Death of a Bartender

His girlfriend put the post online: a cigarette and clown makeup, his full beard and thin frame dominating the photograph. He wore a sequined jacket over a mesh tank and novelty necklace; the bubblegum pink plastic charm dangled from a silver chain, spelling out the word “Daddy” in oversized cursive.

I don’t hold any resentment towards my partner, she wrote. I’m just happy I got to know him for as long as I did.

I rode in his car once. We had been drinking since 10 that night, his jacket sparkling scarlet under the bar’s red accent lights as he poured me a double vodka cranberry, then another. His was a sticky sort of dive bar—the counters were caked with the ghosts of spilled drinks, the floors stained with dried spit and sweat and blood. He undercharged me, and overserved. We shot the shit for a while.

He locked up the bar at midnight; by then I’d drunk myself dizzy, my friend giggling alongside me as we slurred our way down the street. Where’s still open this time of night, we yelled after him. Tell us where the cool kids drink!

He pulled his banged-up sedan out of an alley, rolled his eyes. Told us to get in.

They displayed custom votive candles in the bar window, his crooked grin smiling from where the Catholics would paste images of saints. They became fixtures of my work commute, landmarks on my walk home from the gym. One time I paused at the sticker-plastered door, daring myself to look in; some new guy slouched behind the bar, pouring drinks for a couple of regulars. After that I kept to the other side of the street.

Months passed.

His girlfriend started promoting her artwork again—I watched her gradually repopulate her Instagram grid with tattooed swords and snakes and dragonflies, that photograph of a “Daddy” chain and face paint sliding further and further down the feed until I lost track of it entirely. Someone took down the candle display in the window. There’s only so long a bar can grieve.

That corner of the block still glows crimson during open hours, its revolving door of patrons still wandering in and stumbling out as if in some fiery dream. The light bulbs burn brightest late at night. Sometimes I swear they’re flickering.