Louis Stawski looked down listlessly into his beer and sighed at the bar counter. He took one final swig from his fourth bottle and propped himself up with his free hand, laying the bottle to rest bottom up with the other dead ones. He could cut through all that green glass as easy as a woodcutter among green elms.
"Another one, barkeep," he called, raising his hand.
"Come on. I think that's enough, don't you?"
Lou moved closer to him, inches away from his face. "Like shit!" he snarled.
"Now, if I remember correctly, you didn't even pay for last week's tab!" the barkeep said, rolling up his shirt sleeves.
Lou waved him off casually and stood up, dusting himself down. "To hell with you! I'm going for a piss."
He sauntered into the crapper and stood inside a cubicle with no door attached to the hinges and was greeted by himself once he'd managed to wrestle his cock free from his pants. He breathed in, then out. Lou was a man of sixty-four with greying reddish hair pasted to an almost Nubian skull and wrinkles wrought into his face by a combination of many years' worth of hard living and age. He stared down and poked around at his beer paunch before leaving.
Approaching his usual seat, he found that a woman had taken the one adjacent. She was a cute but tired looking little thing. Young, wiry, redhead, upturned nose, cracked lips...
"Hey, who are you?" Lou spoke up, edging closer to her.
"Uh, oh...umm...my name isβ" she began.
"You got a hairball stuck in your throat or something, kid?" he said. "Spit it out."
"I'm Mia!" the girl blurted out, a hint of uncertainty in her voice.
"That's better," Lou said. "Why don't we get outta here? My place is just up the street."
Mia, unsure about going with a stranger, considered the possibility for a moment. He'd been nice enough to her, if gruff. She shrugged her shoulders and said, "Sure!" They edged around to the back door and snuck out, closing the door quietly behind them so as not to alert the barkeep.
"You know, I didn't get your name," Mia said on the way there.
"Louis Stawski. Let's get in." They hurriedly made their way upstairs, quiet enough not to wake anyone or cause a disturbance. "Take the lead," Lou stood aside to let Mia enter. She looked around at some 2-week-old newspapers strewn across the floor and began to wonder if she made the right decision going with him after all. Not to mention the green bottles piled up in a cardboard box by the table.