The shift before happy hour at Pub Walyoy was anything but joyous.
While wiping dry the last of the lunch hour pint glasses, the barkeep emitted a despondent sigh as he glanced around his domain and the current collection of customers which occupied it therein;
An elderly gentleman thumbed through the jukebox in the corner for a sad and sweet song he knew from his youth.
One of the waitresses sits at a window booth with her nose beneath a textbook titled Intro to Political Theory.
At one end of the bar, an Ostanian Naval Officer speaks of his exploits during the war as his companion intensely transcribes these tales onto the pages of a beat-up journal.
While not the liveliest of collection of life forms, the bartender didn't have anything to complain about when all was said and done…at least not until he glances at the slumped and gloomy figure in the middle forlornly guzzling drink after drink while stealing an occasional scoop from the complementary bowl of pub snacks.
"Dalton, Dalton, Dalton." He muttered to himself while turning his back and tending to the sailor and aspiring novelist.
From the moment he entered ten minutes ago, whatever pomposity and swagger Dalton Koyner possessed in the face of ridicule deflated like clockwork. Pub Walyoy for him was the place where "Daybreak" could be taken off like a coat and hung somewhere while the man beneath the costume came to lick his wounds and drank away his self-pity…or at least he would, implying he were to order anything stronger than seltzer, or the occasional ginger ale. And if making chump change over Dalton's drink choices weren't enough to further irk the miffed mixologist, the customer in question would still find it in him to exhibit the belligerence and obstinance reserved for any normal inebriate; sprawling about, histrionically muttering to nobody, and always being a day late and a Dalc short on his already frugal tab.
Tossing down two Dalc for the drink and another in the tip jar, Dalton gives the testy tapster a tip of his pork-pie hat (to which he in turn replies with a snort and rude gesture, his way of saying 'we're even'). But just as he is about to peel himself off the stool, a rap at the window and muffled shouts from outside turns not only his head, but those of the rest of the patrons.
"Hey! Hey you with the hat!"
The contrast couldn't have been any starker as both men took the booth behind the waitress.
Rubin pulled the want ad out of his coat pocket and all but slammed it onto the table while waiting for the other man's response with the look of a hopeful puppy. By contrast, Dalton's face went from confusion to hurt as he held the want ad in his shaking hands.
With clenched teeth and tears in his eyes, memories the man with the pork-pie hat believed he'd long since suppressed began to bubble back with a vengeance as he whispered in perpetuity:
"A Bondman themed café?"