FFXIV Write 2024

24 - Bar

Husband had news for me when I met him at the bar for his bouncer shift. "Looks like we won't have a bar for a couple weeks. Sam wants a vacation. Says he hasn't had one for a while."

"So the bar will simply close?"

"Nobody else to run it."

"Perhaps we could run it? How different is serving beer to adults from serving pretzels and pies to children?"

"Enough that they don't have beer at the diner."

"You like to theorize, Husband. What could go wrong?"

Husband's eyes wandered over the room. "Let's see...Garleans could figure out how to do rifts and invade Earth through the bar."

"If the rift fits in the bar, it will be small enough for us to hold them off."

"Voidsent."

"We can handle voidsent if we can pull aggro."

"Someone summons a primal."

"He would need crystals. We take his crystals away. We always need crystals."

He thought for a moment. "Deputy Frank could come in and check our liquor license."

"Why would he do that?"

"Because he's an asshole and he doesn't like us?"

"This is true." I sighed. The bar was not a very pretty place, but it was still part of what we thought of as home. "What will we do without a bar for two weeks?"

"Find another bar? How about Murray's?"

"You only like it because the men there worship you after the healing you did. And I do not like their Pepsi."

"Paulie's Pub?"

"The fern bar in Tulsa? It is all the way in Tulsa. And...ferns."

Husband brought out his phone and searched for things. "Well...there's a cowboy bar in Stillwater..."

"What is a cowboy bar?"

"Boots and big hats. Cheap beer. And a mechanical bull."

Husband showed me a video of a cow-shaped thing a man sat on. It spun and bounced and eventually threw the man off.

"Why would someone ride that?"

"To try to stay on. Earn the praise and adulation of the crowd."

I considered the screen a moment. "Are you prepared to praise and adulate me?"

"Always, my love."