The first customer of the day walked in about ten minutes after I opened and ordered something cheap and hard in a nasal east-coast accent. He sat at the end of the bar and sipped it quietly while I futzed behind the bar; I’d gotten all the pre-opening crap done for once, and frankly I had been hoping to have that magical hour or two after opening when there weren’t any customers and I could get my homework done.
Fuck it, it wasn’t like the guy was needy. I whipped my backpack up onto the bar and pulled out the post-structuralist novel I was supposed to be enlightened by before Tuesday. I found it really difficult to read with distractions, but then I also found it really difficult to read this stuff without distractions, so really, it was a wash; and like I said, that one guy wasn’t being distracting.
The experience of that novel may help me later on with being able to understand the structural underpinnings of a postmodern society, but it set a surreal tone for the rest of the morning that made things just a little bit... well.
The guy at the end of the bar finished his drink and slammed the glass down on the bar; I jumped. I hate it when people do that, it’s like this I’m-a-badass flourish to finishing a glass of cheap booze, like it’s something they accomplished, rather than a sign that they might need to spend some time thinking about the underlying causes of their alcohol dependency.
Then he did something else that irritates me: he set money on the bar and walked out. Some people really like doing this; it says something about being a regular or able to do basic math or whatever. I didn’t know this guy; he was just another morning alcoholic to me, so the fact that he decided to skip the payment ritual just made me nervous that I was being stiffed.
I let the book flip closed, letting go of my fear that I’d never be able to find my place again because I had no idea what was going on anyway, and hurried down to have a look at the money.
Which was fake. It was some sort of bank-issued note: payable at something called the Fifth Hibernian Bank, valued at five of whatever currency it denominated; it had a picture of Mark Twain on it. It was red, for Christ’s sake.
“Hey,” I said, almost conversationally, and then, “Hey!” The door was just closing on the guy’s heels. I ducked under the bar flap and ran to the front door, wondering the whole time whether the price of a drink was worth a morning sprint. Hell, though, I’m a bartender; if I don’t collect money for the drinks, what the hell am I doing, anyhow?
I flung the door open and looked up and down the street. The guy was about halfway down the block, walking fast on the... moving... sidewalk...
