19 The Dealer by Benjamin Konuch As I walked through the familiar creaky old door, I was struck by how much the bar seemed untouched from my memories. I hadn’t been inside it for over a year but still, it felt comfortable. The air was warm, yet not overbearingly hot. Soft jazz music played from a speaker in the back, and tables and booths were tucked away in private, darker corners of the room. The bartender was making a drink behind the bar for the lone patron, a man seated at the bar with his head down. Wordlessly, I slipped into a stool one seat over from the other man, and the bartender nodded a greeting paired with a welcoming smile. “Alex! Been quite a while! How have you been?” Those words hung on the air for a moment as I stared at the bartender, a man whose face and name I had forgotten months ago, and I didn’t know how to respond. After an awkward pause, I gave a slow shrug before pulling out my phone to distract myself, and he understood the sentiment. “I’ll be with you in just one minute.” I nodded in answer and looked down at my phone while waiting, staring at the blank screen without even turning it on. If I did, I knew that I’d see texts from people I couldn’t answer, missed calls from my coworker James about our conversation, emails about work that I couldn’t get done, and reminders on every app that I had about why I was in that bar in the first place. “Rough day, stranger?” I was startled out of my thoughts by an unexpected voice, and I realized I had zoned out as I stared at the wedding ring on my hand again. I put the useless phone back on the
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