Free Visitation Street by Ivy Pochoda

middle of the bar, his hands cupped around his glass. He’s short with a concave chest and sparse gray hair that’s combed and pomaded into neat rows like crop furrows. Between these rows his pale scalp is visible. His face has broken out in the purplish bloom of determined drinking. He’s one of the guys who tells everyone that the Dockyard’s bar counter is made from a single piece of wood salvaged from a tree that fell in the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary churchyard. He says it’s sacrilegious to use something from a holy place in a bar. The fuck you kids think you’re doing drinking on sacred property? This doesn’t keep him from hitting the Dockyard for happy hour. He looks up from his drink and taps the bar with his fingers, signaling for Jonathan’s attention.
    “The other girl turns up hurt or worse, everyone knows where to find you,” he says.
    Jonathan drops his gaze to his drink.
    There are a few other patrons in the bar—artisans with plaster-caked fingers who smell of paint thinner and a couple of local musicians. In the middle of the bar is Dirty Dan, a perennially out-of-work drywaller who smells of the skunk weed he sells.
    Dirty is talking loud. He’s yammering with the old-timer, making crude jokes about why lesbians can’t be vegetarians. When the old-timer turns away, Dirty homes in on Jonathan.
    “Maestro,” he calls, signaling to the bartender. Before Jonathan can object, a shot of Jameson and a Coke back slide down the bar in Jonathan’s direction. When you drink with Dirty Dan, you drink what he’s drinking.
    Dirty’s wearing a baseball cap from a long defunct skate-wear company and a baggy T-shirt with a drunken panda on it. His cargo pants are ripped and flecked with plaster from whichever job has recently let him go. Every time Jonathan sees Dirty Dan he wonders what becomes of people like him in middle age. What happens when he can no longer make rent by slinging eighths of weed? How long can he exist on menthol cigarettes, Jameson, and one meal a day?
    “My liquor too good for you? Or are you too good for my liquor?” Dirty says.
    “Neither.” Jonathan drains the shot glass and chases it with Coke.
    “So, Maestro, you still tuning up the schoolgirls?” Dirty gives an old man cackle that demands attention.
    “Keep your mind off my students.”
    “I wouldn’t screw them with somebody else’s dick.”
    This gets a laugh from the old-timer.
    “I wasn’t into schoolgirls, even in my day,” Dirty says. “Do you slap them with a ruler when they’re bad, Maestro?”
    The thought of all the afternoons he’s spoiled with this creep turns Jonathan’s stomach, and the shot of whiskey rises back into his throat. He moves to a stool near the window, out of Dirty Dan’s range.
    Jonathan nurses his drinks. The bearded bartender cashes out and Lil comes on.
    “Maestro,” she says, “aren’t you going to thank me?”
    “For what?”
    “That’s right, you’re this week’s hero.” No matter what happens around the Dockyard, Lil assumes she runs the show.
    “None of yous is heroes,” the old-timer says on his way out.
    “Maybe one day you’ll remember who saved your ass,” Lil says, refilling Jonathan’s glass.
    “What’s got you thinking about my ass?”
    “It’s a slow night.”
    Lil hovers at Jonathan’s end of the bar, outdrinking him. They flip through her vinyl, picking upbeat songs to combat the Sunday evening disappointment.
    Around seven Fireman Paulie comes into the Dockyard. Jonathan clocks him and slides down the bar.
    Paulie’s an ex-Marine and fireman with one of the local engines—a loudmouth who enjoys sounding off on slackers, drugs, and law and order. That doesn’t faze Jonathan. What gets him is that Paulie’s got a special hard-on for him ever since he barged into the storeroom one night to find Jonathan standing over Lil, who was rolling naked on the floor.
    He knew there was no point in explaining that he was just helping Lil