Free Everything Is So Political by Sandra McIntyre Page B

briefcase at the bar and knocks it over. K– stops fingering his glass, his eyes fixed on the briefcase. The young man turns, with open hands, ready to apologize—but there’s no one there. He rights the briefcase, shrugs his shoulders to his friends at the table, and turns to catch the barman’s eye.
    â€œOut here,” Dag goes on, touching his hands and chest and face, “maybe you are not so young out here, okay. But that is nothing. Only the vain think they don’t get old.”
    â€œMaybe you’re right,” K– says offhandedly, again turning his glass in circles.
    â€œMaybe?” Dag says, feigning exasperation. Then leaning in a little, adds, playfully, “And maybe you are old, no?”
    K– can’t prevent a slight smile and chuckle.
    â€œGood,” Dag says, leaning back with satisfaction. “It is good to laugh.” His small glass of vodka looks like a thimble-cup between his thick, weathered fingers. He clinks it against K–’s, in a deep voice says “Christos,” and then downs it in one gulp.
    K– drinks his vodka in three small swallows. And before he’s set the glass back down on the table Dag’s refilling it again.
    â€œI want to tell you something,” Dag says, the change in his voice drawing K– to look up at him. His eyes are heavy in their sockets. And his face, taut and weathered like a hide, only one day unshaven, seems, for the first time in K–’s memory, to falter. Dag holds his glass from the bottom, between his thumb and two fingers, and looks down into it as though there were something there to contemplate. K– watches him breathing, watches his chest inflate and deflate, inflate and deflate—and in the silence between them this mechanicalness makes K– uneasy, nervous. Dag grins slightly, to himself, lifts the vodka to his lips, throws his head back, and drinks it down.
    â€œI have been thinking,” Dag says. “A bad man does good things to forget that he is bad.” Looking down he refills his glass. “And a good man does bad things to remind him that he is good.” He reaches across and refills K–’s glass. “I am a bad man,” he says, gesturing with the bottle and meeting K–’s eyes. “And you,” he says, with a smile and pointing the bottle at K–, “you are a good man.” Replacing the bottle on the table he adds, “It is funny, no?”
    â€œFunny?” K– asks.
    â€œYou and I,” he says, gesturing with his hand. “Like day and night.”
    â€œIt’s not that simple is it?”
    â€œNo,” he says with a chuckle. “And yes.” He wets the tip of a fresh cigar between his lips. “Nothing is simple. But we make things simple.”
    The first smoke from his cigar hovers between them. K– smells it—sweet and winey—and it reminds him of something he just can’t picture.
    â€œNothing is simple,” Dag repeats to himself, looking down into his glass again.
    The fluorescent lights suddenly flicker and go out. A hush falls over the room. Heads look around and up. And K–, in the silence and darkness, closes his eyes and takes one deep, calm breath.
    Diffused by the misted front windows, the glow from the streetlight out front slowly brings the room back into view. Faces reappear out of the darkness, but look softened. Shadows stretch across tables and across the floor. And one by one all heads turn towards the front windows, expecting an answer or reason to appear there.
    â€œIt’s the storm,” someone says from the other side of the room. “Yes,” adds another, “it must have hit the power station.” And a light murmur begins again to fill the place.
    Dag leans across the table and whispers to K–, “Then why is the streetlight still on?”
    â€œWait,” a silhouetted figure hollers from the front of the