A Small Gray Dot

He had a point, too. I likely wouldn’t have believed him. I would’ve been wondering if my friend was finally letting it all get to him and was falling over the edge. I would’ve gone anyway. But now I knew why he’d paid me more to make the delivery.

I was irritated, though. I had already promised to make another run for him in two weeks, but if he hadn’t been paying me another hundred and fifty bucks to go, I would’ve reneged.

Chapter Eighteen

HAVING LEARNED FROM MY FIRST GO ROUND, I got through my second trip to Blue Heaven without much trouble. There had been only one glitch.

Not at the guardhouse. Getting in was uneventful. I was delivering another brown envelope to the same place as before so directions weren’t necessary, and I knew not to ask any questions, not even the obvious one of why the hell they needed to ID me again when they knew who I was from the previous visit. I figured they were following orders and I didn’t need the suit coming out to tell me that.

The glitch came after I made the delivery and was making my exit. Trouble was, on the way back out I made one small misstep. I still wasn’t all the way convinced about “keep your mind on where you’re going and you won’t get lost” and for a moment I allowed my thoughts to wander, so, I got lost again. However, it was different from the first time.

I’d started back to the entrance and a chill breeze made me think of the boy I met two weeks before. I wondered how he was doing, if he still had the cap I gave him. I remembered the ragged jacket he was wearing and hoped he had something heavier for the winter. I snapped back to the present and found myself in front of a soot-smudged, frayed-around-the-edges little shop wedged between a couple of taller buildings. The taller buildings appeared to be unoccupied but the shop had an old neon sign in the window broadcasting the fact that it was a bar. I looked around. I was down one of those little side alleys I hadn’t ventured into before. I didn’t try to figure out how I got there.

The name of the bar was “The Hole in the Wall”. Kind of oddball but a lot more distinctive than the name of the one where I hung out in my neighborhood – “Bob’s”.

Annoyed with myself – and Blue Heaven for being such a pain in the ass – I stood there wondering if it was the same bar Adam had encountered. I was thirsty, so I went in.

The name was a good description of the place. It was small and the furnishing looked old and a little worse for the wear, but in contrast to its exterior, it was very clean. There was one booth up front and one in the back with three small tables in between. An old jukebox sat next to a pool table across from the back booth. As I’ve said, the place was small so there was only the one pool table. There was a rack of cue sticks displayed behind it and beyond that were two doors on the back wall. One, with a stylized placard showing male and female figures, was a unisex restroom. The door beside it displayed a dimly glowing red and white exit sign.

There was a man and a woman sitting at one of the little tables sipping drinks. The man, facing the door, looked up and nodded a greeting and the woman turned to look and gave me a friendly smile. That was surprising after the folk I’d seen the first time I was there. I nodded back. The only other person in the place was a man behind the counter whom I took to be the bartender.

It was around noon and the middle of the week so I was moderately surprised to see anyone there until I noticed it wasn’t strictly a bar. It also sold sandwiches, snacks, cigarettes, and magazines. I wondered if the jukebox worked but I didn’t plan to hang around long enough to find out. I slid onto one of the barstools at the counter and took a look at the menu, which included drink prices. After mentally going over my uncertain cash futures, I ordered water.

The bartender was not at all like the folk from whom I’d tried to get directions when I wandered off track the first time. With his bushy eyebrows and wire-rimmed glasses, he reminded me of my long ago late neighbor, Dave, though Dave had been taller and slimmer.

He was talkative and friendly and told me to call him “Joe”. A six-ounce glass of water went for anywhere between ten and fifteen dollars depending on where you were, and his was eleven but he only charged me five bucks. I think he took pity on me after seeing I was lost, and, he gave me the same advice as had the boy about how not to get in that state. Along with that, and what Adam said and the fact that it seemed to have worked the first time, I gave up my last doubt. I knew it was something I needed to retain in my sometimes-rambling mind in order to get back to the entrance.