The Sum of All Happy Hours

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

Eddie comes in from the Staff Quarters with damp hair and his Ginslinger t-shirt, his gun and gunbelt already tucked into a neat roll that he sets under the bar. He sits on a stool for a while picking his Specials and writes them up on the chalkboard.

"Howdy, all you beautiful folken. Specials tonight are Love Potion #9, the After 18, and that old fav, the Manhattan. Come and get it!"

Comments

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

"The rose is...everything," Eddie says firmly. "It's very strange, I know."

[chelleuncurled]

"I'm getting used to very strange," Michelle smiles a little. "I'm afraid my job doesn't leave me a lot of time to contemplate the nature of the world. Although, I have nothing but time here."

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

Eddie laughs. "The nature of the world was my job in life. What's your job?"

[chelleuncurled]

"Counter-terrorism. I worked under the Department of Defense. If any of our enemies used magic, we would have really had problems."

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

"Yar." Eddie nods. "I can see that."

[chelleuncurled]

"Were you a bartender back home?" Michelle takes another sip of her drink.

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

Eddie laughs again. "I'm complicated. I was a part-time bartender for a few years before heroin addiction got to be a full-time job."

[chelleuncurled]

Michelle nods. "I used to work with...a friend of mine was addicted to heroin, it's a very dangerous substance."

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

"You say true. It's not a monkey on your back, it's a big fuckin baboon."

"It got my brother, but I got a second chance. In that life I was... well, a bit like you, I guess. I was in the saving the world business. Then I died and... here I am."

[chelleuncurled]

"Yeah, my friend was surprised when he got hooked, I think."

"I'm sorry," Michelle says, knowing quite a few dead people in the bar. "Are there other people from your place here?"

She smiles a little, "I don't know how much I was trying to save the world, more like LA."

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

"LA is part of the world. Marginally." Eddie smirks.

"Um. A few, yes, in a manner of speaking. People I know from my life after I left New York. My family, really. Anybody around besides your ex?"

[chelleuncurled]

"Somedays I wonder," Michelle smirks in return.

She nods, "Family is important, by blood or otherwise. Somehow, most of the people I worked with are here. I met my ex at work."

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

Eddie nods. "None of mine here is by blood. We call it ka-tet, a group brought together by a common purpose. Or by fate."

[chelleuncurled]

Michelle thinks about the people from home in the bar, yes, they had a common purpose, but were they family...she's not sure.

"I can understand that," she says after a moment and takes another sip of her drink. "Did you get to do a lot of bartending in your second life?"

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

He laughs. "Not a damn bit. Did a lot of travelling and a lot of shooting."

[chelleuncurled]

"Oh, you shoot?"

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

Eddie's smile this time--he has a large collection of them is wide and slow and lazy. "Oh, yar."

[chelleuncurled]

"What kind of gun do you use?" Michelle's curious.

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

Eddie pulls his gun out from under the bar, where it's wrapped in a lovingly-maintained leather ammo-belt with a holster on one side.

The gun itself is an enormous and heavy six shot revolver, ancient-seeming but still in good repair. In fact, in perfect condition. The butt is of sandalwood, polished to a low shine both by work and the constant passage of hands--this is a heirloom, in constant use but always well-cared for. There are raised shapes along the steel barrel; one of them, near the tip, is an arching rose.

It looks like it loads forty-five caliber ammo. Steel plates have been fastened to the bottom of the butt, perhaps to weigh it properly to the hand.

Eddie handles it like it's Excalibur.

[chelleuncurled]

Michelle stares at it for a moment, having never seen a gun quite like it before in person.

"It's beautiful. You must take very good care of it. In my time we mostly use semi-automatics with clips. But some people still use revolvers."

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

Eddie nods. "I've used others, but this is... special. And if not for the reloading, I can pretty much keep up with a semi-automatic, if I have a hand free to fan the hammer."

[chelleuncurled]

"It looks special," she agrees. "I don't usually think of one gun as being any more or less special than the other, but since in my line of work we tend to lose guns often it's really not a good idea to get attached to one."

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

Eddie nods, putting it away. "There's none left like these in all the worlds--although," he laughs. "There are seven in this very bar. More than there's been in one place in a very, very long time."

[chelleuncurled]

"Each member of your family has one?" Michelle guesses. "It's really an exceptional looking gun."

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

Eddie shakes his head. "Not exactly. Traditionally, a gunslinger carries two of them. My... teacher lost the fingers of his right hand, so he passed this one on to me and kept one. Two of his friends are here, and they have two each, and then..."

He laughs. "My wife and I swapped this one back and forth. After I died, she kept it. I died with it, so this is, um, a ghost gun. She's got the real one."