Sam looks around his apartment. It’s the size of a motel room, everything is pristine and in order like an exhibit in a museum, yet it reeks of residual secondhand smoke and cat litter from the previous tenant.
Sam notices the mustard-green wallpaper between the stained-glass window and refrigerator peeling and sighs, bowing his head for grace.
“Amen.”
He removes the plastic cover from the microwave dinner, grabs his fork and slowly pushes the nuked macaroni around the tray. The tenant above him starts blasting rock music.
“Come on, it’s a quarter past nine on a work night!”
He drops his fork and leaps from the kitchen table like porcupine quills are sticking out of his chair, snatches the microwave dinner like a grenade, and heaves it at the kitchen sink. The mac and cheese splatters everywhere.
Sam storms to the coat rack, grabs his cashmere coat, and a dark blue jumpsuit with janitor stitched on the front of it falls on the floor. He puts his coat on, pulls his keys out of the right pocket, and exits the apartment.
*
Sam meanders down the street counting the canopies on the trees, struggling to evade trash, cigarette butts, and gum. He encounters a man at the bus stop with gray hair pushing a shopping cart full of soda cans and gives him some spare change.
Sam then looks across the street and sees Gabi’s, the bar a few blocks from his apartment that he passes everyday walking to and from work. He jogs across the street, grabs the silver handle on the red door, opens it, and enters the bar.
It’s filthier than a trash can full of maggots. The floors feel like flypaper and honey. Smut is decorating the pinball machine. The dart board has more cracks in it than a pavement. The crowd looks like a band of mucky marauders.
Sam keeps his eyes forward, walks to the counter and sits on a stool. He tips side to side until planting his feet on the floor.
A bartender approaches him. She has long, dark hair, green eyes, and tattoo sleeves.
“Hey, stranger. What are you drinking?” Sam presses his hands together and blows on them a few times.
“I’ll have a beer. Open a tab for me, too.”
She winks at him, grabs a beer, removes the cap, and sets it on the counter. Sam picks it up, takes a sip, coughs, and covers his mouth. Gabi’s erupts into laughter.
“First time, huh? How old are you? You look pretty young even with the beard.”
Sam picks up his beer and chugs it.
He grimaces, “Twenty-five. I’ll have another one, please. Thank you.”
“I don’t think that’s a great idea.” Sam tosses a fifty-dollar bill on the counter.
“Okay, enjoy.”
Sam then drinks a brandy, gin and tonic, ouzo, rum, and vodka soda. He lines the empty glasses up like traffic cones.
“I’ll have a whisky now,” slurring and holding onto the counter.
“I think you’ve had enough, man. I should have cut you off after the first beer. How much more can you drink?” she says.
“Up until I pass out or when I spend the last three hundred dollars for my rent, whichever one comes first” he replies. Sam then slaps two hundred dollars on the counter. She collects it and slides him the whole bottle of whisky.
#
author bio:
Shamar English is originally from Santa Barbara, California, but he lives in Douglasville, Georgia. He has an Associate of Arts Degree in film from Georgia State University. He has pieces published in literallystories2014, Better than Starbucks, the writing disorder, the mystic blue review, eskimopie.net, not your mother’s breast milk, Susan/The Journal, Litro Magazine and Terror House Magazine.