Return to Oakpin(11)

            “A man walks into a bar,” he said, pulling the door open. “No,” he said. “A lawyer walks into a bar.” The bartender was sorting a rack of thick glasses, nesting them in rows behind bar, and he glanced over as Mason entered, looking for the person he was talking to.

            “Just me,” Mason said.

            There was one other person in the place, an older man whose hair had been printed by the circle of a cap, but there was no cap on the bar. He was dressed in a blue oxford cloth shirt and khakis, and he watched Mason step up and sit two stools down at the bar.

            “A dumb fat lawyer walks into a bar.”

            “What’s that?” the bartender said. He was forty and thin-haired and pale. He was the owner. Mason could tell by the way he’d handled the glasses.

            “Just a draft of Fat Tire,” Mason said. “And a shot of whatever whiskey goes with it.”

            “They’ve all learned to go with it,” the barman said.

            “Any then.” Mason turned to the other patron. “You want any Any?” he asked. “I’m buying.”

            “I don’t know,” the man said.

            “Oh-oh,” Mason said feeling suddenly like arguing. He’d been floating all day since he’d dropped off the keys to his loft with Allison at the office, and now he wanted to argue. “A truth teller.”

            “Yeah, pour me one, Gene,” the man said.

            “How long have you had the place?” Mason asked Gene.

            “What’s your guess?”

            “I guess one year. The place is polished up, no dust on the shoulders of the bottles, even the old blue brandies, and optimism is in the air.”

            The man sitting at the bar turned, “And you’re a realtor or a professor.”

            “I was a lawyer,” Mason said.

            “I won’t ask,” the man said. When Mason held his glance, the man said, “I manage the little satellite TV store in Farview.”

            “That’s hardly bar-fight material,” Mason said.

            “Did you come in to fight?” Gene said. “Is that why you wore the sport coat?”

            “I don’t know. I don’t know how I started the day. But since we’re talking, I think I came in here to get hit.”

            The television representative shook his head. “You deserve to be hit?”

            “Certainly,” Mason said. “Should I provoke you?”

            “Oh, I’m provoked,”

            “Gene, your new bar is a powder keg.”

            “We haven’t had a fight in here since I bought the place.”

            “People don’t fight anymore,” the man down the bar said. “They swear and they shoot each other later, but they won’t fight. It’s too genuine.”

            Mason tossed back his whiskey. He lifted his beer. “You want to hit me?” he said to the man.

            “Let me just say it,” the man said. “I wouldn’t know how. I’d hurt myself, and I’m not provoked enough to want that.”

            Mason put a hundred-dollar bill on the bar and said, “Let’s have another. Gene, can I buy you a drink?”

            “Then you ask me to hit you? No thanks.”