Excerpt from This Guy Walks Into a Bar
So, this guy walks into a bar. It hurt like hell.
Don’t like that one? Okay, how about this one.
This guy walks into a bar after playing a round of golf. He turns to the leggy blonde sitting to his left and says, “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” She smiles and says, “I’m a hooker.” The guy replies, “Try turning your hands on the shaft a little bit to the left.”
Come on—don’t you get it? See, the guy’s a golfer and—never mind.
Okay, I’ve got it. You’re gonna love this one!
So, this guy walks into a bar…and everyone inside is dead.
CHAPTER ONE
The story eating at my insides has to be told before it kills me.
That’s how the letter requesting a ghostwriter began. Somewhat intriguing, if a bit sinister. Even more intriguing was that it had been formally written on fine stationery rather than through today’s more impersonal electronic channels. An old-fashioned kind of gal, perhaps?
His first instinct had been to pawn her off on someone else. After all, he’d been referred to her by his wife Kate, who said she’d been referred by a friend of a friend of a friend (and who knows, maybe a couple of second cousins sandwiched in there too), so why not continue this game of Pass the Buck? But she’d said the magic word. Money. And money was something he could really use right about now.
Kate had practically pushed Joe out the door, saying how he’d always wanted to write a novel and could now actually get paid to do it. Sure, his dream was to write a best-selling book that would influence generation after generation. Hemingway. Steinbeck. Kerouac. Campbell.
Campbell. Joe Campbell. Didn’t exactly sound like the voice of a generation. It sounded average. Like everything about his life. Average job. Average height. Average looks. Even his name was average. Just your regular old Average Joe.
Kate was right—well, half right. He wanted to write a novel, but his novel, not some anonymous piece of drivel from a Patricia WhatsHerName who just had to get the story inside her out. If Kate were so gung-ho about it, why’d she pass it off on him? Though Joe hated to admit it, his better half was a better writer. He’d known it since reading the first line of her first assignment for a creative writing workshop she’d roped him into taking with her. Except for one thing. She had no drive.
With Kate on indefinite sabbatical (and, who was he kidding, not planning on going back to work any time soon), their live-beyond-their-means lifestyle was about to come to a screeching halt. Factor in a Range Rover and a mortgage the size of Texas, and you had yourself one big cluster-fuck.
That’s why good old Average Joe Campbell was sitting outside a ramshackle bar on a Tuesday night at 7:44 in an epic rainstorm. For the money. And maybe something else. The idea—no, the hope—that on the other side of that door was a life less ordinary. A life less average.
Joe Campbell pulled on the hood of his overpriced Brooks Brothers rain slicker, pushed open the door of his exorbitant silver Range Rover Sport, and made a mad dash for a battered old bar called Griffin’s.
CHAPTER TWO
Griffin’s had all the amenities one might expect from a top-notch dive bar. Threadbare décor highlighted by assorted kitsch splashed the walls in garish splendor. The quintessential barfly nursed a drink on the corner stool. A boorish looking bartender scrolled with disinterest through his phone. Griffin, maybe? The lighting was hazy enough to obscure the grit and grime that no doubt shellacked every surface. The melancholy vocals of Aimee Mann, arguably one of music’s most underrated talents, drifted from the shadows.
Joe approached the bartender with trepidation, wishing the guy were on a leash. An intricate landscape of black and green obliterated any indication of skin on the heavily veined arms. The body ink crept across the guy’s neckline and snaked up the tightly shorn skull, which resembled a skinned watermelon.
“Excuse me. I’m here to meet someone.” Joe avoided eye contact with Griffin, scanning the room for his mystery date. Only two of the dozen or so tables were occupied. At one, an obese man gnawed feverishly on a plate of grease Joe guessed to be meat in one form or another. At the other, a heavily mascaraed woman with high hair played coyly with the thinning hair of a probably married, probably working late, middle-aged man. The man’s suit looked bespoke, the drab tie’s double Windsor knot cranked a bit too tightly to his protruding Adam’s apple.
“Isn’t everybody?” the surly bartender replied in a bored, yet slightly hostile tone.
Joe laughed. Louder than he meant to. The obese guy glanced up from his gourmet meal, grunted, and resumed his feeding. “No, it’s not like that.”
“Never is.” It was Griffin’s turn to laugh. “But always is.”
“Listen, I think I made a mistake. I’m just going to—”
“Joe? Joe Campbell?” A gravelly voice called out from his right. The barfly. Perfect. Just perfect.
“Have a nice time, Joe,” Griffin said. Then added, “You’ll need a drink, or ten, with that one.”
Joe smirked and made his way to the end of the bar, where the Queen of All Barflies sat proudly perched on her throne. “Patricia?” he asked more incredulously than he intended.
“In the flesh. And, please, call me Patty. Only my mother called me Patricia. God rest her pathetic soul.” Patty extended a deeply tanned, snap-in-two hand, which Joe shook with care. “Thought that might be you. You look like a writer.”
Joe laughed at the absurdity of the comment. “What does a writer look like?”
Patty Quigley smiled and said, “You. Looks like you.” Joe was about to feign an emergency so he could get the hell out of Dodge, but Patty tugged at his still-damp slicker and said, “Pull up a stool.”
Patty motioned to the bartender. “Hey, Rufus, bring me another and—what’ll it be, Cowboy?”
Rufus? So much for Joe’s Griffin theory. “Whatever cold lager you have on tap, Rufus.” Joe stifled a laugh. Rufus? Man, his parents must’ve hated him. Probably had the shit beat out of him all through school. And probably why he looked like he did now, muscle regenerating from muscle.
Patty expelled a rattly cough and said, “Throw in a coupla belts of Jameson too.”
“None for me, thanks.”
Patty laughed, the maraca rattling in her throat again. “Who said they were for you?”
Joe chuckled along with her, not sure if he was laughing at a joke or the absurdity of the situation he suddenly felt trapped in.
“You okay, Cowboy?” Patty leaned in close enough for Joe to take in the intense mix of alcohol and nicotine, topped off with a hint of nondescript perfume probably purchased from the same corner store where she bought her cigarettes.
“Listen, Patty,” Joe said, “I’m not sure I’m the right person for this project.”
Patty’s face sucked up into itself. Her hard eyes got harder. “But you ain’t even heard my story.”
“It’s just that—”
“You don’t think I can pay you, do you?” Patty’s voice shot up a few octaves, took on a sinister edge. “Do you, you arrogant sonuvabitch?”
Patty Quigley eyeballed him, those steely eyes cutting right through him. Then they softened and disappeared into the sunbaked, weather-beaten face Joe suspected had once been stunning, before that triple threat of booze, butts, and sun did their number. She gazed at him some more, the way an art connoisseur might study a painting, searching its surface for depth and comprehension.
They had a captive audience. Rufus and his third-rate cast of characters gazed in their direction. “Listen, Patty, it’s not that, it’s just…” What, Joe? How are you going to get yourself out of this one? “It’s just, I don’t know, I don’t know if I’m good enough to tell your story.” Nice recovery, ace. Puts the onus on you. Softens the blow.
A delicate hand brushed his forearm. Joe’s instinct was to recoil. He didn’t. This mystery woman was too unpredictable and likely short of a few cards from the deck. He forced a smile.
Long, well-manicured fingernails tap-tapped his skin, sending a minor shock up his arm. He was swept up in a memory of his high school crush, the kind an adolescent boy never really gets over. Miss Mayhew, in that clingy red dress that displayed a body destined for the pages of Playboy (which, Joe found out years later, it was) and those fuck-me heels that click-clacked as she strutted her stuff before the class. But it was those nails that no student, male or female, would ever forget. Blood-red daggers gripped the chalk with a mix of tenderness and aggression as they danced across the blackboard, spewing algebraic nonsense Joe would never use in real life. With every a + b and x = y, the class held a collective breath, waiting for one of those glossy daggers to connect with the cloudy slate, unleashing a screech so spine-chilling—
“You with me, Cowboy?” A voice far more offensive than fingers to a chalkboard repeated the question.
“Huh…yeah, yeah. Sorry.”
“Thought I lost you for a sec,” Patty squealed. “Anyway, as I was saying, sorry I got so defensive.”
“No worries.”
Patty, clearly pleased to have him back in her good graces, cracked a broad smile that, like the fingernails, was meticulously maintained. Rufus slammed down their drinks, told them to “enjoy” with zero conviction, and went back to his post.
Defeated, Joe snatched up the Jameson, savored the warmth of the fiery liquid as it made its way down his throat, and said, “So, what is this story you just have to tell?”
Patty downed her shot and said, “Hold onto your hat, Cowboy. This story? It’s gonna blow you away.”
