The Beigey in the Ache

Jose’s headache reminded him of a girl he’d dated in high school. Her name was Mina. She’d seemed okay at first, but in the end she slashed his tires, shaved off his eyebrows and left a used tampon in his locker. This headache seemed just as vindictive. (And just as likely to overreact if he got drunk and accepted a handie from her best friend.)

Jose had spent the better part of the afternoon sniffing around for the whereabouts of the guy who’d stolen his client’s pancake collection. Jose had wondered why the client would go to so much trouble for a suitcase full of flapjacks, but the poor sap kept saying one of the larger ones looked like Captain Steubing, so it was somewhat understandable.

Still, four hours of walking the pavement had left his dogs sore and his head pounding.

During his travels in the Orient, Jose had studied under a jiu jitsu master who’d said that headaches were a sign of a weak mind. The master smoked five ounces of opium a week, so Jose took anything the guy said with a grain of salt.

Jose weighed his options and found ‘em a couple of pounds shy. He could ignore his headache and bulldog his way through another three hours of turning over stones to see if his particular worm was excreting some mud down there. Or he could call it an afternoon and see if he could drown his headache in bourbon.

Just then, the sun peeked out from behind a cloud and the light stabbed into Jose’s eyes like a fat lady spearing the last olive in the jar. Screw the hotcakes, then.

Jose staggered a ways down the sidewalk, holding his temples as tightly as a Family Values Republican holds his gay lover’s penis.

After a block and a half, Jose saw a guy stumble out of a doorway and vomit on his shoes. “Looks like a bar to me,” Jose would have thought if his brain had been capable of overcoming the massive pounding long enough to fire off a coherent message.

Jose clawed his way onto the nearest bar stool and tried to bring the old man behind the bar into focus.

“Listen, Cappy,” Jose managed to say, “I need a bourbon like a guy with three balls needs a custom-made jockstrap.”

“You're in luck,” the old man shot back, “we just decided we’d make more money if we stopped not selling booze.” He slid a lowball glass down the bar and Jose did a magic trick and made the liquor disappear.

Jose was just about to send a second glass down his throat to keep the first one company when two guys roughly the size of Saturn waltzed in.

They made a beeline for Jose’s barstool and the bigger one decided to tickle Jose’s side with a .38.

“Get up, Shamus. We got someone wants to talk to you.”

The gun dug into Jose’s ribs like a homeless chick at Tony Roma’s. These two neanderthals meant business. And not a fun business, like a muffin basket delivery service.

“Easy, Hoss,” Jose said. “You keep poking me with that pea-shooter and I’m gonna start thinking you don’t like me.”

“Up,” the other guy said.

“Why, that’s one of my favorite directions,” Jose quipped. He was happy to find that the bourbon seemed to have jumpstarted his inner Noel Coward.

He started to go with the goonasauruses when the old man behind the bar waved him back over. The geezer handed over another glass of brown liquid.

“You look like you’re gonna need this,” the old man said, with that special kind of geriatric twinkle in his eyes that could be a cataract.

“Thanks, pappy,” Jose said. Then he allowed himself to be steered toward the door, wondering just who he’d pissed off this time.



Happy Birthday, Beigey!