Page 9 of The Barkeep and the Bro

Question: why was rocket science positioned as the most challenging science? Wouldn’t neuroscience—the study of our brains—be more fitting? That was a thought for another day.

“And more importantly, I don’t think he was a fan of me. I could barely get two words out of him when he’d visit Ellie at school.”

“He’s protective of her. She’s his only daughter and all. That’s sweet and kind of hot.” Amos drifted away in thought.

“Have you noticed that you think everything involving a guy is hot?”

“It’s a feature of homosexuality, not a bug.”

“Fair point.”

Amos hopped off the couch and sat on the sofa arm. “Ellie is happily engaged. It’s water under the bridge. Stone’s Throw is a literal stone’s throw from the condo, too.” He nodded with certainty. “I think this could be your best opportunity for a job. Hell, not a job, a new career.”

Perhaps he was right. My chest filled with hope for the first time all week. I could do this. I would make a great bartender.

Now I just had to convince the big, burly, scary bear of a man, Mitch Dekker, to hire me.

4

MITCH

Monday afternoons were slow for Stone’s Throw. Business picked up as the week went on, and people clamored more and more for the weekend. I used the downtime to do some work on the building. Patching up wobbly tables, checking inventory. The usual. The to-do list never ended. One day, I would get around to repainting the bathrooms and cleaning up the storage closet.

Despite being a quaint local bar, the tavern itself was quite large, thanks to expansions over the years. Large windows in the back overlooked a tributary off the Hudson River with what I called junior waterfalls. Snow rested on sleeping tree branches dotted with buds waiting to burst in the spring.

By late morning, I found myself in my usual spot: the upstairs office. There was a spiral staircase by the windows that led up to a loft space my dad had converted to an office in the 1980s. I sat behind a desk with a laptop and extra-large monitor, courtesy of Ellie, going over documents to send to my accountant for taxes.

“Hey, Mitch!” Natasha, my assistant manager, yelled from the bottom of the stairs.

“What?” I yelled back. “Come up here.”

“I’m not climbing up those stairs.”

Natasha was both a fantastically loyal employee and a headstrong pain in my ass. When you found a quality worker, you held onto them for dear life, so I put up with her attitude at times. She meant well, and her dedication to Stone’s Throw was apparent.

With dark roots peeking from her rock star blonde hair and dark eyeliner, she reminded me of the goth and riot grrls from the ’90s.

“What is it then?” I called out, not taking my eyes off the monitor.

“We got an applicant for the bartender job down here.”

I’d put a sign in the window saying we were doing interviews on the spot to boost applicants; it had brought me exactly one teenager trying to score free booze and a young guy who talked so softly I couldn’t understand him.

“Did you screen him?”

I had Natasha do pre-interviews to weed out any obvious no’s. I left the questions up to her, but I got the feeling she just stared down the applicant, waiting to see if they’d crack.

“Yeah. That’s why I’m yelling up to you. He doesn’t suck. Yet.”

But when I looked over the balcony, I didn’t have the same stoic excitement as my assistant manager. In fact, I was mostly confused.

“Sup, Mr. Dekker.” Charlie Porterfield gave me a nod and half-wave.

“Charlie?”

“You know it.”

I didn’t expect to see him again, not since he and Ellie broke up in college. Memories of him regaling me with mindless stories of fraternity formals and Cancun spring breaks came roaring back.

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