JULY 23, 2014
I flew into Jacksonville International Airport for the first time in ten years. The sun was shining and the ground temperature was 92 degrees. As we circled the airport I could see black thunderclouds building in the distance. I'd forgotten how clockwork the summers were in Jack-sonville.
Hot as hell during the day, summer heat like a thick cotton blanket lying across your face, followed most days by the rumble of afternoon thunder and violent, refreshing storms that were wonderful to experience if lightning or high winds didn't kill you or demolish your house in the night.
I got a rental and took care of some business, then bought flowers and visited the Ever-green Cemetery. I found the graves without much trouble, although the old cemetery had ex-panded and added sections since I'd left. Granite headstones marked the resting places of Ei-leen and Patrick McCarthy.
I'd bought vases for the roses I'd gotten for Mom, her favorite flowers, and the sunflow-ers that Dad, a big rough Irishman, had told me were his favorite because they had been his mother's favorite.
I'd expected to find the gravesites a little forlorn. Evergreen was managed well and the owners kept things cleaned up. But it had been ten years since I'd last been there, and there was no one else to visit or remember them.
But they were well trimmed and vases already sat on each grave site, although the flow-ers in them had faded and wilted. I looked around but there were only a couple of visitors a long way off. I knew that sometimes church groups would visit and take pity on the forgotten graves and take special pains to beautify them and leave flowers. Whoever they were, they had my grat-itude.
I had meant to leave the flowers and spend only a moment. But I sat for an hour and I could never later exactly remember my thoughts. I don't even know if I thought in words. Only feelings of sadness and loss, for a life and things that were precious and now were gone forever.
I had most of the day to kill so I drove around the downtown and found myself heading out U.S. 17 South. I took the off ramp, drove onto the divided four-lane that veered right and found myself traveling into the past. A lot of buildings, like the old pharmacy, a few small stores on the left side remained unchanged. On the right O'Brien's had expanded at least two stores down from where I remembered it.
And it had been big when I had been a regular. I wondered what O'Brien had come up with to fill that extra space. It was only a quarter to 7 and so there were plenty of parking spaces. I pulled into one on the curb and made my way to the front door. It still said in the same golden, gilt lettering, "O'Brien's."
The doors had changed, now resembling the old fashioned wooden swinging doors of a Western saloon. But there was plate glass above the painted-on wood design and an electric eye swung one door open inside and opened the other to the outside to let customers leave. There were two more doors at the very end of the bar. One had a steps and a railing for the handi-capped, another a ramp for wheelchairs. It all seemed so much more -- civilized -- than it had been. But times change.
I put my hands out and the door swung inward. I stepped inside and looked around. The long wooden bar seemed longer than I remembered. Obviously the business had expanded. There were tables for customers to sit and drink, a large area for dancing, the far area reserved for pool and a few electronic games. Despite time of day, approaching twilight, the bar was still largely empty. Which wasn't unusual for a Wednesday.
Looking across the floor I spotted a large sign across the wall saying, "O'Brien's Late Night Eats."
Of course, that's where the expansion had been. He had taken over the adjoining shops and turned it into the late night restaurant night owl customers and late night partiers had been asking for. And the doors were handicap accessible. But, I'd be willing to bet, he could lock them with a touch of a button behind the bar.
Occasional brawls had always been part of the lure of the bar, but you couldn't have riots spilling out into the restaurant where customers were eating. So he had the best of both worlds - the wild and woolly bad bar vibes on one side, and a sedate eating experience on the other.
"You doing an inspection, or are you here to drink?"
The blonde bartender's words weren't particularly friendly, but the face and honey hair piled high above her, and the chest that filled out an "O'Brien's World Famous Saloon" T-shirt made me willing to overlook the attitude.
I walked over to the bar and leaned over to see the rest of her. Hot pants caressed a par-ticular nice ass and she had legs that went on forever, ending in four-inch platform heels.
"How tall are you, anyway?"
"Anybody ever tell you that you're a little too curious? Ask me about what we serve and I'd be happy to talk to you. And keep your eyes off my ass."
The tone still wasn't very friendly, but there was a twinkle in her eye. This was foreplay. I liked this game.
"I'd say six-foot in stocking feet, add in another four inches for heels, and I don't know why you're working here, but with legs like that, I'd say you must have been a showgirl at one point. Vegas? New York? Private clubs? And I'm sorry for staring, but you have a fantastic ass."
She didn't take offense and I didn't expect her to. Any woman that looked like her had to be used to being hit on
"Are you going to drink? That's the reason most people go to bars."
"Coors. In the glass."
"That's the way we serve them."
She turned around and bent under the bar, flexing that ass and I had an almost over-whelming urge to bite it. She came up with a bottle and a mug and poured it until the head lapped the edge of the mug without spilling a drop. She glanced at me from under long lashes and looked like she was struggling not to laugh.
"You must really love your Coors."
"Something like that. I like beautiful things, and Coors is a beautiful beer."
She let me wet my lips and take that first wonderful sip of ice-cold beer and then said, "You're a pirate?"
"Pardon?"
She reached out with one long finger and almost, but not quite, ran it along the deep scar that cut the middle of my face from under my ear to the edge of my lip. It had been bright red when it first healed but now had faded to an angry brown under the sun of a lot of alien climes.
"It makes you look like a pirate, or a very bad man."
"No to the first, yes to the second. And you can touch it if you want to."
That almost made her smile.
"Does that line ever work?"
"About fifty percent of the time."
"You must hang with some really stupid women. I think you'll be disappointed in here. The average IQ of our female customers is too high to fall for that."
"That's okay. I'm not interested in picking up any of your customers. Now, the staff, that's a different story."
"Sorry, our waitresses don't make dates- during business hours. We find it causes too much trouble and distraction. What they do off duty is their own business."
"I was thinking more along the lines of bartenders."
She just shook his head.
"How old are you?" she asked.
I gave her a long up and down look. When I looked closer at her face and neck, it was obvious she wasn't as young as I'd first thought. But she was still a beautiful woman.
