This is my entry in @fireawaymarmot's contest (week 2) to write a story based on his instrumental song "Lighthouses / Maggie's Table" - click here to hear the tune on Dsound
If you would like to enter, or to find out more about the contest, check out his post: @fireawaymarmot/write-from-my-music-contest-week-two
I have made the story acrostic, so if you take the first letter of each sentence it spells out the name of @fireawaymarmot's song.
Leaving the cold night behind him, Jim entered “Maggie's Table, Bar and Restaurant”. Inside it was warm, and Maggie gave him a little wave from her position behind the bar.
“Good evening, Jim,” Dave said, without looking up from the paper he was reading. He was sitting on his usual stool, his left arm resting on the bar. Throwing his hat, casually at the hat stand - it missed and flopped onto the floor, as it always did - Jim walked up to the bar and patted Dave on the shoulder.
“How’d you know it was me?” he asked.
“Obviously, it was you, Jim. Unless some other idiot had stolen that death trap of yours and driven it down here!”
Sliding his backside onto a stool next to Dave, Jim ordered a beer, one for his friend and whatever Maggie was drinking. Even though Maggie never drank behind the bar, Jim always insisted she put the money aside for a drink later. She took the change with a smile, mouthed “thank you,” and dropped the coins into a jar.
Maggie was Jim’s childhood sweetheart, and he secretly hoped one day they would get back together. Although he was doubtful it would happen, now - not now.
“Gotten too stuck in my ways to share my life with someone, now,” he said , whenever anyone asked if he minded living alone. “Glad to see folks in the bar, of an evening, but like to leave ‘em behind when I go home.”
It was true, he did enjoy his own company, but he also wondered if he had missed out on an important experience of life by being so damn stubborn.
“Even crotchety old bastards like you deserve love,” Maggie had said to him, once, a sad half-smile on her lips.
“So do sullen old serving wenches, like you,” he had responded.
They had laughed loud and hard, but when Jim left the bar that night, he couldn’t help but think he had missed yet another opportunity.
About eleven o’clock - as usual - Dave finished his drink and wished them both a good night, and left the bar.
“Better be off too,” Jim said, picking up his hat from the floor. “Let you finish off here and get to bed.”
Exiting the bar, he thought he heard Maggie call his name, but he knew it was probably just wishful thinking, and let the door close gently, behind him.