Cantina Problema: Part One

“One more.”

That’s all the man sitting at the bar had said for over three hours, as I poured him another bourbon he looked up at the clock on the wall.

4:15 AM.

The man was wearing a torn Mambo shirt underneath an open-buttoned Acapulco top, cargo shorts and sported a pair of sandals on his feet. He’d been sitting in the same spot now for nearly twelve hours, the only time he moved was to go to the bathroom. At least that’s what the other bartender had told me when I took over.

Mambo looked up at me with bloodshot eyes, his greasy stubble shimmered in the low light of the bar.

“Leave that bottle.” He slurred, scrambling through his pocket for coins. He tossed enough for the bottle on to the shipping pallets that the bar was constructed out of.

The doors to the Cantina crashed open, a man in a crumpled Calvin Klein suit and a bandage on his nose, staggered in. He seemed to be staggering not because of drink, but rather sheer exhaustion.

Making his way towards the bar he asked for a drink, it sounded like someone had put his throat against sandpaper so that whenever he talked it would rub on it.

“Bourbon, neat.” He rasped.

I nodded in the direction of Mambo, who had just bought the bottle,

“Have to ask him partner, just bought my last bottle. Can I get you something else?”

“Can you make a- Never mind,” he turned to Mambo and waved slightly to get his attention.

“Hey there buddy, any chance I can get in on that action?” Sliding over a note as he talked.

“My bottle.” Was Mambo's short reply.

“C’mon man, I’m desperate here. I really need a drink.”

Mambo looked at the pleading face of Calvin and reluctantly slid the bottle over to him.

“Thanks man, you wouldn’t believe the run of luck I’ve had.” Sighed Calvin.

Mambo looked right into his eyes. “Try me.”

After a bit of going back and forth about who had had the worst week, Calvin finally started getting to the crux of his story. Both Mambo and I were leaning closer to Calvin, in anticipation of the tale behind this man’s nose and the state of his clothes.

“So a week ago I was coming home from work and I noticed there was a car following me, every turn I made, it made too. This could have been coincidence but I don’t think so anymore. I got home only to find my wife sitting in the lounge room talking to a woman I didn’t know. The moment I walked in, my wife stood up walked over to me and-”

BAM!

Calvin smashed his hand down on the bar top, startling Mambo away from his glass. I started cleaning the bench where the drinks spilled from the sudden outburst, still listening to his misadventures.

“Just like that, hits me right in the nose, it’s only just gotten easier to breathe.” He lifted the bandage on his nose to show Mambo the cut.

“Ouch…Nasty.” Mambo winced in sympathy.

Since there were no other customers around, I poured myself a Sarsaparilla and took a seat, engaged in the story.

“…Where was I?" Calvin continued.

"Oh yea, so I’d just been whacked in the nose by the old lady, and then she started screaming her lungs off at me. The other lady apparently had evidence proving that I was married to her five years before I met my wife… second wife… The woman I thought I married first.”

“I get it.” Mambo assured as he drained his glass and refilled it in one swift motion, presumably only achievable through years of abusive drinking.

“Boy do I get it. My wife left me because, among other things, she thought I was sleeping around.”

“Were you?”

“Not even a little. Go on…”

“Oh yea, thanks, um... So I’m in my lounge room with two wives it would seem, no idea what to do. Thinking it can’t get any worse, when there is a flush from the water closet-”

“The what?”

“The bathroom.”

“Oh… do you have kids?”

“No.”

“Then who was in your water closet?” Mambo asked, complete with a fake curtsy.

“I’m getting to that-“

In mid thought Calvin’s face lost all colour, as he stared into the mirror behind the bar and saw a man walking in his direction.

“Him!” He shrieked as he spun around to face the oncoming man.

Mambo turned around to see standing in front of Calvin was a lumbering man in a cheap brown suit and barely fitting into his thick trench coat, his head pushing his swede fedora to the very limit.

“Geez, look at the size of him would ya!” Mambo let out under his breath.

“How did you find me so quickly? Please just leave me alone!” Calvin pleaded with Fedora.

“What’s all this about? You on the run or something?” Mambo asked, looking back and forth between the two men.

After letting out a loud sigh, Fedora finally spoke with an air of authority.

“Mistake number one: You used your own name when booking your ticket across the border. Two: You made me come across the border, so that’s going to cost you… and mistake number three, which just might be the dumbest thing I’ve seen in all my time as a private eye. You used the ATM machine around the corner from here.

Mambo suddenly burst into fits of laughter, stopping only when the cold stare of Fedora caught his own bloodshot eyes.

“Sorry.” Mambo said, "Tautologies always make me laugh..." As he looked away from Fedora and back to his glass.

Fedora grabbed Calvin by the collar and began to drag him through the bar.

Mambo sighed, and picked up his bottle of bourbon and followed.

I was close behind, keeping an eye on the situation, but stayed inside the Cantina. They all stepped outside the bar into the crisp air of dawn. Fedora dragged Calvin and forced him into the driver’s seat of a 1975 Chevy Impala, after he handcuffed him to the steering wheel and shut the door; he took a cigarette from his pocket and lit up.

Mambo looked on with bemusement; he caught the pleading eyes of Calvin through the window.

“Damn it all.” He said.

“What’s the matter princess? I take your date away?” Fedora scoffed as he spun the car keys on the finger of one hand, while in the other he absentmindedly played with his lighter.

“Well it’s just that he was in the middle of a story, and one thing I hate is a story interrupted, so…”

Mambo paused to take a big gulp of bourbon, which he sprayed at Fedora’s lighter, right as it lit again.

“What the hell!” Fedora bellowed, now covered in bourbon and holding a ruined lighter.

“What exactly did you expect to happen there? Set me on fire? This isn’t a movie!”

“You’re not wrong.” Mambo calmly agreed before hammering Fedora over the head with the bourbon bottle.

Fedora slumped to the ground and Mambo quickly ran around and got in the passenger seat. Handed the keys to a still speechless Calvin, who then with some difficulty started the car, Fedora was slowly getting back onto his feet; his cold menacing eyes caught mine.

I slowly slunk back into the bar, not wanting to get involved, the last thing I heard from the car before it tore off into the sunrise was Mambo.

“Now…” He said. “…This better be a damn good story.”