Chapter 1

I never had been all that good at anything except searching out distractions to the dull pain of my relentlessly and unpleasantly bland life. Which was nothing since distractions were plentiful and were essentially within arms reach. All it took was a flick of the switch and sound and image of the TV flamed on. Not much of a flame, though. Not like staring into the camp fire, the flames an intricate constant flow of interesting shapes and smells and light and dark spears into the night. These were residual particulate that consumed nothing but time. Dull pain is prescribed dull distractions. The phone jangled a nerve somewhere sciatic and spastic jolts got my leg muscles contracting and lifting me to the cradle where the noisy phone lay.

"Hello?" I said dully.

Silence and a click and a voice. Soliciting. It should be a crime. But it's a job instead. On the phone they don't solicit sex. It's the TV that solicits phone sex. On the phone its some money scam or other, pure and simple. You give us your name and address and access code and we'll take your money. I wish I could dam up the whole thing, but me alone was no match for the ocean of it. Just make a quick splash. I wish I could vanquish it at its source, but I was powerless alone to storm those enormous vault doors. Only create a dent maybe but more likely smash myself creating a mess of my face. There was no revenge I could be at peace with what with the poor clown at the other end stuck jostling people for their money so's to get a little more of an income. Commissions were not a way I could stand to make dough, what with it taking a little bit of a knack for it and, of course, practice. So I guess I felt sorry for the poor guy making a buck cause his employer sent him briefly as my distraction. Hung up on him. "Hi, have you trie..."

No, not likely.

So when the phone rang immediately after I cradled it, I don't think I was ready. But I swept it up against my ear and mouth.

"Hello?" I said tentatively.

"Jack!" Uncle Charlie calling. He was the only one I knew in the city. He was well to do, stocks or commodities or some such. The kind of go-getter you gotta take a step or two back or you feel an intrusion on your space. It was probably a good thing on the job. I don't know, not having traded in intangibles for loads of money. Occasionally I made my bucks, my short term bucks, exchanging tangible goods for small money: books, records, food.

"Uncle Charlie? How are you?" I said into the phone extra quietly, trying to make his side of the exchange a degree or two lower in volume and muscle. It wasn't completely effective. I could put the speaker a little closer to my ear but not quite on it.

"Fine. Fine Jack my boy. But most importantly, how are you?"

"The same." Meaning the same crappy job that kept me safely under a rented roof and filled up enough. Putting screws on some little motor for some contraption or other was something I was getting good at but didn't count for much.

"Cheer up, son!" I thought about correcting him, being his nephew, not his son, being related one step away on my dad's side, only similarity is to an eighth the genetics that made up the puzzle that was me, but thought not. I expected something more interesting from him than from me. "You doing okay? I mean with the job? Everything okay?"

"Pays okay," I said, and thought, tainting the reply: "and everything else sucks."

"I gotta proposition for you Jack. No favors here. Favors both ways so they make up for each other. I gotta deal set up."

"I don't mean to interrupt you here Uncle, but I don't see me selling those whatever it is you sell," I said, instilling even less confidence in him towards me.

"So don't interrupt. What I got is a proposition. It's a sweet proposition, I promise you. I have this place through... Well, that's a bit complicated. I'm going to give you a place for a bar. West Thirties. Got a pen?"

"Hold on," I said, "I'll look." I set the phone down without too much jarring to my uncle's ear, though as loud as he talked he probably could barely tell if I slammed it down. Not that I would ever slam a phone down on my uncle or anyone else for that matter. At least not at that point in my life. As I searched I thought things were going to change. Little did I know. I would soon learn more.

"10th Avenue just north of 39th. 3925 to be precise. It's over by the West Side Highway. How soon can you get there?"

"A couple hours?"

"You don't need to dress up. You don't need to clean up."

"An hour."

"Good. See you there."

Not much more. Hint with no key to the solution. In an hour. In an hour I would know more.

After brief ablution, water out, solid waste out, water on, water in, as clean as could be hoped, I threw on my traveling duffs and took off to the nearest station to take the cross town train as far west as I could then legging it the remaining 15 blocks. I never did learn how my uncle came to own this particular bar. I figured it was a trade deal gone sour, and this was his punishment. It seemed to sag despite being within a hard greenish yellow stone building. It was probably the slight tilt of the sign. Bradley's. I never learned who Bradley was. Mr. Bradley or Bradley whoever. Probably got no pride from having this sign hanging. The place clearly was well distanced from the territory of success.

I thought about knocking but saw there was no lock on the door. Eternally open. I stepped in. I still wasn't sure if the bar was open. It was empty.

"Uncle Charlie?"

Out stepped a man that resembled Charlie as much as a ferret resembles a sloth. "You must be Jack," he said in a sprite manner matching the sprite of his persona: a quick darting mythic forest creature with an urban cast. A tough little old guy with a gleam in his eye. "Have a seat, Jack. Drink?"

"Jack and water. Don't worry about the ice." What I really wanted was a coffee maybe sweetened by some whiskey. I figured the coffee could be a toxic mud. So I risked the water. He poured a hefty shot and poured in water and placed it before me. A skinny man with a late middle aged paunch, he had a rodent's attentiveness. You thought the guy might bolt at any crazy opportunity. He slipped the cardboard coaster advertising some other pub under my glass swiftly, well timed.

I hadn't sat yet but was lured to the stool placed in front of the drink. Partly it was the drink. It was a momentum builder for my parched, well traveled palate. But the final push was provided by the little skinny middle aged man. "Sit." So I sat. I drank.

"Where's my uncle?" I asked.

"No your uncle's not here. Uncle Charlie's not here. Charlie your uncle is not here Jack."

"Okay," I said without comfort. The jitters are contagious. The old guy was infectious.

"Okay Jack. You must be wondering what the fuck's up. First let me tell you about the bar. You got time don't you? Course you do Jack."

"What do you know about me?" I asked this perfect stranger.

"Not a lot Jack. I know you are stepping into a whole new life and you don't know it yet. And when you do I'll know more about you. All I know from your uncle is you're ready for an opportunity like this."

"Sure. I got time."

"Good." He said with a surprising, delighted chuckle. "Let me pour me some of that Jack too. Is it some kind of joke you preferring your name-sake? I guess I wouldn't offer it to a girl would I? Might think it was a bit rude. But maybe as a come on. Huh Jack?"

"I never have offered it to a lady. I guess I let the lady choose. Except maybe when we're at home and that's all that's left to offer."

"Well then I guess you're alright to offer it to her," he said with another light chuckle.

The silence that followed had him glancing at me and glancing off me at the room. I let my eyes wander behind him to the racks of liquor and the large mirror which paralleled the full fifty feet of the bar. It was placed along the right wall as you enter.

It was a setup for a club and yes across the space was a raised floor for just such a purpose. But there was nothing on it or around it. It stood out straight and pale, a brackish white paint on it. I figured whatever had been attached to it, lights, sound system, whatever, had been stolen. It was a neighborhood filled with those looking for a quick fix. Hell, it was Manhattan where every neighborhood had its share of junkies looking for a quick fix. The junkies of this neighborhood would have an attraction for any material with mobility and a price tag capability.

The space in front of the stage was cluttered with metal tables, squares and rectangles in a general north south direction but otherwise lacking any consistency, creating no sense of rows. The club was enclosed by bare walls and no windows except the one facing 10th Avenue, and that was painted an opaque white. The lights over the tables were six feet pairs of fluorescent tubes at front middle and back.

The long counter of the bar had its own lights attached to it. The ad signs glowed a hazy red, but mostly it was the bar itself which illuminated its space. Right of three tap locations with three taps each were sinks, gleaming unexpectedly clean via the embedded halogen lamps above them. While dinginess overcame all that I surveyed out on the floor, the bar was sparkling new, everything was pristine. Which brought my attention back to the innately nervous middle aged gentleman who was about to tell me something. Finally.

"So what do you think?" he said. I was blank. He hadn't filled it in yet. He did a taut hard gesture at the bar and the surroundings. "What do you think?" No further along in being capable of answering, I continued blankly staring. He asked again, "What do you think of this place?"

"Honestly?"

"Please."

"Not much."

"You been a bartender?"

"Briefly."

"Good," he said with a smile.

"My uncle..."

"Forget about your uncle Charlie."

"If he advised you I'd be a bartender, I haven't had much experience."

"Forget about your uncle. Forget about experience. You'll have plenty of time to learn," he said with his chuckle. "Business couldn't be described as brisk. You're a smart boy. I'll give you six months. What do you make right now?"

"I get by."

"How much? I mean exactly?" He eyed me carefully, slowly raising a hand that had been hiding in his jacket pocket. In his hand he held a shiny silver pistol. He cocked it and laid it down in front of me at the bar.

"Three hundred a week clear."

"So I'll give you six months. Six months here and a thousand a month and then you're on your own. We'll bankroll expenses. Any club expenses. You list them. Then you call your uncle Charlie and give him the list. Specific list. Specific expenses. Whatever it takes. He'll take care of it. But you got to get to a point to make this place viable after six months or you're out on your own. I mean, no more salary. Only what you get from the place. You get 50% of the take and any tips and that stays after the six months of salary. After six months that's all you get. Personnel is your problem. If you need bartenders, waitresses, talent, whatever, that's out of your pocket."

"What is this?" I asked. He had the gun resting on the bar. The gun wasn't a threat to me. It was a shove. I hadn't had a lot of shoves. Just moving along at the pace life seemed to contain within itself. I got to school on time. I did my school work with enough attention to it. I got to work on time and did the work expected of me. Whatever direction I stepped, it was one in which I could get by. Coercion hadn't been an issue. It was confusing. So my question wasn't defensive or the least bit frightened, just confused. Truth be told I liked the bit of a shove this little man was providing.