” she said, not looking at me directly, but enough in her peripherals where she could get three shots off before I could swing my mop like a ninja sword. I’ve seen a lot of kung fu movies. So I went behind the bar and just to keep some pride I poured her Jim Beam and Pepsi.
“You George?” she asked George.
“Mostly,” he said swigging the tail end of warm club soda.
“George Lucas?”
He pushed out the breath he’d been holding.
“No. But if you find that bastard empty the clip. Phantom Menace; what the hell was he thinking?”
“Oh,” she said, sliding the barrel to cock one in the chamber. “He’s not the George I’m looking for.”
“I have 1000 in cash,” I said.
“Shut the fuck up. Am I talking to you?”
“Wife?’ George asked.
“You’re married?”
“Sort of.”
She held the gun up;
“Across the margent of the world I fled,
And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
Smiting for shelter on their clangèd bars;
Fretted to Dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o’ the moon. “
She kicked off her right shoe and threw the gun at George, a high loping arc like a softball pitch; he caught it to keep from hitting him.
“Francis Thompson.
He shot me, call 911, the son of a bitch shot me, tell him to put down the gun.”
Blood spilled from the empty pump and pumped from the bloody foot.
Prompt
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