Casablanca, Massachusetts Chapter Two
….seph, the local bartender Joseph, was worried Conny would be late to Happy Hour. Conny was one of Joseph’s best and often only customers.
“You’re late. I was pretty sure someone had cut off your legs, burned your house to the ground,” said Joseph.
“Why?”
Joseph gazed into the yonder, “They say in your autumn years you start to think of things like legacy, God, and if your regular customers have been mutilated then murdered through arson, like I’m pretty sure Teddy has been killed with deliberately faulty skydiving equipment.”
“Teddy is sitting right over there,” said Conny, gesturing over to Teddy, who was sitting right over there.
“So he is,” said Joseph.
Conny was getting very drunk throughout it all, and now Joe, the teen-aged girl who Conny had promised to look after was angry…rightfully angry, muttering “jackass” over and over again. She was also learning that Casablanca, Massachusetts, even in the summer, was freezing, as the only 16-year-old in the world who does not have a cell phone sat there in the cold while Conny drank in a warm awful bar.
Conny was having a good time, and as he stared into beer that was mostly water, he thought of another brown fizz he had had at his parent’s New Year’s party late last year. His mom was saying something, “Now Conrad, that is why.” Then there went the beer again, and when it went away his mother was saying, “So you think you can do that? I’m trusting you.”
“Sure.”
And as the beer was going up again, “June 4th, Conrad.”
He put his glass down in the present. He couldn’t time travel, and knowing by instinct what today was, because Conny has a perfect interior clock, he also looked on his phone. What did his mom say? He played back the conversation in his head, and then he heard the words the beer had been devilishly hiding from him, and the words slowly came, to him: sister… staying…important… you buffoon (Mom’s pet name for him.)
“Damn, damn, damn,” he said running out the bar, switching to “crap, crap, crap,” in the car.
