Peril

ABE

He sat down behind his desk and stared at the pile of bills, the liquor stacked high in cardboard boxes, the calendar that hung from the wall like a condemned man. Nothing would change in this room, he thought, if nothing changed in his life. Someone would simply come in one day and find him curled over the desk or sprawled on the floor. That was the curtain he saw. End of Act Three.

And so he reached for the phone and dialed Lucille’s old number.

“Hello.”

“Samantha, it’s Abe.”

“Oh, hi.”

“Listen,” he began, then stopped and drew in a quick, uncertain breath. “Listen, about tonight. I thought maybe you should start off with something lively.”

“Okay.”

“Something to get their attention, you know. And then maybe end it with a ballad. Tug the heartstrings, you know?”

“All right.”

There was a pause, and he knew she was waiting for some final word. He considered his options for a moment, then charged ahead like a man out of the trenches.

“And one more thing,” he said. “I was thinking maybe we could have dinner before you come to the bar. You know, talk things over. Then we could go to the bar and maybe we could sit around awhile, and then, whenever you feel like it, you get up, do the songs.”

“Okay,” she said.

He gave her the name of the restaurant he’d already chosen just in case and told her to meet him there at eight. When she said fine, he hung up and sat back in his chair with a modest sense of achievement, not the thrill of winning the race, but at least the knowledge that when the starting gun fired, you came out of the gate.