It was cold and wet outside, the night I first met Two-Tone. Back then, I was working at Jimmy’s Neighborhood Saloon, in the Lower Claremont. It was quiet, Tuesday, I think, and we’d emptied out early; just some regulars at the bar, all elbows and easy laughter and soft machismo. In the corner, two kids were taking turns crowding the slender girl they’d brought along, trying to dance, slotting quarters into Jimmy’s old Wurlitzer that he claimed he’d bought in high-school, mowing lawns. Jimmy had ducked out early that night, and I was alone behind the bar, washing glasses and waiting to close up.
I was just about to make last call when a noise interrupted from outside: a screech of tires, a dull crash, glass shards on pavement. We all froze and tilted our heads like wary antelopes. After a few beats everyone turned back to me; a skinny girl at 5’5” and half their age, I was still the default authority figure. Fine. I threw the wet rag on the bar and headed for the door. “Somebody call somebody,” I said, pointing to the phone.
I don’t think I’d ever heard gunfire before, not this close. I had my hand on the knob, leaning in, about to shoulder the door open. The shots came out of total silence, right outside the door, steady, like a beat – boom, one-two, boom – big shattering sounds that filled the street and hurt my eardrums even through an inch of solid wood.
My first thought was to lock up, so I ran back to the office for the keys. When I came out, I had new customers: a couple, guy and a girl, maybe early thirties. Slacks, Hawaiian shirt, short skirt, boots, faux fur, both of ’em pretty tall. He was limping a little, leaning on her shoulder. She was holding an abbreviated sort of shotgun, but it was hanging upside-down, pointing backwards toward the floor, like she was maybe just carrying it for him. I kept looking for blood on them but there wasn’t any; only a sprinkle of raindrops on their hair and shoulders, like they’d just hopped out of the car for a nightcap.
They made their way to the bar, no rush, and took a pair of stools right in the middle, by the register. I could tell some of the guys wanted to slide away from the gun, but nobody moved. The trio in the corner was gone, probably ducked out the back. The Wurlitzer was wrapping up a cover of Wild Horses, and when that ended nothing else came on. I thought I could hear the blood beating in my temples. Behind me, the ice maker rattled out a new batch of cubes and settled down.
She helped him get settled on his stool, then took off the fur and set it down on the bar, dropping the shotgun on top, like a paperweight, barrel pointed at my beltbuckle, inches away. I stared at it. She noticed.
“Oh, sorry, hon,” she said and nudged, pointing it safely into the corner. “I’m June,” she added, calm as you like, “and this is Two-tone Tommy.” At this, Tommy raised his head and waved faintly at nobody in particular. June squinted at the bottles behind the bar. “Is it too late to get a drink, y’all?”
Mixing their cocktails made me feel normal again. The rest of the crowd was relaxing too. June and Tommy sipped their drinks, Manhattans, twist for her, cherry for him. Everyone else was nursing what was left of their beers, avoiding eye contact, but visibly relaxing, like, surely there must be some simple explanation for all this. Halfway down her glass, June walked to the corner and put on A Beautiful World, swaying to the music on the way back. Except for the faint gunpowder smell coming from the gun, it was almost a regular night. You could feel the tension about to break, conversations about to resume, glasses ready for a refill.
And right then, the cops showed up. The sirens cut off at the end of the block and we enjoyed almost a whole minute of relative quiet; then a whole bunch of uniforms busted in, tracking rain and mud all over the floor.
They handcuffed Two-tone Tommy and Faux-fur June and took them away, no muss, no fuss. I never got paid for those drinks, and that was just fine with me.