Play One on TV

Warning: amateur short story ahead. You have been warned. Rated “M” for mediocre.

It’s eleven o’clock at night, the bar is completely empty, and the rain is coming down in sheets, just as it has for the last twenty days. A gust of wind temporarily diverts the fall of raindrops onto the face of the front window, and I scowl silently at the patterns of light as they shimmer and distort through the running rivulets.

Normally, rainy weather fills this place to overflowing — nothing like a cozy bar and a warm drink to shake off the drizzles. But this isn’t any ordinary drizzle. It’s not even a simple thunderstorm. It’s a monsoon; a visiting river on the way down from Cloud 9; a redistribution of the Earth’s oceans. Nobody goes out in a rain like this. Why risk losing your car to the raging torrent that was once 5th Avenue just to have a drink at Joe’s Friendly Tavern?

I’m disgusted. No customers the entire evening, including the fellow who popped in to ask for directions, buying nothing, and leaving behind two ankle-deep puddles of water where his rain slicker took a chance to unload some of its burden. At least his footsteps washed off some of the mildew that has been creeping inward from the doorway.

I turn away from the endless gloom outside and stare at the television over the end of the bar, the only source of human conversation for the last seven hours. The oh-so-cute weathergirl is giving the forecast, prancing across a blue-screened graphic of the “Stormcenter 7-day Ultra-Forecast.” The volume is down, but I don’t need to hear to know what is being said — at least seven more days of heavy, torrential rains and a high of 78 degrees. Heat and humidity — what a surprise. I can almost hear the mildew rejoicing at its good fortune. The media is calling this “The Storm of the Century.” Considering that it’s 2006, that’s not really saying that much.

I am distracted from the televised carnage by the jangling of the bell that announces the opening of the front door. I installed the bell in a fit of nostalgia after seeing It’s a Wonderful Life. Yep, that’s the image I wanted — Martini’s place, sans the eggnog. But at this moment, I’m sorry I ever put in the damn thing because the sudden noise startles me into dropping the highball glass I’ve been polishing for the last four hours. It disappears in the darkness at my feet, the faint tinkle of shattering glass telling me I’ll never know if you can actually polish a hole in a highball glass.

“Oh, did I do that? Terribly sorry to startle you!”

The voice from behind me is British; it’s one of those formal, clipped, John-Cleese type dictions that years of Monty Python influence makes you laugh, whether or not the words are actually funny. I sigh. I don’t stock any foreign beers other than Guinness Stout, and they always order a stout — a single stout — which they nurse the entire night long.

A customer is a customer, even if he’s going to spend only five bucks and eat all my peanuts. I sigh and turn around, gingerly sidestepping the shards of glass at my feet. “No prob…” I stop in mid-sentence, realizing that there is a duck standing in my doorway.

It’s a white duck, the kind you see at the duck ponds. And he has a cane. Actually, more like a black walking stick.

“I say, old chap, do you have a stout, by any chance?”

Correction — a duck, with a walking stick, who has just ordered a stout. In English. Precise English. Who happens to be dripping water all over my entranceway as he ruffles his feathers. His beak opens, and John Cleese speaks again. “Sorry about the water, sport. Water off a duck’s back, don’t you know. Heh heh.” He stares at the floor. “Seems to be helping your mildew problem, though.”

My brain is warring between two extremes — trying to deal with this image of a walking, talking duck, and wondering how the heck one carries a walking stick without any actual hands. My pragmatic side takes over — a customer is a customer — and I wave expansively with my hand, “Take a seat, sir. You have the entire facility at your disposal.”

He gives one last shake of his tail and deposits his walking stick next to the hatstand. Waddling up to the bar, he gives an expert-looking flap of his wings and lands on the barstool nearest me. “Spofforth’s the name. I take it you’re the ‘Joe’ from the bright neon out front. Goodness, are those peanuts?”

Damn. I roll my eyes and curse my all-too-accurate predictions of dwindling profits on the slowest night of the year. I reach out and shove a bowl of Planter’s finest in his direction. “Many thanks, old fellow,” he says ever so precisely.

Serving him his stout, I try to casually find some way to say, “So, what brings a duck to my bar on a night like this?” I almost succeed in sounding nonchalant.

“Not a bad try, Mister Joe” he quips, and I would swear he was grinning. “Normally, people say something like ‘I think I’m going quackers’ or ‘can I put it on your bill.’ It’s not often that one of your type tries to pretend that everything is normal.”

“My type?” I’m turning away to retrieve the broom and dustpan, partly so I can clean up the broken glassware, but mainly in the vain hope that not looking at him will somehow normalize this conversation.

“You folks. Humans. You know — two legs, opposable thumbs, funny ideas about hairstyles. Humans normally try to laugh off anything that puzzles them. Come to think of it, that probably explains all the sitcoms about sex.”

“Ah, you mean my egalitarianism at having to serve… um… serve you,” I reply dryly as I bend over to sweep up the remains of the highball glass. “I’m a color-blind kind of guy. I’ll serve anyone regardless of their skin color.”

“Or feather color, eh?

“Uh, yeah.”

He chuckles and takes a sip. “You’re a better fellow than I. Don’t know if I could serve a Mallard. Filthy little things. Always eating all the watercress.”

I decide not to answer, mainly because I don’t know what watercress is. I continue my careful sweeping job. Just don’t look at him, I tell myself, and I’ll be okay.

The door creaks and the bell rings. Someone else has just walked in. My waterfowl companion shouts out, “Talley-ho, gents! There’s stout and peanuts here!”

Talley-ho? I didn’t think anyone actually said those words outside of a bad World War I movie. I peek over the edge of the bar, hoping to find someone who will verify my sanity, or at least cart me away to one who can.

Two more ducks. And their pet cat. The ducks are doing their ruffle-feather drying bit, and the cat is huddled against the wall, escaping the flying drops by scant inches. The cat is glaring at the ducks with almost human malevolence. I’m beginning to worry my next two customers will become someone else’s lunch.

Then the cat says, “Watch it with the water, idiots. I didn’t wear that damn slicker all night just to get myself wet right after I hang it to dry.” Sure enough, I spot a black rain-slicker dripping from one of the coathooks by the door, sized and shaped to fit either a very tiny baby or a talking cat that just walked into my bar.

They flap and/or leap their way to other barstools and order two more stouts and a whisky shot, the last from the decidedly American cat, Chicago most likely. He asks me to leave the bottle because “friends will be here soon.”

The ducks are making a run at emptying all the peanut bowls, but a second round of stouts loosens all my economic reluctance and I go in the back room for two more cans. When I come back out, I have orders for three bourbons, a club soda, and a Long Island Iced Tea from the pack of five dogs at table two. They wag their appreciation as I bring the bourbons and soda. The mixed drink takes a little longer to prepare — I’m picky about how I do my Long Island Tea — and by the time I’m finished, I find myself with another duck and three badgers at the bar, a smallish pony in the corner table, and what looks like a Galapagos tortoise slowly coming in the entranceway.

Just serve the drinks, I tell myself. A customer is a customer. I can always use Lysol spray later to get rid of the wet dog smell.

Business continues to build, and I have to hustle to keep up with the orders. I observe with approval that everyone, aside from the pony, is housetrained, so I don’t have to watch my step unless I’m serving the corner table. I begin to regret sending my hired help home early today. Although I remember that Liz, my favorite, has a goose down allergy that would have kept her away from table five.

Appearances notwithstanding, I am pleased to see that they’re all paying with cash — messing with the credit card machine would have slowed me down too much. “None of that plastic crap for me,” I hear from one of the porcupines as he picks his teeth with a spare quill. “Interest rates are dreadful. Not that it will matter much in a few weeks.”

In fact, I’m picking up quite a bit of conversation as I scuttle around serving these refugees from the city zoo. I discover they talk about a lot of the same things as my two-legged customers, with only the occasional screaming laugh to remind me that I’m dealing with a real gorilla and not just someone who looks like one.

“…this is a nice place. We’ll have to mention it to the Robertsons for when they come through…”

“..so you think they’ll cancel next week’s baseball games? I would have liked to see one more Yankees game…”

“…and he says to me, ‘if you think I’m going to chase one more squirrel, then you can take this job and…’”

“…yeah, my wife stayed at the hotel. Said the rain wasn’t her style. That’s a riot, huh?”

“…rain’s really coming down hard now, eh? Almost the proverbial cats and dogs. No offense meant, Lloyd…”

“Barkeep, more peanuts!”

This last is from Spofforth, my original mind-bending customer. He’s on his fourth stout, and I never would have guessed a duck could put it away like that. I crack open a can of cashews (he’s earned it) and, seeing as how everyone is either drinking, talking, or trotting to and from other tables, I settle down in front of him. “Spofforth, what’s this all about? You guys in town for a convention?”

“Um,” he says, trying to look sly in that special way that only the inebriated can do so badly, “You could say that. A convention. I say, that’s it exactly.”

“When’s it over?”

“Oh, in about twenty more days. Twenty days, hee hee!” He laughs at some private joke and takes another swig. “It’ll all be over in twenty more!”

“Uh-huh. So how do you keep the dogs from chasing the rabbits? Are they neutered or something?”

He grins again in that not-quite-a-grin way of his. “Ha. No, no, none of their type would qualify. Nope, we’re all required to be of good breeding stock.”

“Spofforth, shut up.” This from Lloyd the cat. He’s looking at my duck friend in a menacing way. Spofforth, three sheets to the wind, takes no notice. “No, no, it could never happen. The dogs and other carnivores are confined below C-deck.”

“Spofforth!” The cat is positively snarling and spitting.

“S’no problem, Lloyd old boy!” Spofforth slurs past his stout glass. “Th’ guy’s clueless. Like all of his kind.”

I barely hear him. Something about “C-Deck” sounds terribly familiar. I’ve seen this particular set of circumstances before. Animals. Lots of animals. Twenty days of rain. A racket from the corner table temporarily diverts my attention; a now-drunken pony is attempting to impress a toucan with a rather active Richard Simmons impression.

The sight of an upended pony brings the memory up to the fore. It’s a Gary Larson cartoon — one of those “Far Side” cartoons that used to be all the rage with the desk-calendar folks. I’m remembering one particular cartoon. There’s a bunch of animals on the top deck of a boat. And four hooves sticking in the air from a lifeless equine. And an old man glaring at the cheetahs, saying, “Well, so much for the unicorns. From now on, all carnivores are confined to C-deck.”

I stare out the window at the gray misty clouds and the endless rain, the light from the streetlamps flickering through the patterns on the pane. And I think to myself, not twenty days of rain, Joe. Forty days. I glance back at the television; at the “flood warning” logo plastered in the lower right corner. My gaze shifts back to the window, at the river of water threatening to well up over the curb and onto the sidewalk.

Forty days and nights.

I stare at Spofforth, who has his beak buried in the cashew bowl. I lean down and, speaking in almost a whisper, say a single word in a tone that only a drunken duck could hear.

“Ark.”

The bar goes silent. Every pair of eyes (eight from the spider at table seven) are fixed on me. The only sound is the muffled crunching from Spofforth’s beak as he drills to the bottom of the bowl. I hear him slur, “Yes, ol’ chshap. W’got ourselves an ark. Ol’ Noah, he’s a good fellow.”

Almost as one, my assorted clientele drop their money on the tabletops and begin to leave, silently. All except for the cat, who stares murderously at Spofforth and hisses “Way to spill the beans, Spoff. Better stay away from C-deck if you know what’s good for you.”

Within one minute it’s just me and my old pal Spofford, who finally decides to come up for air and a sip of his stout. He blinks at the sudden change in atmosphere, and looks around the vacated premises. “My, my, where did everyone go?”

I stare directly in his eyes. “Maybe it was something you said.”

He frowns at me, puzzled, then recognition crosses his face. “Oh. OH!” He is plainly horrified. “Dear me, I’m terribly sorry, Joe. Didn’t mean to lay that one on you. We’re supposed to keep quiet about it.”

“It? What ‘it?’”

“You know,” he says, jerking his head upwards. “He doesn’t want us talking about it to you folk. He doesn’t like unnecessary panic.” He jerks his head upward again, making it painfully obvious just which “He” to whom he refers.

I stare at Spofford for a few more seconds. And then I laugh. Not a chuckle, not a giggle, but a full belly-laugh that shakes the countertop.

“Well,” says the duck, “I’m surprised. I wouldn’t have expected you to take it like that.”

“That’s because I don’t believe you,” I say, turning to gather the empties from the bar top. “I remember my Sunday School classes from third grade. God promised never to destroy the world by flood.”

The duck pauses to consider this. “Well, I suppose he did. Genesis and all that.” He takes another sip and ponders this some more while I wipe down a table. “But, Joe, suppose he’s just going to destroy part of the world?”

“Yeah, right,” I reply, grabbing the broom to clean off the corner table. “God’s got it in for the San Fernando Valley. You had me going for a minute, old Spoff.”

The duck is silent for the next ten minutes as I continue to clean. Satisfied that things will keep until I close, I return to the bar and stare at him again. He looks around uncomfortably, as if he wants to say something but can’t find the words. Finally, he pulls some money out of a hidden pocket and hands me $200 dollars.

“Keep the change, Joe. I won’t need it.”

I snort. “Sure, because they don’t use money on Noah’s Ark, right?”

“Except…” and he pauses again, uncomfortably. Finally, he blurts out, “I don’t suppose I could talk you out of a couple of cans of those cashews? None are in the ration supplies, don’t you know.”

I grin and pass him my last two cans. “Here. They’re even honey-roasted.”

“Smashing.”

I ring up the sale and push the cash in the drawer. I feel the humor slowly sliding out of me, being replaced by weariness. I worked hard the last two hours, and my body is feeling it. I stare at the register for a second, then turn back to the duck. He has left the barstool and is collecting his walking stick.

“Spofforth, can I come along?” I want that to sound like a jest. I know it didn’t.

He looks at me with pity in his eyes. Pity – from a duck. How low can I go?

“Afraid not. Don’t get me wrong, old boy – there’s nothing wrong with asking. After all, last time around everyone made fun of old Noah, and nobody asked the important questions until it was too late. No, the operative phrase for Him is ‘ask and ye shall receive.’”

“Uh-huh.”

“You see,” he says, waddling back to me, “the problem is that you don’t have a mate. Breeding stock and all. Er… I don’t suppose there’s a wife or something…”

“No, no,” I interrupt, shaking my head. “She’s past history.”

“Oh,” he says with disappointment, hanging his head. Then he pulls two objects out of that hidden pocket. “Well, you seem like a nice chap. If you happen to get a wife before tomorrow morning, you’ll want these.”

He shoves the objects across the bar. I find myself holding two red pieces of paper. “Tickets for Noah’s Ark: The Sequel,” I read aloud. There’s an address down by the ocean, a dock number, and a departure time at noon tomorrow. I stare at the fine print at the bottom. Seating on an availability basis only. Two by two, please.

The jangling of the bell shocks me out of my reverie. My waterfowl friend is gone, leaving nothing but the faint odor of down and stale stout.

I return my attention to the tickets. They look nicely done, right down to the tamper-resistant ink and the anti-counterfeiting hologram stickers.

The bell jangles one more time, startling me to the point that I resolve at that very moment to take it down next chance I get. I look up and see a woman walking in. She hangs a soaked raincoat on one of the hooks and walks up to the seat recently vacated by the duck.

“Whew!” she says. “It’s raining cats and dogs out there!”

I grin in spite of myself. “You don’t know the half of it. What can I get you?”

She smiles back at me, and I realize she’s quite nice looking. About my age, too. “Scotch, neat.” She looks around. “Do I smell a cat or something?”

“Maybe,” I say as I pour her drink. “One of the customers was… um, one of my earlier customers had a cat with her.” I hand her the drink and she stands up to walk to one of the tables. I notice she has nice, wide hips. “Good for childbearing,” I mutter to myself.

“What?” she says, turning to me and giving me another one of her pretty grins. She was a brunette, I noticed. I liked brunettes.

“Sorry, just talking to myself.”

She sits down, still smiling at me. “Well, it’s a good thing she’s gone. I’m horribly allergic to felines. So, why is a nice looking fellow like you talking to himself on a Saturday night?”

I laugh politely and look down. The red tickets stare at me from the top of the bar. I mentally compute the hour, the distance to my house, and the time it would take to pack. I pick up the bottle, another glass, and walk around the bar to her table. Thankfully, she doesn’t look at all offended; in fact, she pulls a chair out for me.

“Well,” I say as I sit next to her, “if you’re allergic to cats, you could always stay above C-deck.”

“What?” she says, smiling once more in a way that takes my breath away.

I pour myself a drink. “Tell me,” I begin, “How do you feel about boat rides?”