The Old Corner Bar

The downtown streets were deserted one scorching afternoon last week when, looking for shelter, I spotted the sign of the tipped cocktail glass in the concrete floor of an entryway where an unfamiliar, dark doorway stood open, and in search of relief from the stifling heat I stepped inside. Cool, still air met my face and a blinding darkness filled my eyes. I touched my left hand to the paneled wall for balance, and waited. Familiar sounds -- liquor and ice into glass, glass onto wood, a wooden chairleg's judder as it shifted on a worn linoleum floor, low voices, subdued laughter -- all circulated through the ebbing darkness as, one by one, elements of vision revealed themselves to me. The bottles, beer mats, glassware, the long-polished brass, were comforting, just what I expected to see. And then there were the faces. One by one the faces of a barmaid and ten or so regulars (or so they appeared to be) became visible to my blinking eyes, all of them, men and women, in their 70s or 80s I would guess, and every one of them dead.

Odd enough to find a bar filled with dead people; odder still to see them talking with each other, playing cards, walking back from the restrooms. But they were dead, alright. These were faces I'd seen, smiling or stern, in the obituary pages, their lives summed up in a paragraph or two. "Loving husband," "Devoted daughter," "Avid sportsman;" dates in, dates out; survived or preceded by any number of dear friends and relations. Cherished in the hearts of.

Some of these I had known in life, at least in passing. There was Fred Miller the retired postman. Mrs. Belson, who volunteered at the library and was a great-grandmother. Others were less familiar. But they all seemed to know one another. And they all had an air of calm, and absence of urgency that would put the retired seniors of life to shame.

The barmaid seemed to sense my unease and beckoned me over. "Don't worry," she said. "You don't have to stay. You can just have a drink if you like."

"What is this place?" I asked her, accepting the scotch on the rocks I hadn't even named. Some bartenders know.