Good Luck Charlie - The Vu Villa
Poem by Nathan Truzzolino
Written in the style of the scoundrel Charles Bukowski
The pizza sucked that night. NFGs working both bar and pie station.
The nag that was once arm candy - guilts me into dinner at the Vu
Vu pizza always sucks. Now another couple joins our booth.
They suck just as much as the wet New York style pizza.
“I’m getting drunk.” I say to the ceiling.
Only the floor hears me.
Bartender tinkers with a circuit board - soldering wires and nodes
Everyone in this bar is an engineer. Except for me. And except for Charlie.
Charlie sits in the direct middle of the bar. Head resting on intoxictated wood.
Like a cartoon hound patiently waiting to catch the scent.
“I’ll have a hammer and some nails.” I say to the repair man.
He stares at me, pissed I hindered his hobby.
“I need a pitcher of beer and four shots of tequila. The kind that removes grease stains.”
Charlie’s head picks up off the bar. Two football players darken the front door.
New scent Charlie thinks.
Bartender Stark goes to fetch my cure as the studs limp towards the billiards.
The wind shifts. PH in the room rolls acidic. Charlies hands come alive.
The broken money till, the one Iron Man is fixing, sits unattended and gaping.
Fours shot glasses are set along the fire line. Four shots primed. The wind shifts.
The smell of far away Mexico singes my nose hair. The fire is lit.
My axe hand gets to swinging.
One shot. Two Shot. Three Shot. Four.
Charlie now has the broken till in hand and is out the door.
The linebacker and full back flash behind Charlie Hound.
Decades of training and substance abuse has finally crescendoed.
I lift the draft beer in pitcher form and return to the lint covered arm candy and her flat land friends.
The beer sloshes north to south. Now this, east to west.
The rotten Jolly Rancher asks “What was all the hullaballoo?”
“Charlie” I say
Black dead eyes stare through me then shift towards the flashing lights outside.
“Charlie could have come to Mexico with me. We could have been Sal and Dean.”
There and then. The tequila to keep us clean.
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Nathan Truzzolino is the author of
‘Middle of The End: A Novel’
Available for purchase on Amazon.com