line-up

Zazu sat slouched, shoulders rounded. He lifted the thick glass and heard the ice cubes clink and rattle. He placed it back on the oak bar and pushed it away from him toward the thin woman. She had her back to Zazu and watched him in the mirror. She polished a glass with a crisp white towel, a long cigarette dangling from her red lips, smoke curling upward.
"Did you know that the poles are going to shift in the next few years?" she said, squinting into the mirror as the snake of smoke tickled her eyes. "North will be south, south north."
"I am the walrus," Zazu said.
The barkeeper poured Pernod into a clean glass, added ice, and watched the liquid turn milky. She turned and slid the glass across the polished wood toward Zazu, then she placed an envelope on the bar.
Outside, waiting in the drizzle, three men sat in an idling Citroen.


(went to a local barber shop and a guy in a chair sees me in the mirror and yells out, "Yo, an Irishman!!")