Introduction to the Mad Three

The first part of this story: The Aftermath

I couldn’t believe how well my luck was going.

When I had first suggested the idea of opening up a bar, I hadn’t bothered putting in much thought about the process.  Both liquor and pretty girls were intimately involved in my life, and a bar seemed like the perfect place to bring those two items together.  And trust me, I’ve been to a lot of bars.  I’ve met the employees, and they don’t seem to have any more clue than I do.  How hard could it be?

Of course, I had a couple buddies who were all too willing to help out.  Manny, a regular at most of my favorite hangouts, is built like an ogre, and was more than happy to hang around the bar and lean on anyone who gave us trouble.  He also knew a guy who was just itching to make use of his bartending certification.  That was especially nice, because I wouldn’t drink anything Corkscrew hands me.

Speaking of the crazy roommate, Corkscrew managed to be useful for one time in his off-kilter life!  I don’t know how he knew about that empty building, furnished and everything, just waiting for us to make use of it.  He probably overheard about it from another person in the psych ward.  Regardless, it all was coming together!  Even more than usual, I couldn’t wait for the weekend.

Once we divvied up positions, I knew that I had to be the front man.  And despite what you think, it wasn’t just about the girls.  The first employee that the patrons meet needs to charm them, needs to keep the party atmosphere rolling (and the juices flowing).  Jack would bore our customers to sleep, and Corkscrew would burn the bar down before midnight.  The girls were really just a side perk.

As the bar opened, I was excelling at my role.  Bobbing from group to group, learning all the names I could, and being charming and welcoming to everyone.  Of course, the easiest way to be charming is to arrive with free drinks.  When we had gone shopping earlier that day, we had picked up a lot of vodka, so I made sure to greet new groups with martinis in hand.  As an added bonus, the martinis went over very well with the groups of girls coming in!

I walk up to each group of girls, drinks in hand, and announce that they’re fortunate enough to have arrived on martini night!  Seriously, I’m a marketing genius.

About halfway through the night, as I’m walking towards the back of the bar to check on the other groups of patrons, and I run into Corkscrew.  Literally.  Fortunately, the vodka bottle he’s holding doesn’t break or spill on my nice clothes.

“Hey, you might not want to go in the back room,” Corkscrew told me.  “Jack’s feeling a little hot under the collar.”  He giggled.  “And above the collar, too.”

What?  I have no idea what he’s talking about.  My face must have showed this confusion.

“There’s a thief in the bar,” Corkscrew elaborates.  “We don’t know who, but I’ve got a plan to handle it!”  He went running off towards the bar.

A thief wasn’t really for me to deal with, but the night was going amazingly and I didn’t want any big disruptions.  I made my way back to the front of the bar, and tapped Manny on the shoulder.  “Yo, Manny, I’ve heard that there’s a thief in here somewhere,” I said discreetly into his ear.  “Keep an eye out for anything suspicious, okay?”  He nodded back at me.

I turned away, but then a sudden thought popped into my mind.  “Hey, take this,” I told Manny, pulling a small tube from my pocket and passing it over to him.  I didn’t know why Corkscrew was carrying a can of pepper spray in his jacket, but I was glad I had liberated it from his pocket.

Now, back to the fun part!  Indeed, a group of ridiculously hot girls was just entering, looking around expectantly.  I hurried over to the bar, catching the eye of Manny’s bartender friend.  I held up 3 fingers, and he nodded, grabbing for martini glasses.  Drinks in hand, I spread a wide smile across my face and approached the girls.

“Hello, ladies!” I said jovially.  “Welcome to martini night!  Your first drink is on the house!”  I passed over the glasses.

Two of the girls returned my winning smile, but the third immediately took a drink and started coughing and choking.  The other girls’ smiles disappeared as they turned to their companion.

“Oh my god!” one of the girls exclaimed.  “Are these roofies?  Are you trying to roofie us?”

“Of course not!  I’m not sure what happened to your friend, but we just want to make sure you have a wonderful time at our bar tonight!” I said.  Or at least, that’s what I was intending to say.  I was interrupted at the third word by the choking girl hurling her drink into my face.

This time, I was the one choking out, “Oh my god!”  I don’t know what was in that drink, but my entire face was on fire.  I could barely see and I felt like someone had just seared me with a flamethrower.  Abandoning the girls, I stumbled to the back room, where I vaguely remembered seeing a sink.

I made it to the back room, only knocking a couple people out of the way, and forced as much of my face under the faucet as possible.  After a minute or two, the pain had subsided slightly, and I stepped out into the back room.  As I moaned, I saw something move out of the corner of my tear-stained eyes.  Someone was laying on the couch.

Through a veil of tears, I could make out Jack, also clutching his eyes.  “What happened to you?” I asked.

“Corkscrew,” he replied simply.  “And you?”

“Not sure,” I said, but I had a sneaking suspicion that Corkscrew was also to blame.  Somehow.

Dropping into a chair, I sat with my roommate in shared companionable pain.  As we waited for the burning to decrease, however, we could hear the sound level from the front room rising.  And the voices didn’t sound happy…

What’s going on? Maybe Corkscrew’s perspective will illuminate the situation…

Introduction to the Mad Three

The first part of this story: The Aftermath

THREAD #1: JACK’S NIGHT
Sitting in the back, staring down at the sheets of numbers and the piles of receipts, I felt like it was all going wrong.

Although I had put up the token protest that I knew my roommates would expect, I had initially been happy to be given back room duty.  Franco, of course, wanted to be out in the front, not doing any real work.  Corkscrew, the mad scientist, had elected to work at the bar, mixing up drinks alongside Franco’s bartender friend.  Neither of them had really wanted to handle the real stuff, the finances.

Now, that meant that I was in the back room of our makeshift bar, sitting next to a huge crate of booze that would, hopefully, last us through the night, staring down at the disturbingly high piles of receipts.  Every few minutes, I would be interrupted by either Corkscrew or the other bartender, whose name I hadn’t learned before the chaos of the night began.  The intruder would barge in, grab a bottle or two of the alcohol, and go rushing back out, into the fray of bar patrons.

At first, I had enjoyed being out of the way.  To be honest, I couldn’t believe that I’d gone along with Franco’s madcap idea in the first place.  Wasn’t I supposed to be the voice of reason?  Perhaps not believing that I had accepted a role in this crazy venture had led me to want to stay in back, not mingling among our drunk customers.

Of course, even though neither of my roommates wanted to deal with the finances, they had both tried to convince me to come out into the front room.  Franco, of course, had obvious intentions.  He had set the whole thing up as a way to meet drunk girls, and what would be a more perfect component of that plan than a private back office?  I shuddered to think of the mess he would have caused, had this room been given to him.

As for Corkscrew, he had also wanted the back office as his own.  Why?  I honestly haven’t the slightest clue.  The guy’s unreadable, like playing the Joker at poker.  He’s got plenty of expression, but such crazy thoughts that it’s impossible to predict what’s going on beneath that wild shock of blonde hair on his head.

Franco had landed a stinging insult on Corkscrew when he made his office request, of course.  “Why in the world would you need a back office?” he had sniped.  “The only company you’ve got any shot of entertaining tonight are the voices in your own head.”  With this, Franco strode out to the front, leaving Corkscrew sputtering in impotent anger behind.

I had listened to this with a half-smile on my face, but now, three hours into our six-hour night, there was trouble, and the smile had long since disappeared.  I did another count of the bottles, trying to be certain, but there was no denying it.  Even as I finished my count, Corkscrew ducked into the back office to pick up another bottle of vodka.

“Corkscrew,” I shouted at him, grabbing his arm.  “Dude, we have a problem.”

Corkscrew glanced over at me.  He had managed to find a black apron somewhere, but his gangly frame and wild blonde hair made him seem like a teenager playing dress-up.  “Yeah, no one’s ordering anything interesting!” he responded.  “I made up a whole custom drink menu, but no one wants to give it a shot!”

What?  I forced myself to stay on topic, a surprisingly difficult task around Corkscrew.  “No, we have a real problem!” I insisted.  “Look, as we ring up people, the receipts show up on my laptop back here.  And I’ve been counting the bottles of liquor as they go out to the front.  But we’re sending way more out to the front than we’re ringing up!  Somehow, some of the alcohol is disappearing without being purchased!”

Corkscrew’s eyes went wide.  “Someone’s stealing from us?” he gasped.  “No way!  I didn’t think we’d have to deal with this on the very first night!”

“This could be our last night!” I replied.  I didn’t know what to do, and felt a rising sense of helplessness.  We didn’t have cameras in place to look for thieves, due mainly to our inability to either afford or wire cameras.

Suddenly, Corkscrew opened his eyes wide; I had learned to recognize this as a worrying sign that an idea had entered his head.  “I know how to catch the thief!” he shouted.  “Watch this!”

Torn between trepidation and curiosity, I watched as Corkscrew retrieved an empty Grey Goose bottle, as well as his jacket that had been hanging over one of the chairs in the back room.  Lifting up a bottle of cheap bottom-shelf vodka, he poured it into the Grey Goose bottle, filling it about two-thirds of the way.  He then reached into his jacket pocket and, with a flourish, pulled out a small canister.

“Wait a minute.  Is that pepper spray?” I asked, taking a step back.  Corkscrew was dangerous enough by himself.  Corkscrew with a weapon?  Get ready to run.

“Oh, relax,” he responded.  “I’m not going to use it on you, just put some in the bottle!”  He aimed the nozzle into the neck of the Grey Goose bottle and pushed down, spraying the capsaicin down into the cheap vodka.  He held down the plunger for several seconds, until the flow trickled to a stop.

Corkscrew tossed the can of pepper spray carelessly onto the table beside the bottle.  “Huh,” he commented, patting down his pockets.  “I was sure that I had a second bottle of the stuff.  I guess one can will have to do.”  He put the cap on the bottle of capsaicin-laced vodka, giving it several shakes to mix the pepper spray with the alcohol.

I pointed at the discarded pepper spray.  “Look, I don’t think this is such a good idea,” I spoke up.  Yes, voice of reason has returned!

“Oh please, this will work perfectly,” said Corkscrew, his tone dismissive.  “And don’t worry, this canister’s all empty!”  He scooped it up, slamming his thumb down on the top of the can.  “See?”

Unfortunately for me, the canister was not quite empty, and one last spurt of mace burst from the nozzle, hitting me directly in the face.  I screamed as my vision faded into a white-hot blur, my hands flying up to my damaged eyes.

“Oh,” commented Corkscrew as I stumbled towards the small bathroom branching off the back office.  “I guess it wasn’t quite empty yet.  But don’t worry!” he called after me.  “I’ll take this out and catch our thief with it!”

Even though I knew that Corkscrew’s idea was not one of his better ones, there was no way that I could do anything to protest.  I spent at least fifteen minutes standing in the bathroom, flushing my eyes with water and doing my best to take deep, calming breaths.  Finally, when the pain had subsided to a deep and persistent throb, and I had regained some blurry semblance of vision, I stumbled back out to the office, half-collapsing onto the small couch against one wall.

I hadn’t been sitting long, still focusing on trying to breathe through the pain, when the back door opened.  I looked up, expecting to see either Corkscrew or the other bartender, returning for more liquor.

Much to my surprise, however, the intruder was none other than Franco.  Even more to my surprise, he was making small pained noises and holding his face.  Wait a minute.  Had he been maced as well?

Find out who the intruder is from Franco’s perspective!

Don’t recognize these characters?  Start here!

THE AFTERMATH

Jack moaned, trying to fight the urge to rub his streaming, painful eyes.  “I can’t believe it hurts this much,” he choked out, his voice hoarse.  “Seriously, how can any mugger even consider sticking with his career after he’s been shot by one of these?”

Beside him, Franco tried to laugh, but it turned into a hacking cough.  “You know, it fades after a couple hours,” he said.  “And at least pepper spray doesn’t leave any lasting damage, unlike a gun or something.”

“Figures that you would know how it feels to be maced,” Corkscrew gasped from his seat on the other side of the small office.

“Oh, shut up, you!” Franco retorted.  “Seriously, why do you have so much of this stuff, anyway?  I’m sure that this is all your fault somehow.”

“It’s for protection!” Corkscrew insisted back at him.  “Now that we’ve opened up a bar, we’re going to need to be safe, in case we have some unruly drunks accost us!”

Jack groaned, forcing his hands to stay on his head instead of clawing at his face as he half-listened to his two roommates argue.  From the onset of this idea, when Franco had walked into the living room and declared, “We need to open a bar!”, he had known that there would be trouble.

Surprisingly, things had seemed to go incredibly smoothly at first.  Franco had known a bouncer, as well as a bartender who was willing to pitch in on an untested project.  Naturally, Franco had all the connections necessary to set up a semi-legal enterprise.

Perhaps the most surprising fact, however, was that Corkscrew had provided the bar’s physical space.  One of his friends was a realtor, and he had been sitting on a commercial rental property that he’d been trying to move for months.  Ignoring jibes from Franco about actually providing something constructive for once, he had talked the realtor into letting the three roommates borrow the property for a few nights.

After that, it had been a pretty simple matter to order up some alcohol, pick up some signs, and get the bar set for opening night.  But somehow, somewhere during the night, things had taken a nasty left turn.  Now, all three of them were in the back room of the bar, in pain, incapable of going out, and worst of all, Jack had no idea quite how things went wrong.

First, let’s find out how Jack’s night went!

Jack watched enviously as Corkscrew swung the fishing pole.  With a soft zing, the line shot out, the bobber landing squarely in the middle of a particularly promising patch of reeds.  Within seconds, there was the tug on the line that indicated another bite.

“My god, Corkscrew, how are you doing it?” Jack asked, watching as his pal reeled in a decent size sunfish.

At the other end of the boat, Franco took another pull of beer.  His fishing rod was still sitting in a tangle in the trunk of the car.  He was jealously guarding the chest of drinks, however, and had slowly slumped further and further down into the boat as the morning had progressed.  “Don’t encourage him,” he muttered.

Corkscrew winked, grinning, as he worked the hook free.  “It’s all in the bait!” he said happily.  “Here, what are you putting on your hooks?”

Jack reeled in his own rod, inspecting the soggy worm on his hook before forlornly casting it back out into the pond.  “Worms,” he said.

“Ah, see that’s the problem!” Corkscrew enthused.  “You have to tailor your bait directly to the fish you’re after, and then adjust for water temperature, clarity, all the other factors!”

Franco groaned, and pulled his hat down lower over his eyes.  “He’s going to say something stupid, I just know it,” he griped.

Jack shot a quick glare at the complainer.  “Look, just because we chose Corkscrew’s idea for this weekend instead of yours doesn’t mean that you need to be so grumpy!” he ordered.

“Clubs in downtown would have been way more fun,” Franco responded, but he made sure his comments were low enough to be all but inaudible.  He finished the rest of his beer bottle, adding it to the others at the bottom of the boat.

Jack turned back to Corkscrew.  “So what are you using here?”

Corkscrew gestured out at the still waters of the pond.  “Well, we’ve got a sunny day, but rather murky water,” he said.  “So we want something with a bit of flash to it, to shine through the water, and something that will move, so it stands out in the still pond.”

Holding his rod in one hand, he reached down and flipped open the large tackle box at his feet.  “Here, try this,” he said, holding out a shiny spoon lure with several small, dangling hooks.  “It should be lightweight enough to dance in the water, catch their attention.”

Jack reeled in his line, attaching the new lure.  “I can’t believe you know so much about this,” he said in admiration.

“Oh, I’ve always been a great baiter,” Corkscrew replied, a smile dancing around the corners of his mouth.

“Here it comes,” Franco murmured, setting aside his beer and reaching into the water-filled bucket.

“In fact,” Corkscrew continued, you might say that I’m an expert in it.  A master.”  By now, he was grinning broadly.  “Yep, I’m the master baiter!  Ow!”

“Nice shot,” Jack said to Franco, who was wringing drops of water from his hand.  Alongside the boat, the fish that had just connected solidly with Corkscrew’s head was making the most of its chance to escape.

Author’s note: Yes, this whole thing was written so I would have a chance to make that pun.