I looked at Liz-S across the bar. “Hey, is this the last day you are the bar manager?” She smiled broadly, tossing her chestnut ponytail.

“I will stay, part time, but as of Monday I am an official grown up.”

“Awesome. It is about time. You are on your way.”

Friday’s at Willow are transitional days from the perils of the working week to the full-on activities of the weekend. People tend to skip happy hour to go home and get changed for date nights or clubbing, so we had the place to ourselves. Old Jim was in Vegas with Mary, and whatever they were up to is going to have to stay there. A week without him growling at us would have made me feel a little lonely, but Mac was there to buck us up.

Tracey O’Grady was standing at the end of the bar, hands on the hips of her white coat. “Hey, Tracey!” I called. “What is the special today?” She has been putting items on the menu for a limited time, like the Buffalo Beef Sandwiches on kemmelweck rolls.

“Gotta keep it fresh,” she said with a broad Irish grin. “I think you will like it. I have sushi with soft-shell crab or shrimp, or some all-beef Sahlen’s mini-wieners from my home town of Buffalo, New York, served with pomme frites and tempura pickles.”

“Holy smokes,” I said.

“Sort of like half-smokes, yes.”

“No, I mean I never thought I would see wieners on the menu at a fine dining place,” I said.

“It is the nosh for the night,” she said, and swept off toward the kitchen. Mac smiled in appreciation. This was another virgin night for him, damn the Doctors, and he liked to see the kids enjoy themselves in consolation.

The Master Chief swaggered in through the doors to the patio and slid into Jim’s usual chair next to Mac, and John-with-an-H pulled out the earbuds to his iPod. “Whaddaya think,” I asked. “Wieners or Sushi?”

Jasper, the other Guamanian to Mac, grinned from across the bar. “Sushi for me. It is like back in the islands.”

The Master Chief said he would try the wieners, and Mac took a sip of his Virgin Mary. I took a long pull from the crisp white wine, and asked Mac if we could tally the number of wars we had experience with. He wrinkled his brow. “I had two big ones on active duty,” he said. “I missed Korea.”

“I had to serve there, but no one died while I was there, or, better said, only the ones who were going to die anyway. No Red Letter days.”

“This is a Red Letter Day for me,” said John-with. He produced a slip of paper from his pocket. “I paid off my car.”

“The FX35?” I said.

He nodded. “Yep. Only 28,000 miles on the odometer. I am going to own it until I die. Of course they asked me if I wanted to shop for a new one and I said Hell No.”

“That is a nice raise every month, though the Infiniti people would rather have you replace it. Why aren’t you doing something to enhance the economy?”

“They will have to do it without me. That is one thing. The other is that this is the day the wheels came off the Obama Presidency.”

I snorted. “You mean the Brietbart discovery of that publishing brochure for his first book that claimed he was born in Kenya?” asked ISCM.

“I saw that. That site is pretty strange. It took about fifteen minutes for the Huffington Post to change the caption on the story to reflect the spin from the White House. I bet no one pays any attention to it.”

John-with looked disappointed. “Well, it turns out that the First Birther was actually the President himself. I remember when I first heard about Monica Lewinski. I was convinced Clinton was toast.”

“You were wrong about that, and the media will just ignore this like they do everything,” said Mac. “I don’t blame them. I have seen about everything in this town since we came back from the war.”

“I think he actually was born in Hawaii, don’t get me wrong. I think what it means is that he wasn’t thinking about the Presidency at the time and thought that was an advantage to seem foreign born.”

“Oh, you mean that stuff about him getting tuition aid as a foreign student? No one cares about that stuff anymore.”

“I think they have to pay attention to it. This is huge.”

“The White House says he never even saw the blurb from the publishers, and they just had it wrong, or were hyping the foreign-born aspect on that first book.”

“It wasn’t Dreams of My Father,” said the Master Chief. “It was some other project about race relations that he abandoned.”

“I think that explains a lot,” said John-with.

Jon-without and the Lovely Bea came in and sat down the bar. “Wait till you see what the Friday specials are,” I said. The Lovely Bea gave me one of those smiles that lights the whole dark bar.

“I mean, it really does explain a lot,” repeated John-with. “The whole stonewalling thing.”

“I think we are sort of beyond all this,” I said. “There is enough to talk about that is really screwed up rather than rehash whether the President claimed to be a foreigner when he was a kid. He might only have been thinking about being Mayor of Chicago at the time.”

“I think it is still an issue.”

I said it was just a war story from another war that had already been fought. Mac shook his head in agreement.

“I know something about that,” he said firmly. “Enough wars. Mine are pretty much done.”

The Master Chief looked dubious, and then smiled with the little plate with the tempura pickles, delicate French fries and lump little hot-dog on Kate Jansen’s delicate roll arrived in front of him.

“That looks fantastic,” I said, and snapped a shot of the Friday Special.

“Can we talk about something besides the presidential campaign? Something not so controversial?”

ISCM nodded. “How about chasing war criminals in Bosnia. That was interesting.” And so we did. Mac chimed in with his tales about the former Yugoslavia, back when it was a nation.

That, at least, was a war that was over.

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com