Jim and I had gotten to the Bend It around 8:30 p.m. that night. We had met some guys from work for a beer around six and were not ready to go home. We were usually in the Bend It four or five nights a week for more or less time, depending, so we were readily known by the regulars and of course Ray, the bartender. We said high to a half dozen people we knew and nodded to some we had seen before. We stood at the bar drinking our beers. Jim was talking to Ray about some redhead who had been in last week and I was looking around the room.
The Bend It was your typical neighborhood gin mill. It had a long bar with stools. There were maybe ten tables and two or three of those tall tables that were bar height. That night there were four people sitting at the other end of the bar and about four or five of the tables were occupied. At one of the tables was this old couple who had started coming in about a month ago. They always sat at a table near the bar. They never said anything to anyone or bothered anyone. I guess they just liked to drink, as did most of the people in the Bend It.
When I say the couple were old I guess I mean that in a relative way. They looked to be in their fifties. I was twenty-four and my brother Jim was twenty-five. We had another brother, John, twenty-eight, who was the upstanding member of the Hastings clan. He had gone to college, gotten a good job where he wore a coat and tie everyday and last year had gotten married. Jim and I didn't want any part of that life. When we got out of high school we both got jobs in construction and after a year we moved from our mom's house to a small house of our own. We figured that way we could stop fucking in the back seat of the car. Just last year Jim and I had gone to Australia to go skiing. We got jobs maintaining the ski trails for the Royal Park service. We worked until the spring melt and then headed back home. Australia was O.K. The people were nice and man could they drink. Jim is the best that I had ever seen at quantity consumed and being able to hold his liquor but those Aussies could drink him under the table and that was only the women. When we got home we were back in construction and drinking every night and fucking as often as we could.
I had turned to talk to Jim after Ray went to the other end of the bar and the old man came up. He was very polite and said that he and his wife had noticed us many times in the bar and they would like to buy us a drink and would we like to come to their table. Never ones to pass up a free drink we followed him to the table. He introduced them as Harry and Helen. They knew our names as they had asked the Ray a few weeks ago.
We chatted for awhile about this and that. They told us about their daughter who was in college and their son who was a major in the Air Force. We told them about our trip to Australia. And the kind of work we did. On our third beer Harry got down to crux of why they had asked us over. They had been married thirty-five years and Helen was going through a period where she was horny all the time. And she wanted some new cock and she would prefer that it be young. They were not separating or anything like that. They loved each other and Harry wished to get her what she wanted and after their watching us for a time they thought that we might be interested.
Well, I must have been sitting there slack jawed because Jim reached over and put his hand under my lower jaw and pushed my mouth shut. This brought me back to what had just been said. But I still couldn't talk. Jim asked them if they could give us a few minutes and they both said they understood and to take as much time as we needed. We picked up our beers and walked back to the bar. Once there I let out a sigh and asked Jim what the hell was that all about. He said, a chance at easy pussy.
"You're really thinking about they said," I asked.
"Look, she's not bad. We've fucked worse. Remember one eyed Lucy."
