Look the part, he says. What part?!

Maybe he meant I shouldn’t be drinking coffee with my pinky extended. It wasn’t tea, after all.

Thankfully, my half-drunken hero of the down trodden clarified with a gesture towards another patron. Though it took me several minutes of pondering, I finally caught on. Perhaps I wasn’t meant for this work after all.

Got it, I thought, Don’t be that guy.

“Barkeep,” I said as brightly as I could, “What say you of life? Is it not for the living, for the taking, for the enjoying?”

He started a bit, as I think I interrupted him talking to someone important, but he sidled down the bar all the same, “I do believe you are now speaking a language I can easily comprehend.”

I put the twenty on the bar, “What do you have that’s…sophisticated?” By which I meant, ‘not above 60 proof’.

He gave me a look, “Red, white, or clear?”

“Oh god, nothing Russian. Something red, perhaps?”

“The classics it is then.”

That went better than expected. Perhaps my luck was turning.