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No, I didn’t know Trevor all that well, but, you know, I saw him around. He was kind of a townie, Trevor. We both liked that bar on 27th, Pete’s, you remember, the one with the giant rooster out front? Cheeseball of a place, farm themed or something, but good beer and the music was never too loud. This was way back in, oh, must have been ’07, ’08. Well, hang on, Pete’s closed down in, what, ’09? Yeah, ’09, just after that scandal with the mayor, you remember that? Should’ve been locked up for life, the scumbag. Like anyone believes drinking made him do those things. Makes me sick, that poor little girl. Anyway, Pete’s, this was maybe a couple weeks before it shut down. I remember reading about it in the paper, bankruptcy or something, but I’m telling you, I think it was Trevor. How could it go belly-up when so many of us were spending our paychecks there? This was peak recession, a shit time for all of us, I’d had to get a contract gig working on highway repairs upstate. Ended up being a good job, but you know, at the time I was real bitter about it, the way Delaney’s let me go with no notice. Trevor and the bartender, real cool guy, Jake was his name, I remember because my cousin’s a Jake and they both had beer bellies and wore baseball caps no matter the weather, even inside. My cousin, I think he wore the caps because he’d gone bald early, was real self-conscious about it. The bartender, I think he was just real into baseball, always had it on the TV when I got to the bar early. Anyway, Jake didn’t take shit from customers, he was kind of a rough-and-tough sort of guy, you know what I mean? You didn’t mess with him, but as long as you were cool, he was cool too. I liked him, and like I said, the drinks were good. Anyway so Trevor comes in one night, must’ve been round about two, 2:30, seeing as how the other bars all close right at two. At least they did back in those days, I’m not much for a drink anymore, I’ll be 11 years sober come October. But Pete’s, I don’t know why it was called Pete’s, far as I know the owner was a Mike, but Pete’s was open ’til three most nights, they must’ve had some special license, I think Mike’s brother was in politics or something. Trevor stumbles in that night already hammered, so he must’ve come from nearby, probably that sports bar on the corner, it’s still there, too damn loud to get good and comfortable drunk if you ask me, not that I touch the stuff anymore, one day at a time, but anyway he looks like he’s already been in a fight, hair all mussed and clothes kind of rumpled, not hanging quite right on him, you know what I mean? Like he’d put his shirt on crooked or something. I remember it clear as day, the way he walked in, and me and Jerry, you know Jerry, good guy, still works down at the Jiffy Lube over on 6th, though I never did get why you’d pay someone else to change your oil, me and Jerry kind of elbow each other and start razzing Trevor, Hey Trev, what you get up to this time? but Trevor, man, he’s not having it, shoots us the stink eye, sits way on the other side of the bar. Okay fine, whatever, we’re each a few beers in and don’t much care, and if it weren’t for what happened with him and Jake, that’s the bartender, not my cousin, I probably wouldn’t even remember it. But then, I don’t know, ten, 20 minutes later, the place goes real quiet and we look over the other end of the bar and Trevor, man, I swear to god, he’s leaning over the bar and has his hands wrapped around Jake’s throat. He’s full-on throttling the guy, and he’s screaming some shit about his girl, and at first we think he’s making a joke, I don’t know what, but he’s being serious, and Jake, man, he’s grabbing at Trevor’s hands and trying to pull them off, but it’s not working. Trevor’s amped up on something and has a grip, a real grip, on him, and when Jake tries to back up, Trevor gets pulled along with him. Trevor just slithers over the bar like it’s nothing, there’s glasses crashing down, beer splashing all over everyone’s shoes, and he doesn’t give a shit, man, not one shit, and then they’re both behind the bar and Trevor’s still got his hands wrapped around Jake’s neck. Me and Jerry and a couple guys start pulling him off Jake, throwing punches, shit is wild, man, like something out of a movie, and it probably only lasts five or ten seconds but holy shit, it feels like we’re some kind of goddamned heroes. Anyway, when Jake recovers he’s spitting furious, now it’s all we can do to keep the two of them apart, and Jake is shouting he’s not even sorry, Trevor had this coming, no-good piece-of-shit cokehead that he is, and Jerry and me, man, we’re like what the fuck is going on here? These two got history or something? Never pegged Trevor as going for that kind of stuff, but what do I know, I only know him as a townie like me, regular kind of guy, head down, you know what I mean, and he had one of these tokens too, though I guess only for a couple months before he fell off the wagon. We hauled Trevor out onto the street, but he’d already knocked down half the bottles behind the bar, and yeah, I mean, I guess that must’ve come out of Jake’s pay for the night or something. But anyway, I heard Trevor skipped town the next day, left his girl and his kid, made a big scene, a real shit show. Jake wouldn’t talk about it, and then Pete’s closed down just a couple weeks later, like I said. I don’t know if Trevor’d done more damage than I realized, but I’m telling you, it seemed like there was more to it. Shit going on underneath the surface, you know? Like an iceberg. You remember that movie? I must’ve seen it three times back when it was still playing over at the Loews across town, I guess it’s something else now, AMC maybe. You show me someone who didn’t tear up at that movie and I’ll show you a liar, I swear to god. Damn. SOS. That’s what they should’ve done, told us they were in trouble, maybe we could have helped out. Jake ran the place, like I said, but he wasn’t the owner, so I don’t know. Just seemed fishy, the timing. Haven’t touched a drink since. Figured if it could happen to Trevor, it could happen to me, sure as shit. I guess I kind of forgot about the whole thing until you brought it up. Some good memories there, though, and damn if those beers didn’t always hit the spot. Shit, man. Trevor dead. You think it was suicide or what? I never thought.
About Jennifer London
Jennifer London received her MFA in Fiction Writing at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her fiction has been published or is forthcoming in X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Slippery Elm, Spank the Carp, Red Coyote, Postcard Poems and Prose, and elsewhere. Links to her work can be found online at http://jenniferlondon.net.
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