Page 2 of Dirty Crown
There were a lot of small pubs and cafes as I got closer to the heart of the city, but none of them looked friendly to somebody like me.
It started to rain and the lights reflecting off the bright pavement were like a living watercolour painting. I felt like I was stepping into another world.
“Hey, fucking watch it,” a man snarled as I bumped into him accidentally.
“Sorry,” I replied and stepped wide to let him move past me on the sidewalk. As he kept going down the street, I thought of something. “Hey!” I called out.
He turned around, irritated. He was an older man wearing a wrinkled business suit and he was clutching a street map.
“What?” he barked in heavily accented English.
“How did you know I spoke English?” I asked.
“You’re obviously American,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “You can always just tell.”
“I’m having a bad day,” I replied. “I don’t usually look so crazy.”
“It’s not crazy, it’s the way you carry yourselves,” he said with smile. He shook his head and continued. “I’m sorry about your day, I hope it gets better.”
He kept walking away, and even though he was probably more than double my age and was dressed in such a shabby way, he’d shown me the smallest amount of kindness. I wanted to follow him. Call it daddy issues or simply needing a hand in the middle of my mental storm, but he offered a stability that I needed.
“Hey, wait up,” I said and jogged behind him until I caught up with his pace. “Where are you going?”
“To drink my cares away, if you must know,” he said, bristling at my intrusion. “This is another American trait. You all think you belong everywhere.”
“Where is there to drink around here?” I asked. I ignored his annoyance, maybe I was being relentlessly American, I didn’t care. I need a human connection and my brain had chosen him.
“There’s a small bar up there,” he said. “It’s not a bad place, one of the cleaner in this area.”
“Are you going there?” I asked.
“Yes,” he relied and kept walking.Then he took a deep breath and sighed so long I didn’t know if he remembered how to breathe. “I know I’m going to regret this, but do you want to join me?”
“Yes!” I said, a little too eager. “I need something to calm my nerves.”
I trotted with him as he sped up. He was my height but he was fast for an old guy.
We went a couple blocks and he turned into a darkened building that didn’t look like anything great from the outside. The inside was okay, and it was clearly somewhere to drink.
That’s all I wanted, something to ease my nerves.
He sat at the bar and I sat next to him. He cleared his throat and motioned for the bartender.
There were maybe fifteen or twenty tables and booths scattered around the dimly lit place and almost all of them were occupied by one or two people quietly sipping their drinks.
The man ordered his, a scotch, and I ordered a gin and tonic. I wasn’t even legal to drink in the US, but here it didn’t seem to matter. When my companion translated my order for me, the bar tender didn’t even break stride.
Once we got our drinks, the man beside me said, “Well, are you going to tell me why it’s a bad day?”
“It’s almost impossible to describe,” I said. “If I told you everything, you’d never believe me.”
“Try me,” he grunted and sipped his scotch. “I’ve seen some things, believe.”
“I was kidnapped,” I said and then shook my head. “No, this goes back farther. My father left me when I was a baby and my mom had to raise me on her own...”
With that, I launched into my life’s story, which was arguably one of the craziest things the man had ever heard even if he pretends like it wasn’t.
I didn’t tell him everything, I couldn’t. I didn’t tell him what kind of abuse Reg had committed on me, for one. I just let him think I shot Reg because of self defence.
