Stuffed air snapped against Bryson's skin in a manner akin to a soccer ball shot out of a cannon as he entered McUrich's Pub on a damp Friday evening through the hefty wooden door. For an instant, he dragged the pouring rain in with him. His clothes dripped silently on the floor as the atmosphere overtook any of his subtlety. The sound of the door smashing against the doorjam securely was obscured almost completely. He could feel the starch and moisture vacuumed from his body, urged to dance with the mists of the other bodies inside with the curling wafts of cigarette smoke.
In the far corner, Bryson observed a group of men disassembling their stage gear. Dressed in aged flannel, deep black Guess jeans ripped at the knees and wallets chained to their belt loops, they began to take down the banner behind them - it read in lazily-sketched spraypaint: “Yet Another Pearl Jam Cover Band.” Through the shouts of the crowd, he could hear the jukebox droning Evenflow, which indicated to him that he must have missed the performance of the worst Pearl Jam cover band ever. The patrons had not adjusted their voices to the absence of the band's performance, as they continued to speak at powerful levels. It was clear to Bryson that the crowd was there for the service, not the show.
He waded his way slowly through the folks standing idly in his path to the lone empty stool near the opposite end of the bar. Elbows cut into his frame, slapping snugly against his brown cotton hoodie, while purses and dangling hands brushed against the pockets of his khaki pants. Bryson stopped on occasion to usher someone past him, hoping the courtesy would buy him enough karma to silently reserve the stool before anyone else could claim it.
One last pedestrian to go before touchdown, he watched a portly man waddle past his line of sight. As he passed, the stool's occupancy changed from vacant to grossly not vacant. Indeed, a woman had entered the fray and taken the place of the void. Atop her head was a frayed, nested waterfall of filth brown hair that billowed from her scalp, stopping to rest at what could be assumed was her equator. With a raspy bark, she called to any bartender that would listen to her pleas for what would appear to be her umpteenth drink of the night. Her northern hemisphere was bedazzled in sequined flowers in all sorts of distracting colors, whilst her southern was skirted with a demonstrably dark curtain that did a poor job of masking the milky white seas above the knees. Bryson only gazed briefly at her skirt as it was once near what would have been his home for the evening.
The man sitting on the right beside the dwarf planet quickly left his post, wisely fearing gravitational pull and likely blast radius. Seeking an opportunity to rest his sneakers, Bryson took confident steps toward the open stool and mounted speedily. For all the support it gave, the “cushion” under his rear might as well have been made of the cardboard street urchins use for beauty sleep. Directly in front of him was a short wall that housed the ale taps, which would likely mean awkward reaching for any crew behind the bar. Sitting to his right was a burly hoss with a beer-soaked mane, his leather jacket unzipped to expose a dark shirt with white letters that appeared to read “UNF.”
Bryson turned his back to take in the scene for only a moment before he heard a call to him from behind the bar: Bryson spun back and met eyes with the bartender, a short-statured man of skin and bone who looked to have seen at least one war with his own eyes. The bartender thoroughly wrung his hands inside the towel that was draped over his shoulder.
“Can I get an AMF?” Bryson asked.
“Wha's 'at?” The bartender blinked measurably as he continued to wring his hands.
Bryson repeated the order. He had been to places before that did not need that spelled out, which confused him.
“Ahh! You're lookin' for some Windex! Why didn't you just say so? I've got some Windex for you behind the counta'. Jus' hang on.” The bartender started gathering the ingredients while Bryson looked on around him.
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To be continued...
(Pulse Rifle note: I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this right now, but it was an idea that kicked into my head that I wanted to get down.)
