Hit Me With Your Best Shot but Wait Two Years
Okay you’re in a bar. It’s a working man’s bar, not a roost for fast trackers. You’ve got your butt on a cracked vinyl stool with a boiler maker in a front of you. The bartender is called Ernie. A ballgame is on but the TV is muted. There would be a haze of smoke but city ordnances forbid smoking. Drinking’s okay though. You get into an argument with a guy named Rafe who has had a few; Rafe’s a big guy and a loud mouth, a troublemaker. He says something like Dennis Lehane sucks; you call Rafe an ignorant lout. Rafe sez you suck you say he sucks Ernie sez knock it off.
Two years pass. Seasons change. If the bar had a calendar, pages would fall off. Ernie has a new haircut, a kind of weird white guy fade that makes his ears blow up like balloons, but he keeps Court TV on mute, otherwise that really loud lady would scare all the drinkers to death. Anyway Rafe ambles over and socks you in the nose and sez Dennis Lehane sucks. Huh? That argument ended in a draw two years ago. I was talking to Bert this morning and he told me we’d heard from an editor on a submission we made two years ago. The guy had some nice things to say about the submission but I’m thinking why did he wait two years. Ernie, explain this to me. Ernie?