I do have a mind of my own. I just never used it when Chris was around. Ever since the third grade, whatever he got into, I got into, right along with him. So, when he told me he found a new bar for us to check out, I knew I would go.
I don't know how he did it. Utica is not that big and we've been going to bars since we were sixteen, but he kept finding new places. I would have been happy hanging out at Duke's with the rest of our friends, but Chris was looking for something--Better? Different? I don't know, I was just along for the ride.
He'd had his successes. The world's best chicken wings. A great foosball table. A joint owned by a musician whose friends would jam until dawn for free.
But we'd also been beaten up, robbed, shot at and, once, kissed by a three hundred pound guy in a body stocking.
The Warning Label didn't look like it was going to be one of his successes. Anemic blue neon implied rather than proclaimed the bar's existence. The windows were either tinted or just dirty. They were maginally less dark that those of the abandoned buildings on either side.
"I have a good feeling about this one, Earl," he told me, and I shuddered. I'd needed five stitches and a rabies shot the last time he had a good feeling about a place.
"Tell me again, Chris," I said. "Tell me why we risk our lives and our livers going to dives that sane people avoid."
"Because, somewhere, there is the perfect bar. Where the beer tastes as good as the beer in your imagination when you're hot and thirsty and miles and hours away from a drink. A place where you can drink and sing and dance on the tables if you want, or drink and cry and puke your guts out, if that's what you need. Where the music is always exactly what you wanted to hear. Where the lies you tell top the ones told before yours, and the ones after are even better, and you can't wait 'til it's your turn again so you can knock their socks off. And the bartender is whoever you need him to be; your best friend, your priest, your--"
"Okay. I get it. The same things we've been looking for for sixteen years. And you think this place could be that place?"
He paused at the door. "Maybe."
It was not immediately obvious we were on the threshold of Paradise. But, on the plus side, I felt no overpowering urge to flee blindly into the night, either. It was less dark inside than I had anticipated, but the light was yellowed, as if with age. The mahogany bar itself was impressive, almost the full length of the room. It was, I had to admit, ideal.
)
Somewhere, perhaps in Utica, is that perfect bar where the beer is without equal, the genders are kind to one another, and the dividing line between fantasy and reality may get moved around a bit.
