It looked like the kind of place where when you walk in, everybody turns and stares at you. Though it was on the main street of the town, that wasn’t saying much – it was all pretty out of the way here, which was how this place got away with looking like the dive it did. A red, white and blue flag hung over the top of the window and fluttered in the breeze, threatening to blow away and let a scourging ray of sunlight into the building.
There was an unfamiliar car in the parking lot, Heather noted as she pulled her jacket closer about herself. Well, less of a lot, more of a landing strip. The daytime crowd usually weren’t here this early. She glanced into the car. It was empty, the passenger side seat leant all the way back. It wasn’t a new car, but not a stylishly old one either – something early-2000s, she guessed by the lines of it.
“It isn’t locked,” said a voice beside her. She jumped. A man in a brown leather jacket was leaning against the trunk of the car. “I mean if you were planning to steal it. You’d still need the key to drive it, though.” He tossed the key to her, and she caught it out of the air. “Nice catch.”
She looked at the keys in her hand, and threw them back. “T-thanks,” she stuttered. “Who are you?”
The man’s eyes lit up. “I’m a customer!”

He had followed her into the bar that was so empty even the roaches hadn’t woken up yet and sat down. While she was cleaning the overnight spiderwebs off the bar and glasses she looked sideways at him, trying to get the measure of what he was here for.
He was on the short side, slim but not skinny. Little scars on his face and knuckles – a man who knew his way around a fight, but not too well. He didn’t wear them proudly though, not like a thug or one of Chief Blake’s beat cops (emphasis on “beat”). They were just part of the furniture.
He waved to her, smiling widely. “Hey, uh-”
“Heather,” she said.
“- Heather. You know what time the regulars start getting in?” He had a hand in his jacket pocket, the one facing away from her, and Heather froze for a second thinking of scenes from thriller movies she had downloaded on her laptop. This was just the kind of moment where the hitman puts a gun on the table.
His hand left his pocket and laid a metal tin on the table, which he extracted a deck of cards from, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
“I… They usually start showing up around one,” she said, glancing at the clock. She would normally have the place to herself for at least an hour to catch up on her podcasts. Instead she had this weirdo to babysit.

The gambler began to cut the cards. His hands were a blur, pausing only to pull a cigarette out of the bottom of the tin.
“You can’t smoke in here-” said Heather, and the gambler gave her a look. “Or whatever, you know…” She trailed off.
He lit a match off the table and touched it to the end of the cigarette, which flared orange. “You nervous about something?” he asked. His sidelong glance had the intensity of a blowtorch, briefly applied to the back of Heather’s neck. She looked down at the bar intently.
“No, I just- we don’t get many strangers out here. Not ones who stay more than a night,” she said quickly. “You want a drink?”
The man stood up. “Stranger, am I? Or just strange?” he laughed in a way that didn’t put Heather at ease one bit. “I’ll take a raincheck on that drink.” He ambled over to the bar. “Whatcha got on tap? Something local.”
Heather gave him a quick rundown of what they had, giving particular emphasis to an ale that was brewed by a small company two towns over that was owned by two brothers.
“What’s it called?” said the stranger.
“Two Brothers Ale,” Heather said. “One of them came over here to deliver the keg.”
“Nice boys?” the stranger said. Behind him, the door clattered as a big gorilla of a man with a startling red beard entered. He was followed by another man from the same basic mould, a little younger. The stranger turned. “These would be your regulars.”
Heather nodded and poured a couple of pints of Budweiser for the newcomers. “Hey, Tez,” she said as the giant accepted one in each meaty hand, the pint glasses looking like whiskey tumblers by comparison.
“You’ve saved my life,” said Tez gruffly. “Siddown, son.”
The gambler watched them. The family resemblance was undeniable. The younger even had the straggly beginnings of his own shock of a beard. A chip off the old block, or in the process of being fashioned into one anyway, the gambler thought bitterly.
Heather watched him get up and go back to his table. He cut the cards again one more time for safety and started to lay them out for solitaire.

Just before four, a cop came into the bar. Heather cursed under her breath. She had gone three or four days without a visit and she was starting to think they were leaving her alone. But of course they weren’t.
He came to the bar in a lurching swagger and looked around. He hadn’t taken his shades off, and a toothpick was clenched between his molars in a way that he thought made him look tough.
“Take those ray-bans off, Marion,” she said. “And don’t spit in here like last time.”
“Hey, shut your mouth,” said Marion, his voice cracking for a second. He paused to shovel a few fistfuls of gravel back into his throat and said: “You got it?” in a raspy stage whisper. It didn’t matter if anyone heard him anyway; they all knew about Blake’s little operation.
“Not yet,” Heather said through gritted teeth. She glanced over at the gambler, who had attracted a few stragglers for a friendly hand of hold ’em or two. “I’m only a month behind.”
“Yeah, but if we let you get a month behind, then you get two months behind. Then all the sudden everybody wants a month, and then soon enough we ain’t been paid for two months from anybody!”
“You get paid by the state,” said Heather. “That oughta be enough.”
“A lot of things oughta be,” Marion snarled. “Shoulda, woulda, coulda.”
“Oh, get out of here, Marion Britten,” said Heather, glancing over at the poker table. The gambler was giving her that sideways look again. She felt a strange need to act strong, to impress him. “Get out of here, before I throw you out.”
“You and what army?” said the cop, and he was so close now that she could smell his rotten breath and see the bits of bacon sandwich in his teeth. Ah, cannibalism.
The gambler was the first to stand up. He didn’t know the lie of the land out here, so that was to be expected. But to Heather’s surprise, after him came Tez. Tez nudged his boy, and then there were waves of them, ready to shove the jumped-up, sweaty, skinny kid with his tin badge out the door.
“I think the lady asked you to leave, boy,” said Tez. “Run home to mama, Marion!” added Tez Jr.
The cop backed off in response to the oncoming tide and rattled the door handle, not getting it open til the third try. “You call me Duke!” he shouted, his voice getting squeaky.
When he was gone there was a sigh of relief that seemed to come from the whole room as one. Not least of the participants was Heather. Then the gambler laughed and said “We sure showed him, didn’t we?” and everything was back-slapping hand-shaking good times. They had stood up, and the floor hadn’t opened up beneath them. There would be hell to pay later, but that was a worry for later. As it was, everyone was merrily buying each other drinks and congratulating and bragging about not backing down, forgetting that the person they were talking to had been right there beside them not backing down too.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said the gambler. Heather jumped. He had disappeared in the crowd for a moment, and now he was next to her.
“Impressive,” she said. “That was a neat trick. How’d you pull it?”
The gambler shrugged. “Blame my natural charisma,” he said, and disappeared back into the crowd.

She arrived bang on time at 9:45. The afternoon crowd had mostly filtered out, Tez and Jr heading home with one last slap on the shoulder for the gambler. She had on all black, and she had a look that had belonged to Marlene Dietrich previously, though she was too old for Hollywood now in her forties.
The gambler watched her sit down at the bar, gathered his small winnings and counted them out. He didn’t have enough yet for his tank of gas out of town, but he could spare the price of a drink.
He dealt himself out of the game and rolled the dice.