Ernie banged the large glass mug loudly on the bar.
'Gentlemen! Your attention please! I have an announcement to make. I want to thank you all for your faithful support, and I have greatly enjoyed your company over the years. But as you know I am not getting any younger, and I have decided that it is time for me to enjoy my life savings while I still can. Consequently I am going to close the pub and retire, three months from today.'
On the face of it, the Duck was a dive. Hidden in a back alley downtown, it didn't even have a lit sign, just a small wooden square out front with faded, peeling paint that proclaimed that the Lazy Duck was a public house. And so you might wonder why the announcement caused so much dismay amongst the customers.
The guys that went there were all guys. Women rarely even wanted to walk down the alleyway, let alone enter the seedy looking doorway, had they noticed it at all.
But to the patrons, it was a second home; a refuge, and in more than one case more comfortable and warmly inviting than their official castles.
You know how these places are. By this point they came here for so long because they all had been coming here for so long. In the middle of a city of millions, nobody came here just because they were passing by. Guys invited other guys from work, once in a while, and the newcomers gradually got into the habit. And the lack of decor meant that you just wouldn't invite a woman here, not if you were trying to impress her.
But they weren't codgers. The bar was in the financial district, and the guys that came in tended to be the younger married guys who hadn't moved out to the suburbs yet, and liked to drop in after work on their way to their nearby fashionable condos. There was a slow steady turnover as guys 'grew up' and started their families and moved farther out of town.
And then there was Jennifer.
The barmaid was dark haired, somewhat mousy looking, and pretty quiet compared to the norm. But there was no great need to be brassy with strangers, to chat anyone up, or to deal with obnoxious strangers either. The clientele were all regulars, they felt like family and would neither have spoiled their little nest, nor would they have allowed each other to cross the line. Jennifer was among friends, and as such she could stay easy and relaxed.
As it happened, she also loved sex.
Years ago she had quietly started taking money for the odd extra bit of business on the side. Nobody got too worked up about it. She was good enough, but her problem was that everyone came to realize that she enjoyed it too much. It became obvious to everyone that she would gladly have done everyone for free, as much as they wanted. Over the years it became a bit of a joke. She was a great fuck, gleefully sucking cocks, taking them in her cunt and ass, and generally never saying 'no' to anything. And she did have great tits. Ordinarily she would have commanded good money. But she was incapable of demanding very much because everyone knew she would pay them if she had to. So her rates became more like tips than fees. It was more like putting quarters into a pinball machine, with the difference being that with Jennifer you always scored.
So the bar came equipped with friendly, enthusiastic sex, as well as privacy, cheap beer, warmth, familiar friends, and escape from the real world. No wonder the patrons were upset at the prospect of it all coming to an end.
Over the next few weeks everyone worriedly discussed the impending doom. Finally a small group approached Ernie.
'Ernie, instead of closing up, how would you feel about selling the place to us?'
Ernie hadn't seriously thought about it, because the place was such an out of the way dump that normal business types wouldn't be interested in buying it or trying to run it. He hadn't made any serious money from it for years, and didn't really even think of it as a business for profit. It was just what he did, and once he stopped it would be like shutting down his own little hobby.
Ernie didn't have to think about it long. The only sticking point was the value of the building itself. In that part of town the bums needed mortgage approval to sleep under bridges. But about twenty guys had gotten together and chipped in enough money each to cover the building, a fair price for all the old furniture and equipment, and some extra on top as sweetener for Ernie, to make him say yes. But he was fine with it, took all of about two minutes to agree, and they shook on it right away.
The economics of the new business had to be worked out a bit. It was still basically a matter of selling cheap beer to themselves, and covering the minimal overhead out of that such as utilities and taxes, maintenance, and so on.
And then there was Jennifer's salary. And Jennifer.
Everyone knew everyone well enough that not a lot had to change in terms of day-to-day personal relationships and activities. But there was an opportunity here. They were now all going to be Jennifer's bosses. Not a huge change in some ways; she had been taking their orders for years. But the change meant that there was an opportunity to take more control of the barmaid as well as the bar.
They decided to turn the bar into a private club officially. Not a huge disruption, as it had been operating that way for years. They put a lock on the door, and everyone got a key.
Jennifer meanwhile was worried.
She loved the situation, the pub, the routine, the guys, the easy good salary, and most of all she loved the sex. Was it all going to end? What was the new management going to decide about her?
She could be in a weak position because everybody knew how much she loved the bar and the sex. Nobody wanted to treat her unfairly, but they had a sense that they could get more out of her, and they wanted to see what negotiations might bring.
