The Sanctuary (A Very Short Story)

Scott Delaney and Dave Bowman sat on high stools and drank mugs of beer at the bar in The Sanctuary which was near the main campus of the University of Pittsburgh.  This was before The Sanctuary went out of business.  It was Thursday afternoon.  Scattered among the stools and tables were several customers drinking, laughing and talking.  Some were eating.  One read The Pittsburgh Press.  Another did homework.  Over the sound system came music from a radio station that specialized in rock from the sixties and seventies.  That night was beer blast night at The Sanctuary which meant two skins at the door and two bits for each small plastic cup of beer there after.  Scott was going to return later that night.  He always enjoyed beer blast night.  He was thirty five and had just found a new job.  It wasn’t much of a job but it was a job.  He started Monday.

“They’re two totally different crowds,” his friend Dave Bowman was saying.  Anyone could see the friend lifted weights.  “Here I never knew what to expect.  You get a really mixed crowd here.  I’d walk up to someone and tell him he had to leave.”

“‘Who the hell are you?’ he’d say.”

“I’m the bouncer.”

“‘Oh, yeah.’”  Dave grabbed his crotch.  “‘Well bounced this!’”

“Across the street,” Dave went on, “it’s kiddie land.  Mommy and Daddy foot all the bills and gave them a new car for high school graduation.  I doubt if half of them have ever even seen a fight let alone been in one.  So, one night I’m off duty drinking at the bar.  You should’ve been there.  Four paddy wagons took a shit load of them out for underage drinking.  All false IDs.  No way for the doorman to tell.  They have them printed up professionally.”  Dave swiveled slowly on his stool away from the bar and looked around.  He said, “Man, you don’t know how much I miss this place.”

The End  

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Young Love (A Short Story) www.authspot.com/Short-Stories/Young-Love.634887

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Saturday At Del’s Italian Restaurant

I did make it to Del’s Italian restaurant in Bloomfield yesterday.  Rick and his wife Dianne, Kevin and his wife Linda and John Del and some other people were in the bar area.  Before I left dinners were flooding into the dinning area.  I gave Dianne my new Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette business card and she said she would check the site out.  She even said she was going to make a one dollar donation.  I had two beers and left.

The following story is one I wrote about Bloomfield, Pittsburgh’s “Little Italy.”

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La Dolce Vita

Bloomfield is a neighborhood in Pittsburgh. Because of the large number of people of Italian heritage living in the neighborhood, Bloomfield is known as “Little Italy.” For three days every year during the nice weather a food festival is held.

Food booths line both sides of Liberty Avenue. The smell of hot sausages, green peppers and onions and many kinds of pastas and their sauces cooking fill the air. There are also stands cooking and grilling non-Italian foods like Chinese fried rice with beef, shrimp and chicken and all kinds of egg rolls. Other food stands serve gyros, shish kabob, hummus, ribs, kielbasa, hamburgers, hot dogs and chicken. There are many stands that sell things a customer cannot eat but the things are nice to buy.

The songs of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin issue from large speakers. The crowds flow leisurely back and forth. The crowds are made up of people of many different ethnic backgrounds. Adults push babies in baby carriages. At different times during the day musicians and singers perform on a stage setup on a blocked-off side street. Sometimes the singers sing in Italian. Above the heads of the crowds, on flag poles up and down the avenue, the red, white and green bars of the Italian flag snaps in the breeze.

Brad Wilson was happy. He was happy because Kristin Clayton walked beside him. He’d known her for more than a year and now they were both sophomores at the University of Pittsburgh; but this was the first time he’d actually asked her out. He was pretty sure she liked him. They’d spent a lot of time together freshman year with mutual friends but this was the first time he’d actually asked her out just by herself.

“Brad, look,” Kristin said. “Smoothies.”

“Want one?”

“I love smoothies.”

They waited in line and he bought two from the woman behind the stand and gave one to Kristin.

“Thank, you,” she said.

The two continued slowly strolling with the crowd.

She said, “It’s good.” She smiled up at him.

“It is good.”

They kept strolling. Overhead, the flag of Italy snapped in the warm breeze. Brad was working on his courage.

“Ah, Kristin?” he said.

“Hummmmmmmm?” She was watching the sights.

“Ah, well, see I was thinking. I mean maybe…Well I really like you and, ah, we’ve known each other for more than a year now and like I was thinking maybe you would like to be my girlfriend.”

She stopped walking and looked at him. He could see she was confused.

He said, “I mean no pressure. I mean we’re really good friends and that’s…I really like us being good friends. I like doing things together.” He thought, that was weak. Man, that was so lame.

In silence they strolled on. He thought, think of something to say. Quick, think of something to say.

Kristin, concentrating on her smoothie, said, “I was kind of hoping that I was your girlfriend.”

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