NOTE:If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
I am standing in the new, ‘Patio Bar’, off the Quark Lounge, at the H Bar. It opened only a week ago. It is a narrow outdoor space with a bar opening from the back wall of the Quark lounge. Six small tables with umbrellas are arranged in a row against a fence draped with wisteria. We can hear a diesel engine on the other side, in the parking lot, and the intervening fence and leaves filter out the fumes.
They advertise six new drinks called: Strange, Charm, Up, Top, Down, and Bottom. Each is served in a glass of a different color, which match the six umbrellas.
Frank Vasari leans against the bar with his shaggy black graying hair combed straight back, slipping over his ears. He blinks from cigarette smoke rising less than an inch from his lip. His gut hangs over his belt stretching the buttonholes of his pink shirt. The bottoms of his black jeans gather around his worn loafers.
Daisy sits next to him at the bar half shaded by the awning. The shadow cuts across her left side leaving one sunlit shoulder of her black cotton sweater against her shaded face.
She looks closely at his glass. One long arm sweeps into the sunlight. Bracelets tumble in the gesture sparkling towards her wrist.
“What are you drinking, Frank?”
“It is called a, ‘Strange’.”
“What have you got Fred?”
“This is called, ‘Up’.”
“Are you getting high?”
“No Daisy, no effect yet.”
“Looks like it has scotch in it.”
“That may be the color of the glass.”
Daisy pushes her bracelets up from her wrist and looks at the house tablet in front of us on the bar and taps in, ‘Up’ under drinks.
“Says here, it is Drambuie, Johnny Walker Red, San Pellegrino water, and a lemon slice.”
Frank blinks through his smoke.
“Isn’t that called, ‘Rusty Nails’?”
The bartender looks up from the glass he is polishing.
“That’s right, ‘Up’, pops in and out of existence with Rusty Nails.”
Frank turns to him.
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“No, that was a figurative, ‘pop’.”
He swigs his, Strange.
“Oh, really, a kind of literary dual existence?”
“You got it, sir.”
Daisy holds her schooner up to the sun. The bartender disappears into the back.
“This is called, ‘Charm’.”
“What’s it doing for you?”
“Why Frank, it is adding to my glow!”
“Alcohol can do that!”
“Yes, it can make you sweat on a hot day, but not with charm, Fred.”
The bartender returns with a tray of glasses, and grinns at Daisy.
“Ma’am, you know what’s in that drink?”
“No, I just thought charm couldn’t be bad.”
“Shall I tell you?”
“Sure, spill it!”
“That is amaretto and sherry with a dash of simple syrup, and orange slices.”
“Simple syrup? I mean, what is simple about it?”
“It is sugar dissolved in water.”
Frank lights another Gitane and speaks with his fresh smoke.
“Yeah, my grandmother would have called that a, Sherry Cobbler.”
“She still could sir, a perfectly accurate name.”
“Another case of ‘popping’ and simultaneity, is it?”
“That’s right sir, you are sitting at the outside side service of the Quark Lounge bar.”
“Are you sure its pronounced, ‘Quark’ and not, Kwork?”
“Mr. Gell-Mann insists it is ‘Kwork’.”
“And who is he?”
“He was visiting professor of physics at Prestige U.”
“Aha, a particle guy, huh.”
“The word came to him with some help from Mr. Joyce.”
Frank blasts a long stream of smoke up above his head. It forms a brief thinning cloud up there before dispersing.
“Who is Mr. Joyce?”
“He made a guy called Finnigan famous by writing about his wake.”
Daisy interrupts with a swipe at her a loose lock of hair.
“Like after his death, or what?”
“Could also be what he left in his wake.”
“Oh, right, that book! I remember. It doesn’t make sense.”
“It makes too many senses.”
The bartender points out a plaque on the wall above his pay station. Daisy reads aloud:
“Three quarks for Muster Mark!
Sure he hasn’t got much of a bark
And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark.”
“So, Fred, what does it mean?”
“I think it is a spell.”
Frank squints through his smoke.
“Mojo, literary mojo, I would say.”
The bartender is putting up the glasses he just brought in.
“Mr. Hoffmann put that up before we opened.”
“Did he tell you what it means?”
“No Ma’am.”
“Are you telling me these two, Joyce and Gell-Mann, were customers here?”
“Not that I know of sir. We have only been open out here since April 7th.”
A woman walks over from the doorway, holding her drink and sits down under the yellow umbrella.
She is followed by a man carrying a beer. He wears his head shaven and sunglasses. His red SnazzE Super-Stretch tea shirt reveals his massive upper arms.
“Where’s your lemon, Fred?”
“I took it out.”
Frank has burnt his cigarette down to his lip again and gets up to throw the butt into a red receptacle shaped like a fire extinguisher, with an oval opening in the curving top.
He walks back to the bar and takes a long draft of his, ‘strange’.
“Nothing strange about it, really.”
“It is the only one served in clear glass.”
“Yup, you can see right through it.”
“That pint should put you away!”
“Daisy, I am imagining it’s vodka.”
“So, what’s in it?”
“Looks like water and tastes like it too.”
“I guess that is a strange thing to drink in a bar!”
“A medical tyrant has told me to stay off the sauce for good.”
“There is a fine selection of herbal alternatives over at, “Legal Drugs”.
“That means getting lost in DC, Daisy.”
“We have a store right here.”
“They can’t sell herb and still be legal in Virginia.”
“Just tap the DC address into your phone’s app.”
“I have never been able to get an app. to work.”
“Why not?”
“Passwords for one thing.
How the hell am I supposed to remember them?”
“Just use some term like, ‘Damar Varnish’ and stick a number in there.”
“Already used that for my PC.”
“Well, use it again with a different symbol.”
“No, I’ll ask one of my ‘herbalist’ students to help me.”
“Is he a dealer?”
“No, but she has modeled for me at that evening class we did back before Covid knocked out of the Art Center.”
“Yeah, I think I know who you mean.”
“She carries about five bags draped from her neck and shoulders.”
“Yeah, on strings and tapes, and bags in all different patterns.”
“Right, very colorful.”
“She has a nice paisley robe too.”
“It’s a good subject, drawing all those paisleys to describe the folds.”
“One of my students got a nice late Matisse out of that approach.”
“How did the student like it?”
“He wasn’t thrilled.”
“Yeah, a lot of good work goes unseen in the studio class.”
“I know, those unrecognized achievements drive me crazy.”
“How’s your gig at the Art store going?”
“I am losing customers since covid died down.”
“It is all computer stuff, right?”
“Yeah, on Zoom using various design programs, but we draw too.”
“Are you going to teach our Tuesday and Thursday classes this semester?”
“Well sure, but it’s a bit late to start now, isn’t it Frank?”
“We can fix that, if you start next Tuesday.”
Gusting wind blows dust and dead leaves over the fence. The yellow umbrella tips over.
A bright flash fills the sudden deluge, immediately followed by thunder. Daisy is pointing into the trees.
“Look at those branches burning in the rain.”
“It’s become a torch.”
“Those flaming branches are falling in the parking lot.”
“Is your car out there, Frank?”
“No, it’s around the other side, too bad.”
“What?”
“Too bad, that old wreck needs replacing, and a little insurance would help.”
“Good to be under the canvas here.”
A waiter stands by the door,
“Come on in folks, this area is closed.”
The man with huge arms helps his date out from under the fallen umbrella. Her purple SnazzE Milano Silk blouse, balloons in the swirling air.
The bartender pulls down a shutter across the length of his service area.
“Daisy turns around in front of me after getting inside.
“Where are they?”
“Who?”
“Those two sitting under the yellow umbrella, Fred?”
Frank blows a last puff of smoke out of the door before dropping his cigarette, extinguishing it with his next step and following.
“They must have, ‘popped’ out of existence…”
