Free My Hero by Mary McBride

seen the VIP Channel. No. Wait. Ellie Young had. But even gabby Ellie didn't want to go on record.
    Holly pulled the list of prospective interviewees from her handbag, perused it once more, then looked at the clock on the bank. It was four-thirty. Five-thirty in New York, where the workweek had already wound down and the weekend officially begun. If she were home, she'd probably be elbowing her way out of the train at the Lexington Avenue station right now, hotfooting it down 59th, grabbing something to eat, hoping to be in her robe in front of her two TVs in order to catch most of the local news on at least two major networks. It was how she spent most Friday evenings, barring the occasional date that turned out badly, making her wish she'd stayed home with her TVs.
    For a moment, she considered going back to Ellie's and flipping on the big-console TV she'd seen in one of the rooms downstairs, but decided that getting a news fix wasn't going to help her get any closer to her story here in Honeycomb.
    Muttering a curse, Holly crammed the list back into her handbag. The hell with it. If nobody wanted to talk to her this afternoon, she'd opt for local color. She was going to find someplace to sit and have a bite to eat and something cold to drink. She eyeballed the street, instantly dismissing the Longhorn Café with its banner telling her that Friday promised all the fried catfish she could eat for $6.99.
    As far as she could tell, that only left the asphalt-shingled dive in the middle of the block. Ramon's. Worst case, she'd have a beer and pretzels, then climb her fire escape and call it a day.
    When she stepped through the door, the darkness nearly blinded her for a second. The chilled, recycled air was rank with booze and peanuts, and Patsy Cline was wailing somewhere in back by the pool table. God Almighty. Holly took a deep breath and headed toward a vacant stool at the end of the bar where a kid who looked almost young enough to be her son was drying glasses.
    “Hey,” he said after she'd managed to hoist herself onto the tall stool. “What can I get for you?”
    “Is there any chance I could get some kind of sandwich?”
    “Sure. No problem.” He stepped a few feet to his left and bent to open a small refrigerator. Its light washed over his face. “I can give you ham or…ham.”
    “I'll take ham,” Holly said, smiling, already feeling better.
    “One ham sandwich, coming up,” he said. “What can I get you to drink?”
    Holly gazed at the assorted neon signs that decorated the place. A cold beer sounded so good, but it would make her way too sleepy to get any work done after dinner. “I'll have a diet cola,” she said.
    A moment later the young bartender set a tall, ice-filled glass in front of her and deftly poured the soft drink so that not a drop of foam spilled over. “You're not from around here, are you?” he asked her as he poured.
    It was the nicest thing Holly had heard all day. “No,” she said. “I'm from New York.”
    “Cool.” Without inquiring what a nice, obviously sophisticated, big-city girl was doing in a dump like this, he began fixing her sandwich, a process which amounted to slapping square pieces of processed meat onto square slices of soft white bread.
    Holly sipped her drink. The only other person sitting at the bar was a blonde who looked like a permanent fixture down at the other end. There were people in the back of the room, but it was so dark she could only distinguish their shapes. Every minute or so, there was the thunk of a billiard ball falling into a pocket, followed by a delighted whoop or a disgruntled curse.
    It reminded her of the place in Sandy Springs where her parents used to go every Saturday night. What was it called? Joker's? No. Wait. Jester's. That was it. She could remember the boot heel of her daddy's good foot hooked over a rung of a bar stool, and how her tiny mama's feet never touched the floor once she was perched at the bar. In some ways it seemed