Lost Keys
A novel excerpt from Executives of the World
by Dave Barret
El Sombrero’s twin sets of front doors were locked that bright May 5th morning and Ben Ailing was trying to find the keys to unlock them.
Again.
Third time this week already!
Two of the Sombrero’s Cactus Room regulars—Pete Steiglich and Chester Nimitz—were rapping their canes against the tinted glass of the Sombrero’s street front door.
The bastards reminded Ben of a Zombie flick he’d seen back in California days: Night of the Mutant Dead?
Steiglich and Nimitz laughed, shook their heads, rolled their eyes knowingly when Ben stopped pacing from bar to dining room in the vestibule area the other side of the still locked doors. Ben signaled his keys were missing by mimicking the turning of an imaginary key in an imaginary lock: pressing one of his hands in the palm of the other, torquing it repeatedly.
This set the old buzzards off all the more: slapping their thighs, guffawing now as they stumbled about on the sidewalk outside El Sombrero like circus clowns: mimicking Ben’s hand gesture with ones of their own: feigning to jerk-off the handles of their respective canes.
Pricks! Ben thought.
He raised his hands in exasperation, but not without betraying a begrudging wink and grin to let the boys know he knew how ridiculous this seemed.
He continued his quest for the Sombrero’s elusive keys, leaving Steiglich and Nimitz hee-hawing it up outside, leaning into each other now, wiping crocodile tears from their eyes.
It had been a long and turbulent night before this: Cinco de Mayo:
The busiest day of their business year.
All three of Ben’s boys were back in town for the 10-year anniversary of El Sombrero. Will had shown up a week before off a Greyhound after graduation ceremonies from a liberal college on the west side of the state; Ben, Jr. had arrived on a jet plane a month before from far-off Singapore where he’d been trading futures on the Nikkei market. And Ben’s youngest, Jerry, had returned that winter after a failed bid as a musician in Austin, Texas.
The turbulence had occurred when Ben asked the brothers to dress up in sombreros and bullfighting costumes for the anniversary. Ben had bought the costumes when he and his then friend, Felix Ramirez, had travelled to Tijuana, Mexico to buy decorations and uniforms and bar and kitchen supplies for the restaurant. Ben, Jr., the lone fellow capitalist of Ben and Myra Ailing’s brood, had championed the idea.
“I love it, Pops! It’ll be a hoot! Like Chevy Chase and Steve Martin and the boys in ‘The Three Amigos’!’”
Jerry and Will had been less impressed by the idea.
Jerry because he had actually been working at the restaurant for five months now and knew the sport the Sombrero’s regulars would have with them.
Will because he claimed it was a kind of “acquiescence” to the NAFTA bill ratified by the U.S. House, Senate and Executive branch that winter.
“A bill,” Will had exclaimed. “That will someday bring the utter ruination of our country tis of thee!”
(Ben had later looked up the meaning of the word “acquiescence” and discovered it had something to do with “passive submission and/or compliance to another’s demands.” But, in his heart, Ben knew that Will’s opposition to Ben, Jr.’s cheer had as much to do with an unresolved feud between his two eldest boys over a girl they’d fought over in the past.)
Ben was scurrilously searching the darkened interior of the Sombrero for the keys now. He felt himself panicking a little. He’d had a terrible recurring dream of late: that he was trapped and locked inside the confines of his own goddamn restaurant as it caught fire, Ben ping-ponging wildly through the labyrinth of his own building (not unlike he was now). When the Republic Fire Department went through the wreckage the next morning, they found only his bones and teeth: trapped mid-way between the Sombrero’s double door entrance like a jammed pinball.
The old boys were rapping the Sombrero’s front glass with their canes again, louder now, and the phone was ringing from the kitchen and the Cactus Room, when Ben stumbled upon them.
Where he’d found them the second time that week:
Dangling in plain sight from the inside lock of the big steel alleyway door at the rear of El Sombrero under the cracked neon green EXIT sign.
BIO: Dave Barrett is an Assistant Professor of Writing at the University of Montana. His work has appeared most recently in Hive Avenue and Weber--the Contemporary West. His novel--GONE ALASKA--was published by Adelaide Books.