Re: [The Mean Eyed Cat: Jack + Cat]
The bar was familiar. Jack knew it now, in the comforting heat of bodies that had lingered over drinks and pool table, the curdle of smoke and the throaty music but he knew it then too, which made all the difference. He remembered remembered Johnny bloody Cash and he remembered bars around the holidays, when the people who had family they didn't want to go home to and people who had neither family nor home to go to, congregated. It had clearly emptied out somewhat. The hour helped.
He remembered, incidentally, Cat, who was both the girl from the wrecked painting and the party and a recollection that had cemented a night or two ago, was triptych and amalgam. He could see both at once, what seemed bloody apparent, which was either the slice of clarity sobriety possessed before you threw it wholesale out of the window, or a blur of memory mingled with newly-made ones. Jack shucked his coat in the sticky heat of the bar and no, he didn't need the reminder.
Jack knew about the wagon's existence: but you could only experience the onset of alcoholism a few nights before you needed a cushion of reality.
"Vodka, I think." It wasn't whiskey. Whiskey haunted memory, vodka was future tense, possibly present. He looked at the bar, at Cat. "One for you, if you want it."