Summary

“An empty space. An empty stage. That is, a bar in December. Specifically, St. Mazie’s bar in post-Bloomberg Williamsburg, Brooklyn. One might call it a hipster bar. A man. Eddie Torres. An unemployed truck driver. He looks out of place here” (9).

Eddie drinks a glass of seltzer and speaks to another customer, whose conversation eventually suggests is a young man (this character is never actually seen and never identified by name).

Eddie comments on how sometimes, things that happen cannot be understood, referring at first to a phone call he got from a hospital a week before the birthday of the woman he spent almost 21 years with, and with whom he had plans to go to Maine with as a birthday present. He offers to buy his listener a drink, saying that he is no longer drinking himself, adding that not waking up...