If There's A Dive Bar In Heaven

Scene.

“Listen,” the man says, “I used to come off a lot happier. I was younger then. I’ll be somethin’ like that again one day. I’ll re-shape it over the years. But right now this is who I am and I’m good with it. Wouldn’t change it. It’ll change itself one day”

            “Yeah but you seem so sad mister” The little girl says, “like you’re lost or something… are you lost?”

            “We’re in the park aren’t we?”

            “Yes”

            “Then I know right where we are little darlin’”

            “But where are you?” She says.

            “Right beside you”

            “Will you ever leave me?” She asks, in that sweet little girls voice.

            “No baby, I’ll never leave you”

            “Do you promise”

            “I promise.”

            “Then will you smile for me?” She begs.

The old man smiles and tickles her and she laughs and makes a face at him that’s stuck with him all these faraway years.

Now, at the end of the bar and the bottom of his glass, he calls the bartender for another bourbon and she pours it for him and he toasts her and smiles a handsome grin full of that somethin’ he’d thought was gone forever. He sits there with a wide smile hoping she’s not too mad that he couldn’t keep his promise. Hoping that she’d forgotten him by now. He smiles and pays his tab and takes to the street with that glow stuck to him.

            A hooker’s outside smoking a cigarette.

            “What the hell’s got you all hot old man?”

            “My daughter,” he says.

            “You’re ugly a*s got a daughter?”

            “No,” he says, dropping his head to grin at the sidewalk, “but she has me.”