The man sat at the bar, downing ice-cold Budweiser. It was always Budweiser, although it was not always ice cold, that part depended upon how busy the Lucky Leprechaun was on any particular day and how often the bar's owner, Ted, was able to rotate the stock.
The man wasn't sure why he always ordered Budweiser, other than the fact that you could get it just about anywhere. Availability was an important consideration when you drank as much and as often as the man did. After all, he wasn't always going to be near the Lucky Leprechaun when he felt the compulsion to slam down a beer or twenty. The man felt the King of Beers was about as close to a sure thing as you were liable to get in this world, so he stuck with it whenever he could.
He did, however, try to do his drinking at the Lucky Leprechaun whenever possible. He knew the lay of the land, so to speak, and since his tiny one-room efficiency apartment was only half a block away, it was almost impossible to get lost, no matter how much he drank or how late at night he stumbled home. Also an important consideration.
Plus which, the man liked it here, at least as much as he was capable of liking anything anywhere anymore. The regulars all knew him, and Ted, the owner, wasn't averse to opening up early for the man if he happened to be there anyway, cleaning and stocking and whatnot.
Today was a pretty typical day for the man. He had slept late and woken up hung over. His morning had consisted of a breakfast of dry toast and black coffee with a thin coating of grounds settling to the bottom of the cup, then quiz shows and soap operas on television while waiting for the postman to get around to delivering his welfare check.
Three o'clock found the man glued to his usual barstool, drinking the usual ice-cold Budweiser and doing the usual pensive thinking. That was the major drawback to drinking - all the goddamned thinking that went along with it. Drinking and thinking. Sounded like a game show; one that he'd probably be pretty good at, come to think of it.
On the jukebox, Frank Sinatra serenaded the nearly-empty bar, bragging to anyone who would listen about doing it his way. The man made sure to bring extra money for the juke when he was going to be at the Lucky Leprechaun, and Sinatra was the man's artist of choice. Every day was the same for him, Bud and Sinatra; a natural combination as far as he was concerned.
It hadn't always been like this for the man. Once upon a time, a long time ago, the man had been a sober, law-abiding, nine-to-five regular guy. An actuary, actually. In fact, that was how he used to introduce himself at parties and corporate functions in his old life. "I'm Jim Robertson, insurance guy. An actuary, actually." This little exercise in witty wordplay would invariably earn Jim those polite chuckles total strangers reserved for other total strangers when an honest reaction would be considered inappropriate.
The man, Jim Robertson, had also had a family once upon a time: A wife, Elizabeth, not beautiful or ugly but stunningly average, and one chld - a daughter named Jenny. Jenny, once upon a time, had been the apple of her father's eye. She was bright, beautiful and athletic - incredibly, inexplicably, world-class athletic.
But all of this, of course, had been a long time ago and in a different life. Because more than twenty years ago, a lifetime ago, the incident that Jim Robertson had come to think of as "The Thing" had happened. Robertson knew it was stupid to compartmentalize a life-changing event with its own snappy title, like it was some Grade B horror movie or something, but it was the only way he had ever found to deal with it; that's all. Well, that and the Budweiser, of course.
Anyway, after "The Thing," Jim Robertson had simply ceased to exist. With astonishing quickness, Jim lost everything at once - job, money, family, self-respect - it all disappeared down a toilet flushed clean with Budweiser.
No longer an actuary, actually, Jim Robertson became simply the man who lived in a tiny one-room apartment on the questionable side of the tracks, the side he would never even have considered driving through in his previous incarnation, slowly drinking himself to death at the Lucky Leprechaun. He was alone, utterly and completely alone, unless of course you included Frank Sinatra in the equation, which Jim certainly did.
One thing that made the man's life just the tiniest bit bearable, the only thing if he was going to be honest with himself, was chatting up strangers who entered the Lucky Leprechaun and comparing miseries with them. The man had discovered long ago that just about everyone drinking at the time of day he drank had miseries of their own. Some of them even rivaled his.
Today the man had struck up a conversation with one such stranger. He was probably older than the man but looked younger. Years of constant drinking will age you, Jim Robertson could testify to that, but the bright side was that the more you drank the less you cared about things like how you looked, anyway.
This particular stranger had walked past the Leprechaun's entrance, pausing mometarily in front of the blinking neon four-leaf clover mounted in the middle of the big picture window that gave the drinkers a view of the world outside; a wolrd that was humming along just fine without them. The stranger appeared to hold a short debate with himself, finally winning the argument or perhaps losing it. He had then truned around and strutted into the tavern like he was the mayor or something.
Striking up a conversation was easy, since the only people in the whole place at this early hour were the stranger, the man who used to be Jim Robertson, and Ted. The man bought the stranger a beer and immediately began mining for miseries. He primed the pump by giving the man a quick rundown of his own fall from grace. He gave no specifics - he quite frankly didn't like talking about himself - just provided the stranger with a quick recap of the lowlights of his life, then waited for him to reciprocate. After all, he reasoned, it was only good bar etiquette that he give something back.
As it turned out, though, the stranger didn't feel he had any miseries to share. He had a good job, a beautiful wife, a happy family. A lot like the old Jim Robertson, in fact. The only reason he was even in this part of town, he said in a vaguely condescending tone of voice that was not lost on Jim, was because he had to travel to his good-for-nothing brother-in-law's apartment to collect some money the creep had owed him for months.
The man who used to be Jim Robertson was disappointed, to say the least. He had wasted a whole beer on this guy and gotten nothing in return. In the background of the bar, Sinatra continued to sing about doing things his way. "Come on," he said, "there must be something. What's the worst thing you've ever done?"
The stranger hesitated just the barest fraction of a second and the man knew he had him. Everyone had a misery or two, even the happiest of people; it was just a matter of getting them to share. Finally the stranger said, "Ah, what the hell. You want to know the worst thing I've ever done?"
The man who used to be Jim Robertson nodded, and the stranger said, "Okay, since you seem to find it so important, how's this grab you? I was driving home one day, must be close to twenty years ago now, and I had stopped for a few pops after work. You know, just to relax and unwind.
"Anyway, I come around a corner, it's not even that far from here in fact, I'm almost home for God's sake, I come around a corner and Wham! Some stupid chick's running along the side of the road, she's right there in the road, I had nowhere to go and I hit her! Sure, I was a little drunk and maybe driving too close to the shoulder - okay, I was on the shoulder - but good Christ I never saw her!
"So I stop the car to see if she's okay, but of course she's not okay, none of what's left of her is okay. She's dead, in fact, but but here's the unbelievable part, the part I have never been able to understand - no one is around! Not one single, solitary witness! So I do what anyone would do - I jump back in the car and finish the drive home, suddenly stone-cold sober. There was nothing I could do for that chick anyway, right?
"I'll tell you this, though, and it's amazing how it happens - you want to sober up fast, run someone over in your car. Works every time."
The stranger paused for a moment to take a pull on his beer. He saw the man who used to be Jim Robertson watching him steadily. Jim finally broke his gaze and glanced down at the scarred wooden table before taking a sip of his own beer, now almost empty. He waited for the stranger to continue.
"I know what you're thinking, I can see it in your eyes," the stranger said defensively. "I left her there; how could I just leave her there? But here's the thing, friend. She was dead, there was nothing I could do for her, not one goddamned thing. I still had a family to support. What would be the point of my life getting ruined too, you know?
"I found out later this stupid chick was some kind of a local hero, she was some Olympic gymnast or something. Won a silver medal, I think it was, but it's been so long I can't exactly remember for sure.
"I've never told anyone that story, not even my wife, not even when she saw the damage to the car and asked what the hell had happened. She still thinks I hit a deer. But you wanted to know the worst thing I ever did, so there you go." The stranger sat back, seemingly winded, or maybe just amazed that he had actually told someone his story after twenty long years. He took a long swallow and drained his mug, leaving a thin trace of foam running down the inside of the glass and pooling on the bottom.
The man who used to be Jim Robertson had listened without interrupting once. Now he shook his head in mute agreement that that had been one stupid chick. He bought the stranger another beer before abruptly leaving, apologizing but saying he was late for an urgent appointment. He reaized how ridiculous that sounded but didn't care.
The man hurriedly walked the six blocks to where he kept his car stored in a long-term parking garage. It was a 1984 Lincoln Town Car, a huge, gas-guzzling land-yacht, and it was the only thing the man had left from his former life. He turned the key and the big engine rumbled to life as he had known it would. He drove slowly and carefully out of the garage toward his destination. It would not do to get pulled over for DUI now, of all times. This truly was an urgent appointment.
When the man who used to be Jim Robertson reached his destination, he pulled neatly to the curb and waited. He hoped against hope he was not too late. The car sat idling patiently, its finish marred by the decades it had spent mostly sitting in storage. The once-gleaming black paint job now looked gray and pitted, but the engine ran like a Swiss watch, and that was all the mna cared about.
A few minutes later, the door to the Lucky Leprechaun opened and into the dwindling late-afternoon sunshine walked the stranger. Fast-food wrappers and other trash on the sidewalk swirled around the stranger's feet as the late-fall winds whipped and gusted. The stranger pulled his collar up against the cold.
The man who used to be Jim Robertson slammed the accelerator to the floor and the big car shot across the street to the sound of squealing tires and screaming witnesses.
The stranger never had a chance. Jim Robertson's big Lincoln hit him doing forty and drove him into the brick front wall of the Lucky Leprechaun like a nail gun shooting a spike through a sheet of cardboard. Thick black smoke poured from the car's engine. The stranger had disappeared, crushed to death somewhere amidst the wreckage of smashed brick wall, twisted automotive sheet metal, billowing smoke and gushing radiator fluid.
The police arrived at the scene just five minutes later, and when they did they found the man who used to be Jim Robertson, still sitting in the driver's seat of the Lincon, listening to music and waiting patiently for them. Frank Sinatra serenaded him from the car's tape deck and in his hands he held Jenny's 1984 Olympic silver medal. He turned it over and over in his hands as he hummed along with Frank.