The cockroach that bought me a drink

The best part about living in Anchorage is the summer. It’s beautiful and my ice cleats are in a box at the back of the closet. But this summer family influencers decided that mid-July would be an ideal time to have an impromptu family reunion in the lower-48. And so it was that I found myself in Albuquerque New Mexico mingling with mostly elderly relatives. Sometimes the heat was oppressive. I felt like a sliced bagel stuck in the toaster.

But of course, it’s not just the weather. It’s family. We have a history of love, annoyances, disagreements, and tragedies stretching back to the middle of the last century. What could go wrong?

One evening we all decided to go to a large up-scale restaurant on the outskirts of town. On the way there I should have been lost in sumptuous visions of carne adovada, flat enchiladas with red chile, and warm sopapillas dripping with honey. But I wasn’t. I skipped all the food fantasies and went directly to heartburn.

Earlier in the day a family member made a comment that invoked decades of bad feelings, umbrage, pique, rancor...you get the picture. I was so angry I was afraid to say anything because I was afraid of what I would say.

We parked and headed into the crowded, noisy reception area to wait for our table. It was all too much for me. I asked the first staff person I saw where the bar was. I figured a shot of good whisky would help dissipate the black cloud dogging me just then. She pointed behind her and said “Over there.”

It was the longest bar I had ever seen. Every one of the 20 or 25 bar stools at the arrow-straight counter were taken, except one near the middle. Everyone sitting at the bar was bent over staring into their drink with their hands on the counter or clasped around their drink.

I picked up the pace a bit and aimed for that single empty bar stool. I yanked it out from under the counter and stepped into the space. Within a matter of seconds the all-business bartender appeared in front of me and asked me what I wanted. I told him I wanted a shot of bourbon with one ice cube in it. We started discussing brands, and then it happened.

A brown cockroach, about an inch and a half long, suddenly crawled up onto the bar top from the bartender’s side. It was right in front of me running around in circles. In retrospect

I suppose it was thinking about which way to scamper, running around drinks and over hands. Yeah, that would have been fun.

The bartender freaked. He took a step back from the bar, face went pale, eyes bulged, and he blurted out “Oh my god!” Immediately I could see that he had an epiphany, something like, “Oh yeah, I’m paid to be here. I better do something.” He suddenly stepped back up to the bar counter, slammed his forearm down next to the cockroach, and in a seamless gesture swept it off the bar top into the abyss on his side of the counter, and followed through taking my glass in his other hand to find the agreed-upon bourbon. The drinkers on both sides of me remained oblivious to the drama.

My little gray cells fired at random while I waited for the drink, but these ruminations were rudely interrupted by the same damn cockroach. He had crawled up the same bar-top brace from the other side of the counter and was once again frenetically dashing about on the counter right in front of me.

Without even thinking my hand shot out to a pile of napkins, I grabbed them and started whacking away at the counter-top artful dodger. After three or four trys I got him. I tossed the bug and the napkins back over the counter. Hope it didn’t land on a tray of clean whisky glasses.

Just then I realized the bartender was standing in front of me on the other side of the counter. He had an apprehensive but hopeful expression on his face.

“Did you kill it?” he asked.

“Yeah, I got him.”

The bartender, clearly relieved, flashed a big smile. He put the bourbon on the counter, pushed it toward me and murmured, “This one’s on the house.”

Bourbon in hand, my smile lingered as I headed back to a complicated but loving family.