The driver checked the traffic, now sparse because of the snow and the weekday afternoon, and smoothly and wordlessly executed a U-turn.
They headed north.
Robert surprised him, laying his hand on top of Jasper’s.Good Lord, is he putting the moves on me?Jasper pretended to cough so he could move his own hand discreetly away. It wasn’t that he minded Robert’s touch, but it seemed somehow wrong in light of where they’d just come from.
“So where are you taking me? I love the name, by the way. I assume I can get a scotch there?”
Jasper nodded, although he’d never had scotch in his life. “It’s a little neighborhood place around the corner from where Lacy and I live. Lived.” Jasper looked out the window to hide the tears that sprung to his eyes.
“Where everybody knows your name?”
“Something like that.” Jasper got the reference to the old sitcomCheers, but it was also true. He and Lacy had started many a pub crawl at Wishful Drinking and had wound up many a night there, too, on the opposite end of an outing. It was a simple long room with scuffed hardwood floors, an ancient and massive mahogany bar with a brass footrail, a few stools, and a cluster of about a half dozen small table-and-chair sets. At one end of the bar was a statue of David. People decorated him for holidays with feather boas, rainbow flags, tinsel, Easter bonnets, and the like.
The snow was really coming down, almost white-out conditions. Jasper was glad they didn’t have to travel far and that it was nearly a straight shot. His concern over bringing Robert to a gay bar had vanished the moment the older man had laid his hand atop Jasper’s.
He wondered why Lacy had never told him about her gay uncle, or “guncle,” as the parlance these days sometimes dictated. It seemed like something that should have come up in conversation. “I have an uncle who’s a big old ’mo, just like you!” she might have said early on in their acquaintance. And maybe she had and Jasper had just forgotten.
They pulled up in front of the bar.
“This is it?” Robert sounded disappointed, peering out at the little bar halfway up Jarvis Avenue and located on the ground floor of an old white-brick apartment building. There was a simple metal door and a black window, above which hung a pink neon sign reading Wishful Drinking. The neon stood out in an almost eerie way against the snow.
“This is it. Hope you weren’t expecting more. I thought it would be quiet. Lacy and I used to come here a lot. Maybe it’s more fitting that I remember her here instead of at that funeral parlor, where they’d made her into someone she wasn’t.”
Robert eyed him. “They did?” He seemed surprised.
Jasper turned a little to him. “You really didn’t know her, did you?”
Robert shook his head a little, the movement almost imperceptible. He said quietly, “No. And now I really regret it.” He stared out the window for a moment or two longer, and Jasper knew he was no longer looking at the bar. “We should get out.” He leaned forward, his hand on the top of the front seat. “Thank you,” he said to the driver.
“Watch your step getting out of the car,” the driver said. “Stay warm.”
“We’ll try our best,” Robert said.
Jasper followed him out of the car.
Once on the sidewalk, Robert crossed his arms over his chest as the wind whipped up, almost a scream off the lake a few blocks to the east. “Jesus!”
“I know, right? Let’s get inside.” Jasper didn’t wait but headed for the heavy gray metal door. He pushed it open, certain Robert was right behind him.
The first thing he saw in the dimly lit bar was Lacy herself, seated at a small round table near the back. She was under a framed poster they used to laugh about that proclaimed It’s Our Pleasure to Disgust You. She wore black, of course, but Jasper noticed she’d donned lace gloves, too, something she rarely pulled out of her closet. She peered at herself in a compact she held open in her hand. Her eyes, for just a moment, drifted up and met Jasper’s. He took a step back. Jasper recalled he’d been with her when she’d found the gloves at a thrift store in the Ravenswood neighborhood.
He turned to see if Robert saw what he was seeing, but he was eyeing the collection of bottles behind the bar, arranged in front of a large gilt-framed mirror.
When he turned back, Lacy was no longer there. In fact, at this hour of the afternoon, they had the bar to themselves.
Of course Lacy had never been there, neither her nor her ghost. Perhaps an old memory had simply materialized for a moment, raising its head as Lacy’s energy floated about the room. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking.
Jasper decided against saying anything about what he’d seen, or thought he’d seen.
Robert put a hand on Jasper’s shoulder and squeezed. “What can I get you?”
Jasper closed his eyes for a moment, smiling. “A cosmopolitan, please.” He knew Lacy would approve. It was their signature drink—kind of a tip of the hat to theSex and the Citygals.
“Coming right up.” Robert moved toward the waiting bartender, a fiftysomething woman with buzzed salt-and-pepper hair and blocky black-framed glasses. She had a copy of the arts section of theChicago Tribunespread out on the counter before her. Candles flickered on the bar, but they didn’t hide the smell of her cigarette.
THEY’D EACHhad three drinks. Robert had Johnnie Walker Blue Label, neat. He’d insisted on buying each round, and Jasper didn’t object, especially when he learned the cost for Robert’s shot was fifty bucks a pop. The thought of spending fifty dollars on a shot ofanythingmade Jasper’s head swim, yet Robert didn’t seem fazed. Besides, that twenty in Jasper’s wallet needed to last him until Friday. Jasper had tried to get Robert to drink at least one cosmo, in Lacy’s memory, but Robert said he “never mixed.”
Emboldened by the liquor now flowing in his veins, Jasper asked Robert, “So tell me why you hadn’t seen your niece in so long.”
