Now What?

I was sitting in Sam’s at my usual table.

I was drinking the usual and I felt the usual:

bad.  I had many people to thank for my

life, and no one to blame…I figured the

mistakes were mine. Whenever anything 

good had happened in my life, someone

else was always the catalyst. At least, that

way, when I died, I wouldn’t be pissed off

at that many people. You don’t want to take

a lot of that garbage with you.

So, I was sitting there, having these 

thoughts among others, hoping to make it

through another 24 without a whole lot of

fresh scars. If you’ve been around, familiarity

is an important friend…I mean, familiarity

with your environment…your package. This

is not true only from a street sense p.o.v., but

also for the comfort zone. That’s why spiders 

build webs. That’s how they grok their space.

Time was passing painlessly more or less…

the best that could be expected. So far, no 

new faces..a few fewer older ones…they

had a tendency to vanish one by one from

time to time. Yes, it was as boring as reading 

about it…but, having been around, I never

turned my back on the fickleness of the world.

A woman came in…forties…a few years short

of her Rubycon…nice clothes, but, it looked as

if she had been running. When she reached the 

bar, she composed herself and sat down. The 

room was as unmoved as a sarcophagus. Sam

seemed to know her…he poured her a shot

and said:  “Been a while.”    “Yes…” pause…

“It has.”  A little ripple in our frog pond…I

took a sip of beer and it tasted like my 

grandfather. A man walked in, in a way that

made him seem invisible. He took a seat at a

table. He looked like he had always been there 

He seemed like a regular, although I’d never

seen him before…and I’d been coming to Sam’s 

bar for thousands of years.

Sam was a third generation bartender.
His  mother ran a bar in Cicero, and
kept a sawed off shotgun behind the bar.
William Burroughs wrote that, in a
gunfight, you always go for the  shotgun
first.  Sam loved Burroughs’ writing.
Sam’s grandfather made booze in Chicago,
and had tunnels leading from the distillery
to garages and other innocuous locations
for distribution. One of his great uncles
published a German newspaper on the
North Side. Note:  they interned the Japan-

 ese in California…why not the Germans
in Chicago?

Sam and the woman were having their
private, semi- intense little chat. The bottle
was now on the bar. The  man went to the
other end of the bar and waited. Sam went
over to him and took his order; a pitcher

of margaritas…a bowl of pickles. The lady
was looking straight forward…immersed
in her thoughts. The man 

disappeared back to his table. Sam and the
lady  continued their conversation….more
pauses between  their words.

The man slipped unnoticed up to the bar, and
suddenly pinned the woman’s hand to the bar
with a Bowie knife.  A blast blew a hole in the
bar in front of the man. The second blast from
the  shotgun blew the man backwards 

across the room where he landed in a crumpled
pile. “Guy must been on codeine…” Sam
muttered as he  pulled the blade from her hand.
The bar was suddenly  empty except for me,
Sam, the lady, and what had once been a fella.
I’d seen this kind of thing before. There was

always a moment of “Now what?” prior to split
second action when peoples’ fates were sealed.
It hadn’t happened in Sam’s for a long time.
Sam was on the phone to the police.

It was time for me to leave.