Terry Wilford watched as the brown-haired, well-built and sharply dressed man entered The Varnish, one of the most famous speakeasy-themed cocktail lounges in Downtown LA, and took a seat at the bar. As the man sat down, he took off his glasses, closed his eyes, placed both elbows on the bar counter, and used the tips of his fingers to slowly massage his eyelids.
Terry, who had just started mixing a couple of cocktails for table seven, lifted a quick finger at the man. ‘I’ll be right with you, sir.’
That Thursday night, Terry was working the bar alone.
‘There’s no rush,’ the man replied, still massaging his eyelids. His voice sounded tired and rough. ‘Take your time. I won’t be going anywhere for a while.’
Terry had been working as a bartender at The Varnish for just over four years now. During that time, he’d seen more than his share of similar-looking customers – pristine haircut with manicured nails, dressed in perfectly fitted, overpriced suits, smelling of expensive cologne, and looking like the world was just about to cave in on them.
Terry wasn’t really surprised by how distraught the man looked. The Varnish was located slap bang in the middle of the Los Angeles Financial District and since it first opened its doors back in 2009, it had become one of LA’s favorite drinking densfor the entire financial sector. Terry had been behind the bar during some of the most lavish of celebrations, where $10,000 bottles of champagne were being handed out as if they were wine coolers and cocaine was being passed around as if it was a bag of Skittles. On the flip side, Terry had also witnessed some of the most depressing and embarrassing scenes he’d ever seen – desperate grown men on their knees, bawling their eyes out, asking their bosses for forgiveness. Once, right there at the far end of his bar, Terry saw a man empty a bottle of sleeping pills into his mouth and swig down a full glass of whiskey. If not for Terry’s sharp eyes and fast reaction in immediately compressing the man’s stomach until he vomited, that man would’ve probably ended his life right there at The Varnish, and that was never good for business.
Terry finished mixing two traditional Sidecar cocktails, placed them on the waitress’s tray, and approached the man sitting at the bar. From the troubled look on the man’s face, together with the way in which he kept on slightly shaking his head disapprovingly, Terry guessed that he had probably lost a considerable amount of money that afternoon.
‘Good evening, sir,’ Terry said, placing a coaster on the bar in front of the man. ‘What can I get you tonight?’
The man finally stopped massaging his eyes and reached for his glasses. ‘What would you say is the strongest cocktail you…’ The man paused, his uncertain eyes resting on Terry. ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’
The main reason why Terry knew very few of his customers by name was because the daily customer flow at The Varnish was truly overwhelming, but he could still recognize a great number of returning patrons from looks alone, and Terry was very certain that he had never seen that man before.
‘I don’t think so,’ Terry replied, his head shaking just a touch.
The man’s eyes narrowed, as he studied Terry’s face for a couple more seconds. ‘Are you sure? You do look rather familiar.Did you ever work in Santa Monica Pier, or in any of the bars at the promenade? I used to go there a lot.’
‘No, never,’ Terry lied. ‘All the bars I’ve worked in until now have been here… in Downtown.’ He didn’t allow the silence to stretch. ‘But people say that I have one of those faces.’
Physically, Terry, who was forty-three years old, was a slight man. An inch under six-foot, with a thin, ascetic body, helped by a daily exercise routine and a diet that stopped him from having sweets and ice creams, which he secretly adored. His longish black hair was pulled back into a messy manbun, and his three o’clock shadow contoured a pretty average jawline.
‘One of those faces?’ the man asked.
‘The plain, average-looking face,’ Terry explained. ‘The one that looks like a million other faces.’ He gave the man a single-shoulder shrug. ‘Every now and then I catch people squinting at me from afar, clearly trying to place me against some old memory because my face looks vaguely familiar.’ He pointed to his hair. ‘Even with the manbun.’
‘Yeah… maybe,’ the man accepted. ‘But if you’ve always worked in busy bars and lounges like this one, they probablyhaveseen you before somewhere. That’s why I asked about Santa Monica.’
‘Yeah, that’s true.’
It was Terry’s turn to quickly study the man sitting at the bar in front of him. He looked to be in his early to mid-thirties, with shaggy brown hair that fell over deep-brown eyes. His beard was long enough to cover his jawline. He was slender, but not thin, with enough muscle to add plenty of power to his frame. The bones on his face were delicate, which only added to his somewhat attractive looks. If Terry had seen him before, he was sure that he would’ve remembered.
‘So,’ Terry said, going back to his original question. ‘What can I get you tonight?’
The man let out a deep breath before his expression turned serious. ‘What would you say is the strongest drink you can make?’
‘That depends,’ Terry replied, handing the man a cocktail menu. ‘Strong as in…?’
‘As in obliterating brain cells,’ the man answered, before sniggering. ‘Not that I seem to have that many left, anyway.’
‘That bad of a day, huh?’ Terry asked.
The man once again took off his glasses, but this time he didn’t place them on the counter, he just used his thumb and index finger to pinch the bridge of his nose, as if trying to halt a headache that was already lurking behind his eyelids. ‘I’m Liam,’ the man said after a couple of seconds, offering his hand.
‘Terry.’ The bartender shook it.
‘Well, Terry… on a scale from one to ten – ten being the worst day possible – I’d say that today was a seven-point-five million.’
Terry almost choked.
When the man returned the glasses to his face, the bartender was looking back at him wide-eyed.
‘That’s a hell of a lot of bad,’ Terry said, his chin angling forward as he nodded.
