The Last of the Smoking Bartenders

by C. J. Howell

  Hey.

  Tom kept walking.

  Hey.

  The man said it again.

  Tom stopped, his head down.

  Let me look at that.

  What.

  Your arms man, they’re bleeding.

  Tom recognized the man as the first responder who’d pulled the woman from the car. The EMT cleaned and bandaged the cuts on his arms and wanted to take him to the hospital but Tom refused.

  Let me at least give you a ride home then.

  Tom looked at the parade of flashing lights and sirens on the dam and then looked down the road and at the surrounding desolate landscape and, appraising his chances of getting back to his campsite unnoticed as slim, he agreed.

  It was cool inside the truck and when the doors shut all the ambient noise of the desert and the road suddenly stopped like muting a loud television. The truck felt high off the ground and otherworldly in its silence as it took the long arcs of Highway 93 through the canyons to Las Vegas.

  I saw you, you know.

  What.

  Uh, with the rat.

  Oh.

  Tom shook his head and chuckled to himself. The man grinned and laughed a little and then the two men laughed together.

  I won’t ask.

  Don’t.

  It was near dark by the time the truck pulled up in front of the Las Vegas Rescue Mission. They listened to the truck engine idle for a few moments before Tom started to leave.

  You know, I’ve seen a lot of shit working this job, but that was some pretty fucking heroic shit you did up there.

  Tom said nothing. As he shut the door and started toward the shelter the man called him over to the driver’s side window. He pulled a hundred dollar bill out of his wallet.

  Won this last night at blackjack. Take it, please.

  Tom held it in his fingertips. He held it long after the truck had pulled away. It had been a long time since he’d last handled paper money. It felt different then he remembered it. The bill was crisper, sturdier, less like paper and more like some plastic fiber hybrid. He held it for a long time between his thumb and forefinger, trying to decide what to do. And then a gust of wind came and the bill fluttered loose and skipped down the sidewalk and across a vacant lot until it snagged on a chain link fence. Tom hesitated for a long moment and then went after it, but by the time he reached the fence it was no longer there. He returned to that spot many times over the coming days and weeks looking for the bill. But he never got it back.

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks to Eric Knight, Mike Walsh, Adam Bernard, Mark Bailen, and Noah Edelstein.Special thanks to Jon Bassoff and his crew at New Pulp Press. All my love to Monica, my consummate editor and best friend.