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]

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."

[chelleuncurled]

Michelle nods, the extra gun makes sense. "Your wife is here? She must have been happy to see you." Michelle thinks that this bar does bring people together, even if one of them is dead.

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

He nods, smiling. "You wouldn't believe how happy. I'd been dead three or four months, from her perspective."

[chelleuncurled]

Michelle smiles in return. "I can imagine. A friend of mine from home, his wife showed up here and she'd been dead a few years. Sometimes I think this Bar is a really good place."

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

Eddie nods. "I think it really is. I wouldn't work for it if I didn't."

[chelleuncurled]

"How long have you been here?"

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

"Since late January... three months, now."

[chelleuncurled]

"I've been here...I think almost three weeks, it's hard to keep track of time. Which is odd because at home time was always so important."

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

Eddie nods. "Time here is strange. It was strange where I came from too, so I'm mostly used to it, but it takes time to adjust."

[chelleuncurled]

"Are there 24 hours in a day here?" Michelle wonders.

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

"As far as I know. There's a clock," Eddie points at the clock. Which has four arms right now, one of which seems to be going into the face.

[chelleuncurled]

Michelle looks at the clock, which she'd never noticed before. "Well, not as helpful as a digital read-out."

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

The bar obligingly produces a digital clock, which informs them it is currently nineteen minutes and twenty four seconds past forty-two o'clock.

[chelleuncurled]

Michelle blinks and laughs a little, "I probably should know better than to ask what time it is at the end of the Universe."

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

The clock melts back into the bar. "Better than 'too late,' I guess."

[chelleuncurled]

She nods, "Or a 'time's up'"

[no-prisoner.livejournal.com]

He laughs. "Time is a face on the water, anyway."