A Toast to the Good Times by Liz Reinhardt, Steph Campbell Page B

terrible in the charmed life of Landry Murphy today?” Rusty smirks around his straw.
    “What’s that you’re drinking, Rusty, a fuzzy navel?” It’s a low-blow, but what respectable bartender or drinker, for that matter, could resist mocking the icy , orange drink Rusty’s sucking down?
    He nods unapologetically, his neck bent low like there’s a cement block handing around it. He runs a hand over his grizzled scruff, way more gray than brown. “They were Karen’s favorite.”
    Karen.
    Were.
    And suddenly, Rusty’s disheveled appearance, the chick drink he’s slurping down in this dive on Christmas Eve, his use of the past tense...it all falls into place.
    Fuck.
    Karen was Rusty’s wife. She got sick a few months before I left town, but I didn’t know she’d passed. I clear my throat, look from one side to the other, and wish the floor would rip open under my feet and suck me into hell, where I definitely deserve to rot for a long, shitty time.
    “Rust, I’m sorry, man. I hadn’t heard.”
    “I didn’t expect that you would’ve.” He rubs his chubby hand across the rough surface of the bar. I notice he’s still wearing his wedding band. “I heard you moved away to what, Delaware?”
    “Boston,” I correct.
    Rusty nods and shakes the last syrupy remnants of the icy drink sludged in the bottom of his glass. “Like it there, huh?”              
    “Better than here.” I polish off the rest of my drink and motion for Bergin to give me another.
    “Here’s not so bad. You’ve got family at least.” Rusty’s normally gruff voice sounds broken. When I don’t respond, he continues. “Or are you and your old man still not seeing eye-to-eye?”
    “Not so much.”
    “Come on, kid. It’s the holidays. Your Dad isn’t so bad.”
    “He’s not. He’s not so bad for an arrogant asshole who can’t look me in the eye because I made a decision he didn’t agree with. Because I decided to live my life for myself instead of getting stuck here for eternity.”
    I flick the bowl of peanuts in front of me, then feel like a dick for scattering them all over the bar. Bergin gives me an irritated look, and I sweep the mess from one hand into another and drop the peanuts in my jacket pocket, feeling like the biggest shit in the world while I do it.
    “Success is all relative. This place means a lot to him. And it did to your grandfather, too.”
    Naturally, Rusty would throw Granddad into this talk. He and Rusty went way back, and he always said that Rusty’s loyalty trumped any character flaws I ever pointed out. Bergin places another round in front of us and pushes the bowl of peanuts I’d assaulted to the other side of the bar before there’s a repeat offense.
                  “If it meant so much to him, he wouldn’t let it fall apart around him like this.” I motion around the room to the faded drapes, the peeling paint, the mirror with a huge, horizontal crack, the rough bar top in need of a strip and a polish.
    How Dad managed to save the place from going completely under, I don’t know, but he sure didn’t throw any work into it once it was safe.
                  “Landry, kid, there’s a lot you don’t know or understand.”
    Rusty slurps at his peach drink through his straw, his lips damp and shaky. I can’t help but feel sorry for the guy, sitting in this place, drinking what might be the worst drink on the planet as some sort of sad tribute to his late wife.
    This is, hands down, the most depressing holiday ever.
                  “Care to educate me?” I ask, letting my eyes take in other details that make me grimace; cobwebs in corners, the burnt out lights in the exit sign, the grimy mats behind the bar.
              “What are you so upset about?”
    Rusty presses his bushy eyebrows low over his bloodshot eyes, and I take a minute to appreciate how weird it is that a man this gnarled and ugly is drinking a beverage