999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [96]
Mescal’s her name, yessir; and fucking up my head’s her game. She did that every night while I tongue-kissed the smooth taste of her. Oh, yeah, you got it now. I’ve had a great galloping love affair with mescal for a long, long time. And she was one helluva jealous mistress, let me tell you. But no more. Not ever again. And here’s why.
I used to make love shamelessly to my mistress all over Manhattan, but the place I liked best was called Helicon, so named no doubt because its owner, Mike, was Greek. See, Mount Helicon was the home of the Muses, or so the ancient Greeks believed, anyway. The bar was holed up a block away from the Holland Tunnel, on the ground floor of a cast-iron building you could see had been handsome as sin maybe seventy-five years ago. Inside was a long, narrow space with slowly turning fans dripping from a pressed-tin ceiling dating back to the turn of the century. The old millennium, not the one just passed. The tin was pressed into a nice pattern, which reminded me of some old Mexican tiles I had seen when I was living in Oaxaca. When I’d first met Ms. M. So long ago I can’t remember the date. Hell, they don’t make tiles like that anymore. Not since the craftsmen all got jobs making high-profile sneakers and nylon running suits, and assembling Personal Digital Assistants.
In any event, Helicon had lots to recommend it: sawdust on the floor, and the smell of old beer and even older grease hanging like well-won medals on a gaunt warrior. Not to mention the bar itself, which seemed to go on forever, scarred with the wounds of long-forgotten brawls and newly broken hearts. Best of all, the light was just dim enough so that when you looked at yourself in the panels of cloudy mirror behind the bar’s polished mahogany surface you could just about convince yourself that you were someone else—someone you had once dreamed of becoming, maybe.
The particular day I’m thinking of I was sitting in a booth, making love to Ms. M, when the bar phone rang. Mike picked it up, spoke a moment, then held out the receiver.
“It’s for you,” he said to me.
I grabbed my mistress and brought her to a stool. Scooping up the receiver, I growled, “Yeah, what?”
“Jesus, Willie, it’s ten-thirty in the morning. Are you drinking already?”
“Who the hell wants to know?” I took an extra-large hit of the mescal.
“It’s worse than I imagined,” the disapproving voice said. “It’s Herman, your brother.”
“Ah, that explains it,” I said, cutting the sonuvabitch off. “You have no imagination.”
“If you sobered up, you could get a real job.”
“And, goddammit, my name isn’t Willie!” My cheeks flushed red, I hung up.
“Wrong number,” I told Mike as I slid the phone back down the bar. He just gave me a wry grin. He knew what was up. Mike and I had a relationship—the kind you can only have with a really topflight bartender.
Back in my booth, I pushed aside the empty glass from my second drink and sipped some more mescal while I brooded about my empty office and the last contract I had signed. It had been six months and I hadn’t put a word down on my notepad, let alone on my word processor. Idly, I considered calling Ray Michaels, my accountant, who made sure my life didn’t go straight to hell in a handcart while I struggled through my affair with Ms. M. I thought maybe I ought to have him contact my publisher and tell her to forget it, give back the advance she’d sent me. Then I remembered I’d already blown it on that little month-long jaunt back to my old haunting grounds in Mexico. Just as well; I’d never reneged