Page 20 of The Guy in the Alley

I shrugged and scratched my nose. “You keep calling me kid, so…”

He rolled his eyes, then looked out over the crowd. “Put me to work, please. At the very least, I can pour beer and take out dishes.”

By all means. We could use the help.

“You’re not busboy material, so I’ll keep you at the bar.” I reached under the counter and sifted through our work tees with the Blackhawks logo. XL should be a good fit. I found one and handed it to him. “Go change into this.”

He nodded once and walked off.

What, no changing right fucking in front of me this time? What made him modest? A bar audience of fifty people?

If he proved too much of a distraction, I was seriously going to ward him off with crosstown trash talk.

For now, I returned to work and helped Jamaal with a big order of various cocktails. At the same time, Jerry was trying to increase his beer fund by proposing bets. Malcolm was down, and so were Scottie and a handful of other regulars. Jamaal and I never engaged, but we did enjoy getting the crowd going. So he suggested a vote and picked Hawks enemies as our topic.

We’d done that many times before, and my stubbornness reared its head. I didn’t fucking care what some of the old-timers said; our biggest rival was the fucking Blues.

As I prepared three Jack and Cokes, Jamaal jumped up on the bar and cupped his hands around his mouth. “You know the rules! We need five contenders, and the buy-in is ten bucks!”

I dug a ten out of my back pocket and held it up. “This is my night!”

Jerry and Malcolm laughed at me, undoubtedly knowing I was gonna write St. Louis as usual.

By the time we had our five contenders, Ben was back, and I explained what was happening, then moved on to give him a quick rundown of the beers we offered.

I pointed to our three stations with taps. “Each one is numbered, so we’ll just tell you how many and the item number.” Then I jerked a thumb over my shoulders. “Bottles in the fridges.”

“Got it.” He nodded firmly and seemed to react the moment Tonya and Julie came up to the bar. Luckily for him, it was only cocktails this time.

He’d get his moment soon.

“You have thirty seconds to write down your answers!” Jamaal handed out paper and pens we’d never see again. “We’re lookin’ for the Hawks’ biggest enemy!”

Someone yelled. “Don’t be the jagoff who writes we’re our own enemy!”

I laughed, then bent over and wrote the Blues?—

“Are you joking?” Ben leaned closer. “And you wonder why I call you kid.”

I straightened and scowled up at him. “Look, you old fucks can go back to the days when everything was about the Wings, but?—”

“No, it ain’t that,” he replied. “But he said enemy, not rival. You don’t have to pick a team.”

Huh?

He took one step closer and pointed to the paper. “You wanna win that money? Write the 2013 realignment.”

Holy shit.

He…

He was a genius.

Fucking everything had gone south since then. We’d lost our biggest rivals because they were no longer in our division.

Damn near giddy all of a sudden, I did as told and added my name before I handed Jamaal my note and ten bucks. We had some time as he collected the others, so I hurried my way through an order of gin and tonics.

“And two Heineken!” Julia added.

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