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| Old Family Venue |
There were just two things Tom Hardy couldn’t stand and both of them were staring him in the face: an empty bottle of viejo abuelo and the likelihood of a painful death. The empty bottle stood upright and behind it, leaning on the bar, was a woman he had just met and the gun he met even more recently.
“Where did you learn the trick?” the barmaid asked.
Her finger was still outside of the trigger guard of the .38 revolver. That was a hopeful sign. Other than the distraction presented by the nickel-plated and fully loaded weapon, Ayudante was not an unattractive woman. She looked to be in her late twenties and in good condition.
Hardy had thought it amazing that unlike most of the bar maids in this border town on the wrong side of the border, she still seemed to have some innocence and trust left. He hadn’t picked her to a pull a gun on a guy just because he performed a magic trick. That’s the kind of stuff he’d expect at Agujero Fácil or Puntito Mojado but not here in the Chili’s or T.G.I.F. of San Cansado.
“What’s with the gun?” the old magician asked as he gazed back towards the empty bottle. “And what’s it take to get another drink around here?”
His stare towards the bottle was interrupted by the muzzle of the snub-nosed .38 being shoved into his forehead. He looked up slowly and thought that even if Ayudante was a terrible shot, she probably would not miss his head…
Continue reading Tricks of the Heart – A Hardy Installment
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