Bar Stories (standard:mystery, 587 words)
Author: Anonymous	Added: Mar 17 2013	Views/Reads: 4020/2	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A man and a woman are meeting in a shady bar to discuss a problem they have that one of them thinks is only known by the two of them.

Shane walked to the back of the bar and found the door opened to an
alley littered with the garbage of the bar and the restaurant beside 
it, the one whose neon sign had two lights blown out. 

“Sally, we should leave through this door if the man I told you about
comes in.” 

“We can't”. 

“Why?” He seemed agitated, and unused to disagreement. 

“The alley has no exit, except for a locked chained linked fence, and
besides, we have nothing to be afraid of.” She says, rubbing his 
shoulders soothingly. 

The bar was crowded, and despite smokers hanging outside, the air seemed
thick, or viscous, with something that felt like dewdrops suspended: 
they almost could not breathe. Yet they felt warm within the crowd, and 
the frigid air outside was an incentive to stay put, at least for 
awhile. 

Sally and Shane ordered two beers, and nursed them for twenty minutes
before they started to discuss the real reason they were meeting 
tonight, on such a cold night in a seedy part of town. 

“The money is with my cousin, actually distant cousin; he will bring it
to my apartment tomorrow night, just as the sun sets.” Shane wiped the 
moisture that had left a mark on the counter. Sally swallowed the last 
drops of her beer. She ordered another; Shane was still taking shallow 
sips of his. 

“Okay, then. Put the money in a laundry sack surrounded by linen and
bring it to the laundry mat across the street from my apartment. I will 
meet you there at nine. It will still be quiet at that hour. We won't 
be seen.” 

“Okay.” 

“I will pay the woman who has helped others with this money, and the
problems we have been having will go away. She never speaks of such 
matters to others, and her word is good.” Sally was finished with her 
second beer, and tying her scarf tightly around her pale neck and 
tucking the woolen red and blue scarf into her brown jacket. She took a 
deep breath and declared the matter settled. She did not see the man 
with the knit black cap, pulled so low over his face one could not see 
his eyes, a scarf wrapped around his mouth, come in and approach the 
bar. 

“One vodka and tonic, please”. 

Shane immediately recognized the voice and became afraid. He whispered
to Sally about this man, and she frowned deeply, only to smile abruptly 
when she saw Shane's fear. 

“The woman who we are paying knows of him. He cannot harm us.” Shane
walked quickly to the exit, Sally behind him, noticing the streetlights 
outside flickering as he stepped outside, and, pulling his dark coat 
tightly around him, bid goodnight and walked quickly down the street, 
his footsteps echoing like the voices of long lost friends. Sally 
waited for her ride, and as the car pulled up, Shane turned and saw the 
driver was his wife and the passenger his brother. Shocked, he almost 
ran to the car, now leaving the curbside, and called out “Sharon! 
Bill!” 

A blackness enveloped his senses after unbearable pain and he was
unaware of falling. 

The next morning, at a corner newsstand near where Shane used to commute
by train to work, the newspapers sold had as a bottom headline, in 
small bold printing, the news of the murder of a man: the commuters 
ruffled through the articles, and then set the papers aside after 
reading of such events in a small brightly lit city.


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