Closing Time

It was closing time at the One Lucky--A Saturday--

...melodies of memory always played past 3a.m.

 

'Beer Mugs' Moran cleaned the ashtrays, the bartender's apron covered in streaks of beer and ash. The last of two bar stool drunks competed over the same old songs.

 

The man in a worn blue overcoat drank the last of his beer and would always say--"Billy Joel's Piano Man, saddest song ever, my friend."

The man in the black overcoat drank the last of the tonic and gin and replied-- "No, Harry Chapin's Taxi, was much sadder. Two old lovers meeting in a taxi years later. He the driver. She the fare. They never lived their dreams." 

The man in the blue overcoat, shook his head: "Nope, still the Piano Man. Nothing sadder than a bar filled with loneliness." 

 

Beer Mugs Moran switched the lights on and off. The two men took the cue and shuffled out of the bar nearly falling over each other, like wavy glasses of beer.

 

No matter the season, no matter the summer month or winter storm, it always snowed at closing time. The snow always changing to rain as cold as a San Francisco night. In the cold rain the argument escalates as usual over the two old songs from when they were young.

 

The man in the black overcoat pushes his One Lucky friend to the sidewalk. He yells "Taxi". Sue the cab driver waits for his call and picks up her 3am Saturday fare. They drive off, leaving the other man behind. And the man in the black tells Sue again, drive around the block and we'll pick up my friend.

The taxi driver knows to drive slowly, to give time for the sidewalk man to stand up and wave for her as she rounds the corner in the rain. The taxi stops, he gets in the back seat.

"Take me home, " He said, his speech slurred but his line well practised like the actor he wanted to be.

 

The taxi drives only a hundred feet. The man in the blue overcoat, leaves and walks towards his old apartment, above a 7  Eleven.

 

Sue knows her lines: "Years ago, that store used to be a piano bar where he would play." She presses down on the gas and drives the last of her fare another hundred feet.

 

The fare was only $2.50. The man gives Sue a twenty, and tells her to keep the change. He leaves the taxi and holds up his drunken arms like wings on a plane, and one more time wishes he once could have touched the sky.