The Amazing Kreskin

Here's the next installment! Thanks for reading!

Inside the bar, men watched football on a small black and white television. On the muted set, a man lay on the field, coaches all around. I looked around the room, searching for anyone I recognized. I didn't see anyone so I went to the bar and ordered a screwdriver. Staking out a table in the back, I took my drink and focused my attention on the game. The man on the field was being carried away on a stretcher, and I thought that's the great thing about being hit really hard -- nobody expects you to keep playing.

"Do you know what time it is?" a man asked. He looked older than me, but not by much. He looked like a computer programmer, but I tried to let that go.
I pointed at a clock on the wall near the life-size Elvira advertising Coors.
"It's not as late as I thought," he said.

"Are you expecting someone?"

"Well, I met someone in a chat room the other day and we were going to meet here in person, but I don't see her. You're the only her I see and I don't think I'm that lucky."

I smiled. "You can sit down with me while you wait."

"Why is that section dark?" he asked, pointing at a string of orange jack-o-lantern lights strung up around the bar.

"It's one of those older sets. If one of the fuses blows, they all go. The newer ones don't have the same codependency issues," I said.

He laughed. "My name is Kevin."

"Alexa." The edge of the bar was lined with Halloween stockings in orange and black, the names of the employees in gold glitter cursive on the tops. The toes of the stockings bulged with candy.

"What are you having?" Kevin asked.

"A screwdriver," I said. He looked at me, and I knew what was coming next.

"You aren't from around here originally, are you?" My accent gives me away, every time.

"No."

"Don't." He put his hand to his forehead and said. "Let me guess."

"You're the Amazing Kreskin?"

He let his finger fall. "Who's he?"

"He reads mind. Bends spoons, all that. He read my mother's mind once. She sat in the audience thinking about a trip she was about to take. He kept saying, 'I see a foreign place and someone going to it, but she wouldn't stand up. He finally moved on, but she believed in him after that."

"Nothing like a woman who won't let you know when you're right," he said.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Every time I think that I'm getting old, and gradually going to the grave, something else happens"
Elvis Presley


Cocktail Hour
Drinking music suggestion: Tumbleweed Connection Elton John

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Friday!