TUESDAYS AT THE VULTURE LOUNGE
‘YOU KNOW, WHEN I first saw the place, I thought it said culture lounge.’
From the far end of the bar Noreen gave me a penetrating look, flipped a limp rag over her wing.
‘Eh?’
‘Culture. Poetry readings, berets, double basses – all that.’
She waddled over.
‘Sometimes I wonder about you, George, I really do. Nother?’
I pushed across my whisky glass. ‘Go on, then.’
It wasn’t as though I came here for the conversation.
*
I first noticed the place after a particularly contentious committee. We’d spent the morning agreeing the outline, a working-title, only to double back in the afternoon and unravel the whole thing. I’m all for picking over bones, but we could have just agreed to accomplish sod-all at the outset, then sloped off to the pub.
I came out of parliament and turned left instead of right, trying to shake off the dust. Glenys had been broody lately, and I couldn’t stand another nest-discussion, not before dinner. I waddled over hill and dale, ended up on Great Junction Street by the bookies and kebab-shops. At a pelican-crossing, I saw Noreen’s in neon, the outline of a rather handsome bird. It could have been me.
I hopped the kerb and headed inside.
*
It wasn’t much – a low bar, a few tables here and there – but the barman was a lady (nice plumage) and the prices seemed reasonable. I took my tumbler to a corner booth. It didn’t take long before thoughts of Daniel bubbled up. My successful brother, cruising the rarefied currents of the private sector, stripping the choicest carcasses before the plebs got wind.
‘How long’re you staying at that godforsaken hole, George?’ he’d say, in one of his interminable pep-talks. ‘Mine’s wide open. Could make some real coin.’
I was settling into some serious maundering when a shadow fell across the table.
‘You look like shit. Mind if I join you?’
It was just crass enough to jolt me from my stupor, and I laughed, waved a wing at the bench opposite. He heaved himself in.
‘Duncan.’
‘George.’
‘So, what’re you in for? I work at the department. They just let me out.’
‘Parliament – the same.’
We made a mournful chink, took another sip. He was a big bird, with variegated feathers, a great hooked beak and eyes all black, where mine were yellow. I could see the neon circle of the vulture’s dome winking in their depths. He looked about my age but livelier, somehow, burdens carried with a dash of humour instead of a bitter chain.
‘I’m in most Tuesdays after work.’
It was all it took for us to be friends.
*
He wasn’t there every week – then I drank alone – but a few months later, he beat me to the booth.
‘Saw the latest from your committee.’
I shook my head. ‘Don’t want to talk about that. The department, either.’ There was a gleam in his eye.
‘Alright. Family life?’
‘Same. I love her, Duncan, but you know – ’
‘Not really.’
He’d never married, had chicks. No plans for either. I looked around our little dive, the niceties clearly at an end. Noreen was polishing glasses. Big Chester, the ostrich on security, cracked his neck on the doorman’s stool. Beyond the bar was an alcove, an exit sign glowing above it.
‘That the way out?’
‘Yeah – eventually. Noreen put it up so the terminally-soused can find their way home. It’s a function room, mainly. The door’s through the back.’
I pointed in Chester’s direction.
‘Street’s right there. What are they doing, they don’t want to go out the front?’
‘Pissing their lives away, I’d imagine. Like your brother would say, only – well.’
This was interesting. I drained my whisky, sat up against the chipped back of the booth. Beyond the usual chuntering, he had something to say.
‘Well what? Go on.’
‘Don’t you have some sneaking sympathy with his view, now and again?’
‘Daniel’s? Certainly not!’ I’d been hearing the strains of money-is-wonderful since we first flapped out of the nest, and now Glenys was chipping in with her extra future expenses. I knew life was pricey. So what?
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really. I mean, parliament’s not perfect. A more scrofulous old bunch of fowls you couldn’t find. And the committees! Let me tell you – ’
But I was making his point; Daniel’s, too. Whisky choked through the clutch of bones in my craw, and I began to cough. Duncan whopped me on the back. In a minute it was over, and he sat back, smiling, over his glass.
‘Listen, you’d better not …’
He raised two bent feathers in surrender.
‘Not me! I work for the department, remember?’
*
She caught me on the way in.
‘Noreen, really. I can’t.’
‘There’s nobody else, George. You knew him.’
‘I sort of knew him – we drank together, now and then. What about his family?’
She twisted her damp cloth about, flipping it from wing to wing, wouldn’t look me in the eye.
‘Didn’t have one.’
‘Nobody? Parents?’
‘Nope.’
‘Siblings?’
She shook her head.
‘Little Duncans, running around?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘So it has to be me?’
‘It’s my place, I know, but I’m female, and anyway – it wouldn’t be right.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Back room, laid out. Ready.’
‘And who’s here, for the – ah, wake?’
‘Let’s see – you, me, Chester. Rory’s outside, somewhere.’
‘Rory?’
‘Does the pots. Come on.’
She took hold of me gravely, bowed her head. Nodded to Chester. He dropped off the stool and crackled his feathers, one by one, but didn’t take off his porkpie hat. I had to give her credit: tablecloth, pillow, finger-bowls laid out like little mountain pools. He would have felt at home. I looked round the four of us and considered saying a word, but we never spoke about anything much, and that seemed fitting.
Instead I raised my wing, exposed a talon and thinking of Daniel, dug in.
First published in To Say Nothing of the Dog: Flash Fiction (Cyberwit, 2023)
Next: Went to Bed Fine, Woke Up Dead