I’ll be back
-Terminator
Will’s relaxed presence at The March was pissing Teddy
off. He couldn’t bear walking past
Will on his way to the bar, even though the two ignored each other entirely.
And it galled him to see Will fitting in so well at The March. No one seemed at all bothered by this
interloper who had infiltrated his bar.
And it was his bar. After all, he’d been sitting on his
barstool longer than any other regular.
Hell, he’d been coming to The March longer than most of the staff had
been alive. But they just welcomed
in his loathsome relative, who looked so at home leaning against the door or
carrying cases of beer to the bar.
He bantered easily with guests, flirted with waitresses, followed orders
from Caleb cordially. It was
intolerable. Teddy was betrayed.
And so he decided to betray The March. After 25 years of doing his
post-research drinking at The March, Teddy decided to take his business
elsewhere and began exercising his boozy post-mortems at Scottie’s, also an
L.G.E. joint and conveniently located right around the corner from The
March. It wasn’t quite the same
there. Teddy didn’t like it as
much. There was no quiet dark spot
at the far end of the bar.
Instead, Scottie’s had a large island bar right in the middle of the
room, with two top tables around its perimeter. No one had regular places to sit. Instead, people just sat wherever there was room, no matter
how many nights in a row they came in.
It was anarchistic. You never knew who you’d end up sitting next to.
Teddy hated that.
But he hated it less than walking past Will every
night. And eventually Teddy did manage
to sort out reasonably unobjectionable seating: a tiny table, situated between the basement and the cigarette
machine where he could sit, spread out his papers and not risk distasteful
barroom camaraderie from strangers.
It was unpleasant to sit there when intermittent smokers waged battle
with the machine, an ancient thing known to reject any bill more than three
turns outside the mint. But it was
better than sitting at the bar knowing that it would be only minutes before
someone would attempt to strike up banal conversation about that ridiculous
basketball team. Before too long,
Teddy became known to Scottie’s staff as “cigarette table guy.” Also for being unpleasant, cheap and
rude. But, seated at his isolated
table away from the horrifyingly intimate island bar, he wasn’t threatening
enough to be sent away.
Will was overjoyed to have forced Teddy out of his comfort zone. But more than that, Will was having
fun. He like school and he liked
working at The March. And he
especially liked not having The Future looming in front of him. It’s not that he’d abandoned the notion
of a future in politics; rather, he’d put planning for his future on temporary
hiatus and was looking only as far forward as midterms or his next shift at The
March. It was liberating and he’d have
been entirely comfortable if only he could exorcise a fervent desire to find
himself working one of those quiet weekday nights at The March with
Brooke. But, no matter how hard he
worked to keep his focus off Brooke, images of her bright eyes and beautiful
hair would spring unbidden into his mind.
Fortunately, Caleb was no dummy when it came to potential
drama and Will’s crush was obvious to all save Brooke. Caleb scheduled Will at the door on
weekend nights when Brooke and Gio were at the bar. Brooke was first cut that
night, and home long before the post-shift social that happened in the gray
morning hours. When Brooke was
working her waitress shifts, and the quiet, close atmosphere was more amenable
to cozy chats between wait and door staff, Caleb scheduled another doorman.
Brooke found that she enjoyed Teddy’s absence from The
March. He’d always been a bit of a
drain, especially where Will was concerned. It was nice to get to work and just be with March people; folks
generally pretty easy to get along with.
She preferred her weekend nights behind the bar to her
weekday shifts on the floor.
Bartending with Gio suited her.
He was garrulous and liked chatting up the clientele. Brooke, on the other hand, was the lightning
fast workhorse. She did all the
service bartending (mixing drinks for the waitstaff), washed all the dishes and
stocked most of the beer. Gio
chatted with the regulars, flirted with the ladies, exchanged good-natured
insults with the guys and made about 10 times the tips Brooke did, which were
split evenly between them. This
worked to everyone’s satisfaction.
Sometimes, though, John Farebrother or one of the other
regulars would ask Brooke about her recycling plan. If that topic came up, Gio knew he’d be the one pouring
pitchers for the waitresses and washing dishes. Once she started talking about her recycling program, it was
hard to shut Brooke up. Her
recycling program (and Brooke thought of it as hers) was going
gangbusters.
The March was one of the few bars around to sport both black
and blue garbage bins. The staff
was accustomed now to emptying ashtrays and tossing used cocktail napkins into
the black bin while throwing bottles and broken glassware into the blue
one. The March had adopted this
easy environmentalism without complaint.
It wasn’t much, Brooke knew. She hadn’t spent all this time with Teddy and ended up a
pie-eyed optimist. But she didn’t
embrace his fatalism. It didn’t
matter to her whether or not Teddy believed that his work could save the
world. It just mattered that he do
it, finish the book and launch it into the world. When it was out, Brooke was sure that people would embrace
its message and begin treating their world right. Or she was almost as sure as she had been, anyway. At least, she was used to being sure.
In the meantime, she could relish the feeling of forward
motion generated by the recycling program.
As an added benefit, those blue recycling bins represented a
nascent, cool environmentalism. This, along with the very trendy, very hot
weekend DJ-ing that Rosie was doing, meant that the hipness quotient at The
March had increased manifold. The
March, at least on weekends, was becoming something of a destination spot for
Chicago twenty-somethings.
This had not escaped Tré’s professional notice. It was time to kick off the rebrand
across the business and he approached Bulstrode about making The March the
inaugural store. In the plan he
presented to Bulstrode, he explained that The March was enjoying a nice uptick
in weekend business thanks to Rosie, but it still retained its hold on its
large core of regulars. If the
rebrand went smoothly (and why wouldn’t it?), it wouldn’t alienate the regulars
while increasing the attractiveness of the bar to new visitors. This would increase buy-in at other
bars. Bulstrode agreed.
Once it was all decided, Tré came into The March to help
Caleb plan for imminent construction.
“I don’t know,” said Caleb. “Why us? Our numbers are good,
people like the place. If it ain’t
broke, why fix it?”
“That’s not really how we see it,” said Tré. “We’re just bringing all the stores in
the company in line. The March
will be the flagship.”
Mary snorted from behind the bar. “Flagship my ass,” she said. “More like some bullshit yuppie fern bar.”
“Come on, Mary,” said Tré. “I’m not an idiot. And I like this place. We’re not going to ditch the
place. We’re just going to change
the sign, clean up the place, get some new uniforms, new barstools…”
“Uniforms!” said Mary.
“I’m not wearing a fucking uniform!”
“Cam down,” said Tré.
“It’s just a tee shirt. A
plain, simple black tee shirt that says L.G.E. over the right-breast
pocket. Wear it with jeans or
shorts or whatever. We’re not trying to turn this place into a Friendly’s”
“Tré,” said Caleb, carefully. “Of course we’ll do what you
tell us. You don’t have to
convince us, because we don’t actually have a choice. This place belongs to Bulstrode. But I just want to make sure you know that I’ve been running
this place for 15 years now with limited interference from corporate and I’d
prefer to return, post-rebrand, to that way of business.”
“The way I see it,” said Tré. “Is that once we’re done with our limited remodeling and
rebranding, we’ll be out of your hair and moved on to another joint.”
“Let’s hope so,” said Caleb, looking significantly at the
door. “But I’m not hopeful.”
Bulstrode was walking in, looking uptight and
irritable. He joined the three at
the bar, demanded a diet coke from Mary and dove right in.
“You guys ready for this,” said Bulstrode. “We’re kicking off soon.”
“Here we go,” thought Caleb, as he nodded grimly.
“Here we fucking go,” thought Mary, pouring the soda.
When Tré and Bulstrode walked out after the meeting, they
were both anxious and overwhelmed.
Bulstrode was being blackmailed and Tré was mired in debt. Both situations were bad – exhausting
and nerve-wracking. But Tré was 30
years younger than Bulstrode.
Despite it all, Tré had a little energy to spare. He hadn’t run out of hope.
Bulstrode couldn’t help but take notice. He wondered if Tré might not come in
handy at some point.
