Ray of Sunshine
A random super short story
The G.O.A.T. had a black goat painted on the window wearing a crown.
Nico saw it every time the door swung open and let in heat from the parking lot. He’d been on the same stool an hour, working on a Macallan 18 Sherry Oak he couldn’t afford. Dee, poured it without asking questions. That was why people came in here. Not for the goat.
A guy came in around eleven wearing a cloud of filth. Tattered jeans, soiled overcoat, mittens as earmuffs. He had a denim jacket folded over one arm. Mid-forties maybe. Face gone narrow from missing meals. Hair cut with a pocket mirror.
He stopped when he saw Nico.
“Well,” the guy said. “There you are.”
Nico kept his hand on the glass.
The guy smiled some. “You always did know how to make a man feel welcome.”
Dee came over, eyed the new guy and said, “You buying or visiting?”
“Rye,” the guy said. “Cheap.”
“You got money?”
The guy patted his shirt pocket, came up with light wad of bills, all ones. Dee took them, poured, moved off.
The guy sat tight to Nico like he belonged there. He wrapped both hands around the rye but didn’t drink it.
“You look good,” he said.
Nico said nothing.
The guy nodded. “Still mad, huh?”
Nico turned then. “Ray, you vanished with fourteen grand and my car. Had to explain that to people who don’t enjoy explanations.”
Ray finally sipped the rye. His eyes watered. “That car was a piece of shit.”
“It was my piece of shit, Ray.”
Ray looked at the back bar, all the bottles lit up soft and gold. “Macallan 18. You moved up.”
Nico took a sip.
Dee came back, set down a bowl of spiced nuts nobody asked for. “Keep it civil,” she said. “I mopped already.”
“We’re two old friends,” Ray said.
Dee looked at Nico.
Dee tapped the bar with one finger and went to the other end where a couple in golf clothes were fighting in whispers.
Ray let out a breath. “I need a favor.”
“There it is.”
“Yeah, I know but this is serious, Nico.”
Ray leaned in a little. The cigarette smell lived in his clothes, in his skin, maybe in his blood. “I got a girl outside.”
Nico stared at him. “Jesus, Ray.”
“No.”
Nico waited.
“She’s nineteen,” Ray said. “Maybe twenty. Her name’s Lila.”
Ray rubbed his jaw.
“She found me this week. I didn’t find her. Other way around.”
Nico took a longer, slower sip. It was stupidly smooth. He wished it tasted worse. Or cost less.
“And?”
“And some people are after her.”
Nico laughed. “That is always your music, Ray. Every time you walk in, somebody’s after somebody.”
“This time I’m serious.”
“You were serious the other times.”
Ray looked down at his glass. “I took something.”
“Of course.”
“Not money.”
“That narrows it to everything else.”
Ray was quiet long enough that Nico turned to look at him again. Ray said, “A ledger.”
Nico almost smiled. “You came into a place called The G.O.A.T. to tell me a story from 1978.”
“It’s on a phone,” Ray said. “Not a paper ledger. I know what year it is.”
Nico sat back.
“Who from?”
Ray took another drink. “A guy called Bevins.”
Nico felt something settle wrong in his stomach. “Tommy Bevins?”
“You know him?”
“I know he owns half the vending machines in the city and all the men you don’t want knocking after midnight.”
Ray nodded. “Then you get why I’m here.”
“No. I get why you’re scared. Not the same thing.”
Ray reached into the denim jacket folded on his lap. Nico’s shoulder tightened. Ray brought out a phone with a cracked screen and set it on the bar between them.
“Take her somewhere,” Ray said. “Tonight. I’ll go the other way.”
Nico looked at the phone but didn’t touch it. “You want me to carry your problem because you think I’m still dumb.”
“No,” Ray said. “Because you’re all I got. I’m dead, Nico. Dead.”
Nico let that sit there.
Outside, headlights slid across the front window. A pickup slowed in the lot.
Dee looked up from drying glasses.
Ray saw it too. The color went out of his face. “That’ll be them.”
Nico didn’t move. “How many?”
“In the truck? Two maybe.”
“Maybe.”
“There was a sedan before. I lost it by the highway.”
“You’re having a stellar week, Ray.”
Ray put his hand over the phone. “Lila’s in the ladies’ room. She doesn’t know what this is, not really. She thinks it’s about me.”
“It is about you.”
Ray looked at him then, and for the first time he seemed too tired to lie. “This part isn’t.”
The pickup stopped outside the bar. Engine idling.
Dee set down the glass. “Friends of yours?”
Nobody answered.
The front door opened. Two men came in wearing work shirts and hard faces. Clean boots. No rush to them. They looked around once and saw Ray.
One of them said, “Evening.”
Ray’s hand came off the phone.
Nico finished the Macallan, set the glass down, and said to Dee, “Pour me another. Looks like I’m staying.”