My Cardboard Balcony

The Daily Drunkard by Belinda Roddie The bartender reads my mind like I'm a book with the index wide open, mixing me something sour enough to almost make my teeth turn inward. I pinch a peanut from the bowl hard enough to hear the shell crack and split in half, like San Francisco's scars back in nineteen o'six. Plate tectonics shift. So do my bones. Forty-five, to me, feels like eighty. Scouting out a gray hair in my beard, I watch two college girls huddling in the corner of the bar, taking pictures on their cellphones, flashing the peace sign. I'm ready to give it to them in reverse when the bartender sets another full glass down in front of me. Scoured my psyche again. I ought to give her a tip. I'd give her a kiss, but I think she'd clock me first. I can hardly taste the gin in my drinks anymore. In fact, I can hardly taste anything at all. The room spins like perfect clockwork before my knees hit the floor. I don't know where I

As it stands, we have to try one of two options. The first option is to go on the offensive. Make sure everyone knows we mean business. If they get too close to our territory, we shoot first and ask questions later. And hopefully we won't have to actually ask questions because, hey, they'll be dead. And dead people tend not to be very inquisitive. The second option: Run. Run as fast as we can. When the tanks start rolling in, we'll be long gone. The mountains will still be capped with snow when we hide.