Perry's Place

Before the hug clutches and the offspring and the cast iron homilies scattered across the front lawn. Before the heartache of crow’s feet and bad French wine. Before that momentary lust for her own teenage limbs, quick-witted and carelessly indifferent.

One thing is for certain: she needs a drink.

And just before the highway disappears into the scrub-bald mountains, she finds it. A strip mall’s asphalt, headlights gleaming a sandwich board: Perry’s Place.

Tucked in the corner between the donuts and the hairspray, a miracle of sorts in this land of milk and nearly-lost dreams.

Christmas lights kindle the Jager maker, Blondie on the jukebox, and back behind the bar the bulbs strobe a million Bud reminders. Each barstool a tear-stained promise, a temporary home.

You wanna buy a car? the ramshackle bartender wheezes, passing the crumbled newsprint her way. A Buick Riviera, 1966, year-of-her-birth. All fin and vinyl and clamshell curves, the come-hither headlights edging the fenders. A Rolls Royce in the fog.

She sure was pretty once, he breathes. And so she orders another round, the new year startled into silence.