It takes three people for a good game of cards, and it takes three drinks to really become yourself.
The bartender was short one of each. The bartender was also short (average), short-tempered (he preferred mean, like a mean cocktail), and short-lived. Sometimes that was a benefit: he never banged his head on The Looking Glass’s low-hanging, sparking neon lights. Other times, it was a curse: the obvious joke was stale the third time, infuriating the forty-seventh, and the mouths which said it were begging for knuckles. It didn’t even look cuckoo; The Looking Glass was a fake-red-leather, three-dead-TVs kind of place, not suitably hardcore to get the marching powders crowds but without enough screens to be a sports bar.
The bar was just short of empty on the darkest, longest night yet. Fernand was there, as much a fixture of The Looking Glass as the stains on the floor, somewhere short of eighty and the slowest dealer the bartender had ever known. As the night shift dripped away, it was a blessing to have Fernand working his way through a game on the leftmost stool. When their third regular negative-hour denizen appeared, they played cards; the red suit was late tonight, but at least that meant the place didn’t reek of sulfur yet. The bartender worked his jaw (surely there weren’t hard feelings about the little card trick he’d pulled last week). Red had seemed amused, even!
The door screamed open—jeez, he needed to slake that thing’s thirst—but it wasn’t Red. His eyebrow rose. Fernand muttered about The Wars.
The girl had dark red streaked across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose—an avant-garde performance art look, or, more likely, a shoddy dye job. The color in her hair was damp in some places and stiff in others, with patches of surviving black left behind. Like she took too long to dye, really dragged the process out. Her outfit looked intimately acquainted with a paper shredder, but who was he to judge punk rock fashion? He’d worn a mullet before it was cool!
She stood at the threshold, at the top of the stairs, all bones and tatters in the sparking light; she clutched a yellow glowstick in her left hand. Her head slowly turned one way and then the other like she’d forgotten what periphery was.
“Hit me, Fernand,” the bartender said, “I want to see my luck tonight.”
Glowstick first, the girl inched her way down the stairs (step, step, step). When she drudged to the bar, her head scraped the ceiling, but she didn’t duck until she slumped on a broken stool. She tried to speak—her shoulders rose as her lungs filled with life-giving air—but all she managed was a rough, scratchy cough. Post-rave refresher? That sounded like she’d been screaming for hours.
Fernand finished shuffling. The girl ran a finger down her throat, then pointed to the bottom of the list of specials on the wall. “A Bloody Mary?” Fernand dealt the first card face-up: the Queen of Diamonds.
The girl nodded, licked her lips.
“Can I see your ID?” She patted herself down like she didn’t know where her wallet was. Usually, he’d pretend to look at it, but wanted to check if he was on the money about the dye.
She handed the plastic card over. In the photo, and next to “Hair,” was black. Underneath both, a surprisingly recent DOB. “Uh…you sure this isn’t out of date? Says you’re underage.” She didn’t move, but her nails—wow were they chipped, like she’d dragged them over concrete—tapped at the countertop. Come on, girl, I gave you an easy out. Get your fake. “Maybe you accidentally swapped wallets with a friend. What’s your name?”
Another deep inhale, and this time a voice: raw and broken, like she’d been chewing glass. Raves! “Bloo…ma…I nee…irst.” The bartender didn’t think there was a way to get Blooma from Catherine Worth. “Drink,” she hacked out.
Fernand shakily drew the second card.
“Well, Blooma, this ID is a minor’s.” When she made no move to try again, he offered, “I could do a Virgin Bloody Mary.”
The card hit the table: another Queen—of Hearts, this time. What were the odds? Well, one in fifty-one. But red Queens back-to-back? The universe’s jest, to naturally get those cards now? His blood was starting to pump. Man, was his luck looking hot tonight? If it looked that good other nights he’d never have tried a fast one on Red. He turned back to Miss Worth, or Blooma, or whatever. “Is a Virgin alright, then?”
“…No. Hard. Mean. Real.”
Fernand fumbled the deck, cards spilling across the floor. He left his stool to recollect them. The Queens stared at the bartender.
“If it’s mean you want, I can do that without potato juice.” By the time Fernand finished his pick-up, a vivid, spiced red drink sat before the girl. She dipped her finger in, and for the first time, the bartender saw an inch-long shard of glass sticking out of her skin. As soon as the first drop touched her cracked lips, her other hand, still clutching the glowstick, spasmed. The drink shattered across the floor, staining it red, before the bartender registered its fall. He grabbed the girl by the collar, pulling her up so he could look into her eyes.
“Why the hell did—”
Fernand dealt the third card. The bartender saw his own reflection in eyes as dark as a locked bathroom with the lights off (one glowstick, one candle, the only light left in the world).
“—you waste my Bloody Mary?”
“Where’d you come from?” Fernand asked the air. The bartender registered this somewhere in the front of his brain (the deepest depths began to scream).
***
The bartender stirred himself a drink with a glowstick, this time with vodka. He took a long, appreciative sip. His throat was hoarse from all the screaming. Slowly, as if he hadn’t known a periphery in years, he turned his head from side to side, taking in the newly painted interior. The fake red leather had received a new dye job. Fernand, the fixture, was affixed to his seat. Catherine was slumped, motionless, on the bar, the sacred position of bar-dwellers after a rough night. Three red queens stared up from the countertop.
The bartender nodded. That man in the red suit had been right. It takes three drinks to really become yourself, and The Looking Glass is a great place to get a drink.
Writer | Mike Rosenthal ’27 | jrosenthal27@amherst.edu
Editor | Nico Martinez Nocito ’29 | nmartineznocito29@amherst.edu
Artist | Annika Liss ’29 | aliss29@amherst.edu