Page 11 of Cosmo

“Well, this one is home to me and mine. My grandfather came over from Boston when he was about twenty and fell in love with the state first, then this city. It wasn’t as big back then, of course, but he grew with it.”

“And…this place you run, it’s that old?”

“He bought it in 1962. It was just a neighborhood bar, small, quiet, but the men in the neighborhood loved it. After my dad inherited it, he let it go some. It was mostly his cronies that came in and they rarely paid the huge tabs my father let them run.”

In awe of some of that, Liam said nothing. What he heard next, however, made him respect the man a little more.

“The businesses on that block were all taking a hit, though. There was an old dress shop that hadn’t changed out their stock in thirty years, a television repair shop that wasn’t getting any business, once TVs started being so cheap. Shame, but once they all closed, I put myself in major debt and bought half the block. Then there was tearing down walls and the reno, which, believe it or not, was more expensive than the purchases.”

“How’d you do it?”

“The banks saw my business plan, and well, I bullshitted well enough that they gave me the loan. I figured it wasn’t me, though. It was gentrification. People were already going into those neighborhoods and buying up property cheap, fixing them up and selling to trendy businesses like coffee shops, yogurt shops, crap like that. And I can’t talk. I gentrified the pub too.I couldn’t afford to keep it just a local pub for a few old guys anymore. I made it into a gay bar, but we get plenty of women in the place too. Our bartenders, their shows, they draw enormous crowds on the weekends. We make plenty of money now, but it’s about more than that. My husband was a bartender. He’d been in prison, and he got out and came to me, working his ass off and he decided it was better to be outside the prison walls than inside.”

So, Liam thought, hewasa do-gooder, but that wasn’t a bad thing. He could use some good done for him for a change. “Thanks for helping me out. I’m not good at…”

“Expressing that. No worries, Liam. Not everyone belongs in prison their whole lives. Some are there simply because they never got the chance to make their lives better.”

“I guess.”

They got to the area and parked in a reserved place on the side of a three-story brick building. Murphy got out and took Liam’s sack of clothes from the back seat and then led him to the corner of the block, where the entrance to the pub was located. “We go in the side entrance, usually, but I wanted to give you a tour of the place right away before I show you your room.”

“Cool.”

They went through the double doors and ended up in a dim room that was only bright enough to see where they were. There were neon lights here and there and sconces on the walls, but the lights were dim.

There were tables and booths and a long bar that was polished dark wood, metal stools that looked like they were made of gears or something that better belonged in a factory.

The back of the bar was long, mirrored, and sectioned into three, two smaller mirrors on the sides flanking the huge one in the middle. All were framed by ornate wood scrolls, and there were shelves that began halfway down them all, iridescent lightsshowing the perfect lines of bar glasses beneath the shelves of liquor bottles.

There were a few patrons on the barstools, but the place was quiet and only a television over the right side of the bar could be heard.

The men barely glanced back at them, one nodding to Murphy, and another giving him a wave. “Hello, fellas! Where is Goldie?”

“Went to get a new keg,” One of the men said as he shook Murphy’s proffered hand.

“Good. Let me introduce you to the fresh face in the pub. This is Cosmo,” Murphy introduced, and all the men looked him over before mumbling hellos.

“Cosmo will join us on the weekends soon, but I thought I’d throw him in tomorrow's day shift with Goldie to learn the ropes.”

One of the men, a grizzled old fucker, said, “He gonna shake his ass on the weekends too?”

“Yeah, Mack. He will, and you won’t be here, so what do you care? As long as you get your afternoon Guinness.”

“Fair enough,” he said before turning back to his glass of dark beer.

Murphy informed Liam, “We still have the local boys in here on most days, sipping their beer while complaining about the economy, their taxes, price of eggs, and the youth of today.”

Before Liam could think of how to respond to that, a huge black man came through the curtain to the right of the bar with a keg of beer slung over his shoulder like it weighed a couple of pounds. “Hey, Murph!”

“Goldie, there you are. Set that thing down. You know I told you to use the hand truck.”

The huge guy set the keg down behind the bar and walked back around to Liam and Murphy, nodding to Murphy. “You know it’s not that heavy for me. I need the workout.”

“Yeah, you’re so flabby,” Murphy drawled with biting sarcasm. “Meet our newest. This is Cosmo.”

A big paw was offered to him, and he took it, watching his own hand be swallowed in it. “Nice to meet you, Cosmo.”

“Yeah, you too,” he said meekly. He hated being around people. Even in prison, he’d kept to himself in his cell or in the yard.

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