My memory here sounds almost coherent, but don’t be fooled. Even at the moment of which I write, it is starting to break apart. The old man, for example, I can’t remember what he looked like. And in my memory I can’t feel my feet.

John Lennon is singing from the jukebox, imagine that. The old man is talking about life and loss in the way old men in cheap bars always talk about life and loss. I finish my drink and order another.

The door opens and I turn to it with the great false hope one holds in bars that the next person to step inside will be the person to change your life. And what I see then is a beautiful face, broad and strong with a blond ponytail bobbing behind it. The face still lives in my memory, the one thing I remember clear. She looks like she has just climbed off her motorcycle, black leather jacket, jeans, a cowpuncher’s bowlegged walk. The very sight of her gives me the urge to up and buy a Harley. She stops when she sees me, as if she had seen me before. And why wouldn’t she have? I am famous, in the way you get famous for a minute and a half when they plaster your face on local TV. I give her a creepy smile, she walks past me and sits at the bar on the other side of the old man.

I finish my drink and order another. I order one for the woman. And, to be polite, I order one for the old man, too.

“I loved my wife, yes I did,” the old man says. “Like a fat kid loves cake. We had all sorts of plans, enough plans to make a cherub weep. That was my first mistake.”

I lean forward and look beyond him to the blonde. “Hi,” I say.

“Thanks for the beer,” she says as she taps her bottle of Rolling Rock.

I raise my glass. “Cheers.”

“What’s that you’re drinking?”

“A Sea Breeze.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“I detect a note of scorn. I’m man enough to drink a prissy drink. Want to arm-wrestle?”