If you hadn't known it was Waipahu Depot Road, you would swear that you walked into a bar from the days of your father's father.
One bartender, an old, wasted, drunk couple who are so wrinkled and washed out by the red and blue lights, you couldn't tell how old they were. In the corner booth is seated a middle-aged local Filipino man, with one of those beautiful girls who is bad news from a mile away. She's got a 32-year-old mentality, but her body is all of 16 years old. She'll let this man get far enough to the point where he'll empty out the rent for the month from his wallet into her waiting hands. Once it's in her small purse, she'll lie and tell him that she has to go to the bathroom to take something that will keep her safe. It's only then that she lays a passionate kiss on him while slipping her hand into his pants, getting him ready. Once she's off, this poor sap will never see that girl or his money again.I sit myself at the bar and ask for a Jack Daniels and a Coke. "When's happy hour?"
"Right now," he says, laying my drink in front of me. "Can't you tell?"
I laid a twenty in front of him. "Keep 'um coming."
"Just get offa work, did you?" He asks.
"No, work starts now," I tell him. "You called for me, I believe. There's a problem with your establishment?"
"Oh," he stepped back as soon as the light came on. "You're the guy, and you're drinking before you do the thing?"
"Calms my nerves," I replied after taking a breath. "So, where?"
"Where?" He asked.
"The problem, where is the problem?" I raised my eyebrows.
"Oh yeah," he nodded and then pointed. "Over there, sitting in the corner booth."
The local Filipino man filled his mind with images of what was going to transpire between himself and his female companion. He'd had a few shots, but not to worry, he should be able to perform when the moment came. No pun intended. I took a seat next to him. "You're Fred Cachola, right?"
"Yeah, wassup?" He extended his hand, which I swatted away. He seemed stunned.
"You're about to lose your ass," I told him. "Follow me."
Reluctantly, he trailed behind me to the women's bathroom. The door swung open, and I kicked in the only stall door that was locked. There she was, about to climb out the sliding window into the alley, where her accomplice sat in an idling car. I pulled her down with one yank of her skirt. She went tumbling into the bathroom with layers of grime and yuck from who knows what and why. She hit her head pretty hard, so she was loopy. I took the $1,500 from her purse and placed it in Fred's hands.
"You're wife called me," I told him. "Nancy said the rent is due, and there's no food in the house. Get the fuck out of here, and don't come back. I've been instructed to beat the shit out of you if you don't listen."
"Ok, ok," he said with his hands up in front of him.
"Just to so you know I'm not talking shit," I said while grabbing the girl by the scruff of her blouse, and pulling her up to her feet. "Look at me, Fred, are you watching?"
"Yeah," he replied, not knowing what I meant.
"You can't leave until I'm done, Fred, do you understand? You walk out, I'll do it worse to you."
One punch to the girl's face shattered the orbital bone. The second broke her nose. The third dislocated her jaw. It was disconcerting for Fred, I know. However, his wife did ask me to make sure that he got the point. He was good about it; he stifled his scream until I was done. I let go of the girl's collar, and she crumbled to the floor.
"If I hadn't come along, and she took off with the money, that would have been the end for you because how were you going to explain to Nancy that you gave your entire paycheck to a 16-year-old girl because you thought she was gonna screw you?"
"16? She's 30, she said!" Fred freaked out.
"Even if you lied and told Nancy you lost it gambling, how were you going to feel if you ran into this girl at Safeway, or at Pearlridge somewhere, and she looks at you with a smirk, knowing you can't or do shit about the fact that she robbed you?" I asked him. "This is the best way to take care of it."
When we walked out of the women's bathroom and back through the lounge, Nancy was waiting for him at the bar. "Go home, Fred, don't ever come back."
After they walked out, I went back to the bar to finish off the rest of my tab.
"It's been nothing but wives coming through here looking for their husbands; it was starting to chase my customers away," the bartender lamented.
"You mean the husbands, who didn't expect to be responsible?" I joked.
"Something like that," he scoffed.
Just then, a skinny local Japanese boy dressed in powdered blue cotton polyester pants and a blue silk shirt walked in the front door. His shoes had white, thick, high heels. "You guys seen one girl go inside the bathroom?"
"She's in there," the bartender confirmed. "It's not good though, I don't know what you wanna do because she's beat up and the cops are on the way."
"Shit! Who did that?" He squeaked.
"The guy she was sitting with," I clicked in. "He was yelling something about her stealing his entire paycheck for rent, and stuff."
"Oh fuck that," the Japanese boy exclaimed. "You guys never saw me in here, alright? Plus, I get one gun, so you better shut up!"
"What kinda gun you got?" I asked. "Can I see it?"
"No, no, I gotta go! Maybe next time!" He ran out the door, and a second later, we saw a car drive past the front door. He was gone.
"I also have a ghost problem," the bartender offered. "You know anybody who can address that problem?"
"I could, but it depends on the problem?" I stated.
"It's my late wife," he began. "Her ghost or spirit or whatever, shows up every night and it jumps all over my shit about keeping this bar going!"
"You've been keeping it going, though," I said.
"She wants me to close shop and go do something else," he laughed. "Her spirit tells me that no more good can be done here. By the way, you're Keith Ronqullio, right?"
"It's K. R. Don't ever call me Keith to my face," I told him. "You get a free pass on that one, alright?"
"Yeah, sorry," he said.
"So, where is this ghost or spirit?" I asked.
"Upstairs, first room on the left," he pointed to the ceiling.
"The left?" That was weird. "I don't like it already."
I have this thing about left turns; if I don't have to take a left turn, I won't. I just don't like it. Yet, there it was at the top of the stairs, the first room on the left. Entering the room, there was the spirit of the bartender's wife. Bags under her eyes, hair pulled back in a makeshift bun. Wearing a loose tank top and a converted pair of shorts from pants that painters wear on the job. "Close the bar, it's no good already." Her voice was a whisper. "Close it down, before it closes on its own."
I went downstairs and relayed the message to the bartender. "Before it closes on its own? What does that mean?"
"I'm just saying what I heard," I shrugged. "She's not going away until you listen."
Right then, an enormous explosion tore through the kitchen and took out half the establishment. Because the bar was on the opposite side of the kitchen, the bartender and I got fucked up a bit, but we didn't die. The bartender was caught in a financial mire, but a good insurance lawyer got him through it. I was banged up still when I got out of the hospital, but I wasn't crippled, so I'll take that as a win. My Uber pulled up at the roundabout entrance at Straub, but another vehicle cut it off. That sorry ass looking Japanese boy jumped out of his old '75 Cutlass Supreme and ripped the crutches out of my hand. With his high-heeled white shoe, he kicked me on the side of the knee where all the stitches were still healing. His girlfriend, the one who was going to climb out of the bathroom window at the old bar with fifteen hundred dollars of Fred Cachola's money, came around the other side. She looked at me and smiled with her 16-year-old face that still bore the remnants from my beating it to shit.
"I got my jaw wired shut, got pins in my eye socket, and I had to get my nose fixed with plastic surgery, which actually turned out good because now my nose is straighter," she said. "Fair is fair, I'm only 16, you know?"
She used her new come fuck me pumps to stomp a shit hole all over my face, my head, my ears. She kept going until security finally came, but by that time her piece of shit Japanese boy, boyfriend, had already dragged her back to the Olds. I was checked on right there and then by a few doctors. They admitted me back into the hospital, where I got more surgery and more jello than I ever cared to have. No happy ending here, where I ride off into the sunset. Just the life I chose with all the consequences that come with it.
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