Bloody Valentine

Начало книги

For my readers.

You guys are the best.

*with apologies to Nick Flynn

It was always Christmas down at the Holiday Cocktail Lounge on St. Mark’s Place in the East Village; the twinkling lights were left hanging up on the crossbeams year-round, just like the silver tinsel looped around the edge of the counter and the cheerful tree in the back, its ornaments glittering in the dim light. The Holiday, as the regulars called it, was a New York institution. The bar had been a speakeasy during Prohibition, and counted as its patrons the poet W. H. Auden, who lived next door, and Trotsky, who bunked across the street.

No one could put a finger on why the bar had lasted so long. Its resilient popularity was an anomaly in a town where velvet-rope emporiums serving thousand-dollar champagne bottles had become the norm. Maybe it was the custom-made cocktails—the bartender always seemed to know what you wanted to drink—or maybe it was the cozy, quiet feel of the place that murmured a welcome to every weary patron that walked through its doors. Or maybe it was the way the Rolling Stones sounded from the ancient jukebox, all heart and yearning. Time did not just stop at the Holiday, it came to a standstill, frozen in amber as thick and viscous as the home-brewed whiskey it served.

Читать дальше →