I’ve been threatening this for a while and now here it is, original fiction. I’m tossing this out to the Substack void hoping for any feedback you all feel like hitting me with.
This is an original work of fiction. It should go without saying but won’t: these characters (including the narrator) and stories are fictious. Similarities to real people or events are either coincidental or a huge mistake.
Tallboys #1
Back when everyone left of Reagan was a commie, the blue dogs in the big city called the town across the river “the People’s Republic.” It was a college town filled with college kids and the kind of kid-adults that hang around college towns well past their graduation date. I grew up in the city, but there was no scene in the city so I hung out across the river. There was a bar that leaned into the whole commie-vibe, the Little Red Bar. Tongue in its cheek, the LRB sat on one of the main streets, halfway between the bridge and the university; and a much-closer-halfway between Johnny C’s and the Plough, two other dives on that strip.
They had a horseshoe bar – lacquered top polished to shine – that filled three-quarters of the space. On slow nights the regulars would congregate along a single side – usually the left, closest to the men’s room. On weekends, they’d push to the back, splitting between left and right. This was the back of the bus, the dark corner. College kids and local yuppies with artsy inclinations filled the rest of the space like gas.
Half the regulars worked there, the other half would in a pinch (the bar’s or their own), present company included. I worked shifts at the door or as a back-bar when they were tight. I cashed checks with other people’s names on them and drank for free. I’d trade books with Gregor, talk hockey with Trick, and flirt with college girls while I held their IDs under the light. Most nights though I paid for the privilege of those same activities.
* * *
Jackie was one of the regulars and one of my favorites. Jackie had that blonde hair that’d gone to white but still had the sparkle of gold or hairspray in it, mopping out and down to her shoulders. She always had a carton of Newports in front of her and she was the only person there who got served her drink in a martini glass; a gin martini, extra dirty.
“I like my gin like I like my men,” she said to me, a conspiratorial pausing for effect before the punchline.
“I like my women like I like my scotch,” I told her, “Twelve-years old and mixed up with coke.” Her laugh fell on a spectrum between cackle and wheeze. I loved making her laugh. She’d catch me using little colloquialisms I’d learned from my grandfather, said they reminded her of her dad. She usually left before I made too much a fool of myself.
* * *
Jackie spent most of her afternoons at Johnny C’s because they had KENO. She’d play cribbage with the day-tender and drink the happy hour special regardless of the special or the hour. After that, she’d grab scratchies and a pack of Newports at the 7-11 on the way, hang around TRB until ten or eleven, and meander to the Plough for a nightcap. I cannot say for certain that she ever ate or slept. If she had any winnings from the scratchies or KENO, she donated it “to the cause” through Sully at the Plough. After she passed Sully told me that he’d lost his connection to the boys back home about ten years prior. He’d kept the money thinking to skim it for himself but never did. A portion of it paid for the bagpiper at Jackie’s funeral, the rest went to the local YMCA.
“She used the pool there in the summer,” he shrugged, shook his head, and poured a confessional shot. Years later, in the obituary, I’d learn Sully’s surname was Flannagan.
Jackie’s world seemed confined to about two square miles, but in that square she was a queen. Well, royalty at least. Anyone who came around would have a kiss on the cheek for her, or an offer to buy her next drink if it was a payday. I’d only be going to the TRB for a couple weeks when she reached out to me.
“You’re David’s friend, right?”
“Uh yeah. Peter.”
“I’m Jackie, nice to meet you.” She smelled like juniper and olive brine. Cigarettes and lavender hand-cream. There was a signature of pinkish lipstick on her martini glass. She probed for my life’s story, such as it was, with polite genialities. She said I was handsome, one of those harmless white lies that makes someone’s day. From there it was pleasantries then hugs and pecks on the cheek as I became part of the wallpaper of that place. I made her cry one Christmas but that’s another story altogether.
When the college kids started filing in, she’d say something like “that’s my cue,” push away from the bar, put on a green LL Bean rain jacket that was probably older than I was, and head out. Something in me hated those kids, oblivious to her gentle attempts to escape, smiling softly, resting a delicate hand on a shoulder, polite excuses muttered.
Part 2 here…
In Jackie you have the beginnings of au character to hold a reader's attention through a short story or even a novella. You have done very little with the "I" narrator. What happens between Jackie and the narrator is the guts of your story. What is Jackie's back-story or history. Is Jackie akin to Justine in "The Four Quartets", in other words the turnstile through which all the men in Alexandria, Egypt have passed? Is she good, evil, fake, merely a promiscuous lush, what? Why does she spend her days making the rounds of 3 bars in a college town? Is she a graduate, a drop-out, a drifter, a former topless dancer, a divorcee? Do you want the "I" narrator to be an undisguised autobiographical stand-in for yourself, or do you want the narrator to be an original and unlike you? Jack Kerouac put himself and his circle into his books, unabashedly, so he never had to create an original character. Do you want your story to be one of thwarted adoration, thwarted lust, or consummated love? All three options are open to you.
I love the character of Jackie — feels so real.