Blue

 Blue Eyes pushed his way out of the crowded sardine can subway. He made his way through the slalom course of pedestrians and homeless people. As he rode the escalator up to the fading light of the surface, his bright blue eyes focused intently on the seconds passing on his digital watch. The lady in front of him held a huge shopping bag at the end of each arm, blocking him from proceeding any faster. He knew he wasn't going to make it as he rushed down the sidewalk. His bus sat at the red light a hundred feet ahead of him. The light changed and he felt the warm breeze of exhaust fumes in his face as the bus roared away. Blue Eyes owned a blue Honda Civic that was parked safely at his suburban apartment complex. He could not drive to work because there was no place to park at the office, so he rode the bus. He knew it would be a long wait for the next bus. His blue eyes squinted at the coffee stain on his tie and the small hole in his pants caused by having too many keys in his pocket. It was the end of a long week, and he wanted nothing more than to sit on his couch and watch television until Monday.

 Blue Eyes felt a slight chill as rain drops started to fall from the clouds that had just moved in. His eyelids closed and then opened again to see a small neon sign flickering in the window across the street. He darted across the street before the big drops began to fall and pulled open the heavy wooden door. Blue Eyes had never been inside this dilapidated little bar although he passed it nearly every day. This was the part of the city that had prospered once but was now in a state of decay. Few heads turned as he made his way through the smoke to the only empty barstool. To his left a few construction workers were arguing about football and to his right sat a bearded old man in a tattered green jacket.  The bartender motioned to Blue Eyes and he asked for a Coors Light.

 "Two bucks, its happy hour." said the bartender as he set a cold bottle in front of him. Blue Eyes gave him three singles and stared down at his beer. He had never acquired a taste for beer but knew he could not sit here without ordering anything. He took small sips of his beer and casually glanced at the old man in green without turning his head. Blue could only see half of the man who was sitting against the wall on the last bar stool beside him. His eye was huge and was trained on the last few drops of liquor in his glass. Suddenly he grabbed the glass, downed it, and slammed the glass back on the table loudly. The bartender instantly appeared with another to replace it. As the man in green turned towards Blue he was shocked to see that he did not have another of those huge green eyes. His enormous left eye labored to do the work of two. The edge of a nasty scar peeked out from behind a patch that covered his right eye.

 "My friends call me One-Eyed-Jack but I ain't got too many ah those." growled One Eye. Blue Eyes nodded and began to drink faster for lack of anything to say.

  "I never seen you in here before Blue Eyes. Where you from?"  Blue explained that he was just waiting for a bus and excused himself to the rest room. The bath room smelled of stale beer and urine. He removed his hairpiece, exposing a small balding patch. He shook some rain drops from it before carefully realigning it. He checked his watch. There was still half an hour until the bus and it was pouring outside by now. He hoped for another chair to be free when he went back but there was not. One Eye slammed another empty glass on the bar as Blue sat back down. The bartender filled another glass with whiskey and set it in front of One Eye.

 "So, what happened to your eye?" Blue said timidly.

 "God damn Viet Cong land mine, got half my leg too." said One Eye as he knocked on an artificial leg with a wrinkled knuckle.

 "That's too bad." said Blue.

 "It's all right though, I get enough money to pay my bar tab every month."

One Eye pointed at Blue's empty bottle and looked at the bartender with his big green eye. The bartender directly administered him another one. Time passed and Blue and One Eye shared small talk. Finally it was time to catch the bus home so Blue said good-bye.

 "You comin' back tomorrow?" asked One Eye.

 "Maybe." said Blue Eyes as he went out the door knowing he would never return. Blue caught his bus shortly and went home to his clean modest bathroom. His eyes were red and burning. He reached into the medicine cabinet and took out a small plastic case. Then he carefully removed two blue contact lenses. He blinked his dull brown eyes and looked at his reflection in the mirror. Then he went to lie down on his couch.

 

 

Chapter two

 Blue walked out of the seedy bar with a cloud of smoke lingering around him. Before the smoke could even dissipate he was confronted by a strange old man wearing a white kimono and hospital slippers.

 "Can I ask you a personal question?"

 "Sorry buddy, I don't have any spare change." Blue lied as he briskly strode away.

 The man in the slippers wandered into the bar and eased onto the empty bar stool beside One Eye.

 "What can I get ya buddy?" asked the bartender.

 "I'll have an extra dry vodka martini, shaken not stirred, with two olives please."

 "You got it." he said as he poured.

 "Can I ask you a personal question?"

 "I'm kinda busy right now, that's $3.75." he said as he rushed to the other end of the bar to grab some empty beer mugs. The man in the slippers placed three singles and three quarters on the counter.

 "Slam!" an empty whiskey glass with three melting ice cubes in it came to rest violently on the counter in front of a one-eyed man.

 "What's with the kimono?" slurred One Eye.

 "Can I ask you a personal question?"

 "You some kinda damn commie? Well, your eyes look pretty round to me, not like those chinks over in Nam." One Eye continued to babble. "I saw those kimonos all the time over there, but black ones, not white like yours. And those big round hats. You got one o' those somewhere too? You know they eat dogs over there, ever try any dog meat?"

 "I was born in Nebraska, not Asia."

 "Oh yeah, I got a cousin lives in North Carolina. I hadn't seen him in about ten years but he's one o' those people that grows stuff....a farmer. He's got a tractor and everything, at least he did last time I heard from him. It's been about ten years. So what did you wanna ask me? About my eye? That's what most people wanna ask me. Well I lost it in a fight....  a fight with a land mine. Huh huh huh."

 "Forget it." said the strange man as he wandered off to a new table.