Random Whatnot

The peaks of the city jousted with the sky in a continuing battle recently elevated in intensity and bloodshed.

Filigreed neon squirmed like silkworms across the city’s architecture. The yellow smears of taxicabs plowed across the canyon roads, always filled with faces new and bored. A bag lady sang her song. A leather drenched tough rolled coins across his knuckles.

Through this he found himself, pinned by auto noise and subway tremor, impressed by the hubris of the giant steel phalli, disgusted and heartbroken by the teeming masses of the dispossessed and lost.

He stopped in a corner bar and ordered a drink. The bartender wore checkered felt and spat tobacco juice into an empty glass. He eyed Ethan through a squint.

“Beer,” said Ethan.

The bartender sneered. “Got a type of beer in mind?”

“Whatever’s cheapest.”

“Cheap beer’s the only kind we sell.”

Ethan shrugged. The bartender shrugged back, then poured him a glass, and placed it on the bar.

“Thanks.”

“Yeah, sure. Whatever.”

Across the room jukebox kids were dancing, caroming from one feverish embrace to another, never stopping, like pinballs lost in the night.

A few men, shrouded in denim, with cigarette packs rolled up in their sleeves, talked shit to one another from across the mossy baize of the pooltable.

Ethan ordered another drink. It filled his head like the warm embrace of the sun. He liked this beer. It tasted cleaner. His fingernails stopped picking at one another and rested quietly on the countertop.