Click on image to enlarge.

	Regular				Club
List Price:	$0.60				$0.51
You Pay:	$0.33				$0.28
You Save:	45%				53.33%

eBook Category: Dark Fantasy/Science Fiction
eBook Description: 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.

eBook Publisher: Clocktower Books and Far Sector SFFH (magazine), Published: Far Sector SFFH, 2003
Fictionwise Release Date: December 2002

20 Reader Ratings:

Great	Good	OK	Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [26 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [42 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [10 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [115 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [10 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [74 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [81 KB] , hiebook (KML) [52 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [59 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [8 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [11 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [46 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [18 KB]
Words: 3150
Reading time: 9-12 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

A first story is always exciting, because you might be in on the ground floor of the Next Big Thing. Paul E. Martens is fabulously evocative, if a bit dark for some tastes. Give this one a try, and keep your eyes peeled for more by him. -Robert J. Sawyer, Fictionwise Recommender

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.