Page 107 of The Bartender Special

A little fun last night had turned into a day of silence.

Jack wasn’t sure where that left him and Benny and, he’d decided in a huff of resilience, he wasn’t going to be the one who spoke first.

“I'm going to take these to the bar tonight and see if Santana has any insights,” Dixon finally said, bringing Jack back to his current tampon-platter reality. “If I’m doing this right, I want to do it right, you know?”

Jack understood the sentiment. He nodded solemnly to his cousin.

“You’re doing God's work.”

Dixon left the apartment, determined.

Jack watched him go, an uneasiness in him starting to twitch. He threw on his shorts, tennis shoes, and grabbed a bottle of water, deciding to try and run off some of his mounting frustrations.

It was just dumb luck he was staring down at his phone when it lit up with an incoming call.

He didn’t recognize the number.

He did, however, understand there was a problem.

“Hey, uh… Jack?” the man’s voice was filled with anxiety. “This is— This is Ethan, you know, Benny’s best friend, and, uh— We kind of need your help.”

Jack was already going for his keys.

“What happened?” he asked. “Are y’all okay?”

Jack could hear someone—he assumed Benny—talking in the background. Though, he couldn’t make out the words.

“Yeah, yeah we’re good,” Ethan hurried. “We, uh, we just did something kind of dumb.”

NINETEEN

The Drinking Spot was housed in an older building that locals from both sides of the town limits had described as charming. The slope it was placed on added to its curb appeal. The entire building was built into a sloped lot that dropped below sea level between the sidewalk out front and the parking lot out back.

It should have been called The Drinking Slope, not the spot.

Though from the front, it appeared to be normal.

It was only at its back that the bar seemed lopsided, half of the structure raised on aged brick with the back parking lot butted up to the loading bay and the back door. Neither were elevated themselves, but two of the three windows that dotted the back wall were placed higher than the rest.

Maybe seven or eight feet off the asphalt, following the incline upwards along the side road that led to the main street.

A clusterfuck of architecture that, for some reason, had been since been labeled as a cute quirk.

Jack had noted all of these details before when trying to come up with a plan to beat Cassidy’s Place’s competitor.

What he’d never seen before as part of his surveillance was what was currently going on at one of those higher windows.

Ethan Castings was standing beneath a window at least six feet off of the ground while Benny De Carlo was stuck firmly inside of it.

“What the actual fuck?”

Jack pulled his truck up to the left of them and kept the engine running. He jumped out and hesitated a second to really take in the scene.

Benny was dangling head-first out of the window. He was folded at the waist and had both arms stretched down, hands planted firmly on Ethan's shoulders. It was not what Jack had expected to see, even after Ethan had hurriedly explained that Benny had pulled a “Winnie the Pooh” and gotten stuck trying to climb out of a window over the phone. Though Jack still had no idea why Benny had tried to climb out of any window. Let alone one at The Drinking Spot.

“What the hell?” Jack asked in bewildered greeting. Benny's face was beet red. “Are you okay?”

Ethan was quick to respond in his best friend’s stead.