GONE BABY, REALLY GONE

    Johnny Staccato and Napoleon Volatile stepped into the basement bar that was in Napoleon’s mid-century home. No ordinary home bar, this bar could have been on any uptown street corner or casino, right down to the last detail. All it really lacked at this moment was an actual bartender. Though Napoleon had often hired a girl or two in the past to tend the bar, this was no party and there’d be no need for one now, or ever again.

    Johnny pulled up a stool and sat down while Napoleon went behind the bar and grabbed a new bottle of Jack Daniels. Putting it on the bar in front of Johnny. While Johnny opened the bottle, Napoleon grabbed the half empty ice bucket out of the fridge along with two glasses.  The bottom of each glass reverberated against the other as he picked them up using his index finger and thumb at the edge of the glasses.  He set the glasses next to the bottle and ice.

    “Nice place you got here, Volatile,” said Johnny, lighting a cigarette. “Yeah, I’ll miss it”, Napoleon replied, putting ice in his glass as he sat in the stool next to Johnny. Once Napoleon had poured each of them a drink, they both settled in their seats and stared blankly at the mirror over the bar across from them.  Sinatra’s “One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)” started to play over the bar’s hidden speakers.

    “What about the girl?” Johnny asked as the cigarette smoke escaped his mouth. Napoleon shrugged, “What about her?” “You seen her lately?” asked Johnny. “Nah. Not in person at least.” Napoleon said with a slight grin as he set his newly emptied glass down. Johnny then cautiously asked, “So, you plan on it?” Napoleon didn’t answer. Instead he reached for the bottle and refilled his glass. He raised the glass to his lips, pausing the motion only to finally reply, “You know, she hated Jack Daniels.” Johnny chuckled slightly and said, “Yeah, so did you at one time. People change.”

    Napoleon reached into the side pocket of his suit jacket for a loose cigarette. Carrying around a half a pack of loose cigarettes this way was a habit he had picked up from Frank. He lit the cigarette with his chrome plated Zippo, a lighter he was never without and that was never without fuel. “I don’t change,” he said after taking a drag, smoke swirling heavy around his head.  Then turning slightly to Johnny, added, “I react”.

    No sooner than Napoleon had finished his sentence, Johnny was gone. Johnny hadn’t got up and walked out, he was just gone, vanished. No trace that he had touched his drink or smoked even one cigarette was visible. It was as if he had never really ever been there, only a figment of Napoleon’s imagination. The only thing left behind was an unused pack of matches from The Sands Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.

    None of this seemed strange to Napoleon. He knew what Johnny really was. He also knew that Johnny was gone for good. There was a bittersweet quality to this realization. After all, it was the end of an era. There were great times, mythical times. There were moments of greatness that would only be improved by memory. There were moments too, of darkness, that would need to be shoved further and further back into the recesses of his mind.  But the party was over and Napoleon knew it.

    Napoleon emptied his glass then set it back on the bar top. He got up from the barstool, and as he walked toward the door, he picked up the pack of matches that Johnny had left behind without even looking at them. He stopped at the door, took one last look at the bar and with a slightly reminiscent grin, and then he switched off the light.

    As darkness hit the bar, only Napoleon’s footsteps fading away and the final strains of Sinatra’s remorseful ballad could be heard.

“...for the road...the long...it’s so long...the long...very long...”