INTERIOR, EL SANTO, MIAMI, FLORIDA

The man walked into the dimly lit room uneasily. He didn’t go out much anymore, specially not to places like this. He had to go, though. He didn’t have a choice

He headed to the bar by the green wall, as he was told. A dirty blonde bartender was mixing drinks.

She casually looked up, without stopping her work.

Bartender: You’re late.

The man didn’t know what to say. He stammered out an unconvincing “I’m sorry” before mumbling a weak excuse about an Uber driver, traffic on the causeway, and his wife’s doctor’s appointment.

Bartender: No me importa. Está en el cuarto rojo. Te está esperando.

The man uttered a painfully shy “Gracias” and headed to the right. As he turned the corner, a girl almost ran into him.

“Oh and sixteen, asshole! Oh and sixteen!” , she cried.

Just as quickly as he encountered her, she was gone. As he kept walking a trio of patrons accosted him

“It’s all your fault, dickhead!” , they yelled in his face.

The man didn’t know why he was getting such treatment. Hadn’t he given them their greatest glory? Hadn’t he made it a point to remind them of that glory every year? What had he done wrong?

Finally, he made it to the booth in the red room that the bartender had indicated.

There was no one there. Didn’t she say he was waiting for him? He sat down in one of the red booths and checked the time. As he looked up, HE was there.

HE: Evening, Morris. I trust you know why you’re here?

Mercury Morris: To tell you the truth, I don’t. And why are people yelling at me?

HE: Your bill is due. Time has run out.

MM: What are you talking about?

HE: 47 years is a good run. You should be happy about that.

MM: Hey, I’ve done what we agreed on. Why are you putting a stop to it?

HE: Well…. because I can. And because I think you’re an asshole.

MM: That’s just… not nice!

HE: It’s going to be wonderful! In the same year that your precious Dolphins go 0-16, I’ll get the New England Patriots, your hated division rivals, to go 19-0 and surpass your shitty ass team and make everyone forget you ever existed.

MM: NOOOOOO!!!! What do you want from me? I’ll do ANYTHING!

HE: Well, there is ONE thing you could do that could make me change my mind.

MM: Anything.

HE: First, a toast. To our new relationship. Marisu!

A sexy female waitress comes over. She has a name tag with “Linares” on it.

Marisu: ¿Si?

HE: Dos tequilas en caballito con sangrita. Gracias.

Marisu: Claro. Ahorita mismo.

She walked away and returned quickly with the drinks.

HE: You know how to drink these, right?

MM: Isn’t it just tequila? You shoot it, right?

HE: You fat American moron! This is fine tequila. You take a sip and then you take a sip of the sangrita and you savour each one.

They lift their drinks.

HE: To the 1972 Miami Dolphins!

MM: YES!

They clink the caballitos and sip their tequilas. It burns as it goes down Morris’ throat. He quickly grabs the sangrita and drinks a bit.

MM: What the fuck?!? This is blood!

HE: No shit. What did you expect? Ok, asshole, now you have to go to the cementerio on Calle Ocho and build an altar. Make sure you have one muerto for each of your fallen teammates. Kuechenberg says hi, by the way! Now get the fuck out of my face.

Morris gets up out of his seat and heads for the door. The next day, he arrives at the cemetery and sets up what he thinks is a pretty good altar. Luckily, his wife had Latina friends.

Each sugar skull had a number in the back corresponding to each dead teammate’s jersey number. He laid the final two decorations down:

It was done. Now all he had to do was wait and see if HE found this acceptable.

Just in case, he decided to go back to Northern Ontario for a week with his old hunting buddy. Another couple of muertos couldn’t hurt…

(132/69)