“Sawyer, I’m not taking this.”
“The fuck you aren’t!” he growled, angrily.
“Sawyer—”
“You’ll take it, and we’ll make this place work if it kills us,” he said. “You can pay it back when you can. Or don’t pay it back — I really don’t care. Either way, we’re not losing The Refuge over some dumb legal bullshit, after all these years.” He cleared his throat and looked over my shoulder. “Now… beer me.”
Damn. This was going to be way harder than I thought.
“I can’t beer you.”
My statement didn’t register at first. For the first time since walking in, Sawyer looked around.
“Wait, where is everybody?”
“Not here,” I choked.
“I don’t see Sammy, I don’t see Gus…” his gaze shot frantically to the corner. “Holy shit, no Grizz?”
“No,” I sighed heavily. “No Grizz.”
Sawyer squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed them, as if maybe things would change when he opened them again. They didn’t.
“I can’t beer you, because we have no liquor license,” I said solemnly. “We’re completely shut down.”
Once more, my statement didn’t register. Or maybe Sawyer just refused to acknowledge it.
“Remember that meeting with the fire marshal I mentioned last week?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So plenty,” I frowned. “He showed up today, with a whole laundry list of things that need to be done around here. Most of it was shit you and I would never dream of. Hell, some of it I think he even made up.”
“Fuck,” swore Sawyer.
“Yeah,” I commiserated. “The guy was a total prick. But until everything is done, and inspected, he yanked the certificate of occupancy.”
It had all happened so fast, I really didn’t know what to make of it at first. After he left though, I started piecing things together. Nothing about the inspection seemed even remotely organic. The way he knew where to look for violations, even those I suspected he was stretching limits on, was highly suspect. Almost as if he’d drawn up the citations before he’d even gotten here.
“The liquor authority called within minutes,” I went on. “Yanked our license. Standard procedure, or so they told me. I can’t serve anyone.”
Sawyer circled behind the bar, pulled a bottle from the lower fridge, and popped the cap off. I watched him down half the beer, before looking back at me.
“There, you didn’t serve me. I served myself.”
I sighed like the whole world was on fire, which it was.
“Fine. Give me one of those, too.”
The bar was eerily silent, as we stood there downing our beers together. It looked so different empty. Without the hustle and bustle of people, and having to make sure everyone had a drink in their hand, I was able to appreciate the place for what it was. History lined every inch of The Refuge’s walls. My eyes flitted over all the old photographs and other various objects, most of them military themed, pinned to the walls by people long gone.
“So we have some things to fix,” said Sawyer. “Big deal.”
I smiled, appreciating my friend for who he was: a bouncing ball of eternal optimism.
“Even if we did, the inspections are going to take months,” I replied gloomily. “They want plumbing changes, electrical upgrades, gas pressure tests…”
Sawyer finished his beer. I finished mine, and got us two more of them.
