Joe wandered into the Microbrewery on Sixteenth.  The place was exactly as he remembered it from two years ago – noisy, bustling with people.   A local blues band was hammering out ‘Hard to Handle’ from the loft, and waiters jostled between the crowds taking food to the tables.

He had flown into Denver that morning, and had survived the flight in the back of a 757 without throwing-up.  He hated flying in 757’s, as they felt to him like they shimmied in flight, a movement accentuated at the back of economy, the location he usually avoided.   But this time at check-in, he had got the cold-hard bitch who was having a bad day, and so was entirely disinterested with his protestations about a susceptibility to air-sickness, particularly on 757’s, and specifically going into Denver, where sometimes the approach felt, to him, not dissimilar to the Khe Sanh technique used during the war in Vietnam.

He had come, reluctantly, in response to a cryptic e-mail from his old friend Robin.  In this, Robin had intimated that there may be news about Joe’s brother Charlie, who had left so suddenly during their last visit to Denver.  So he had arranged to meet Robin at this bar, and was a bit early.  Continue Reading