On a mahogany bar, a fly twitches. Buzz buzz. She launches and figure-eights before landing wobbly next to a drop which she nervously nectar-sips. The bartender shoos away the nuisance and wipes the wood clean. This is a spectacular old-world bar—a rich owner imported it after a drunken boast—hand-carved, ornate, lustrous. Still, it’s essentially a beer bar for hipsters and university students that stroll and bike in from nearby Victorian houses. Some of a certain inclination assess mouthfeel and carbonation bite for online reviews. The fly, cut from a different beverage cloth, has other intentions.
She sits on glass shelving behind the bar and leg-saws, observing. She’s waiting for leftovers in the pints, steins, and pilsner glasses, or a little bar sloshr, which is now vacant and spotless. A man walks in.
Cam the bartender, thirty-five, tall and lean, pre-occupied with opening rituals, peripherally tracks the entrant: “What can I get you?” He then peremptorily answers the customer’s eyes wandering over the giant refrigerator: “One hundred bottled beers and cans.” Dropping a laminated beer menu on the bar, he reveals a forearm tattoo that bubbles and foams into “craft” at the top of a stein. “On the board are the drafts.”
The fly convulses in anticipation of a buzz bump.
Milos, the customer, absorbs the pastel chalk menu. He’s in his early thirties but looks boyish with straight brown hair and pale skin. “You call ‘em craft beers around here?”
“Or microbrews,” Cam hunches, “either.”
The impatient fly spirits an elliptical reconnaissance route.
“Flying Pterosaur is local,” Cam details their “provenance,” such as it is. “Broad Shoulders—”
“Don’t tell me, Chicago?”
Cam squints an eye, pulls his towel back, taut, and the fly loops out of range.
“From the Carl Sandburg poem?”
“You an English major or something?”
“PhD program.”
The fly, shudder pivots on her six legs, left then right, like she’s watching a tennis match. What she lacks in neck flexibility, she makes up with a beguiling radio-intonated, Liverpool accent. A male voice, if you’re going by pitch and the Liverpudlians’ distinct tone and phrasings. “That bartender’s an arse,” he—she—bellows to the room, inaudible to them.
“Where’s your accent from?” Cam asks.
“Chicago. Maybe why I prefer pilsners.”
“I won’t even land on one,” the fly says. “Not enough alcohol. Prefer the micro-poo! Hee hee.” The fly can’t refrain from getting her snarky opinions off her thorax, now orating to an imaginary cloud of trashcan flies: “The bartender’s cooking on but the one burner. If ye of the kitchen realms understand me meaning. Same pot, same snide dish. Full of bluster pretendin’ he’s something more. Aye, succumbed to the easy drink of sarcasm.” The fly’s angry. She’s descended from stowaways that came over with the bar, wanting to make a better life in America but generationally derailed by the drink. “Pour the gent a pint, already.”
Milos is staring at the chalky line through the fluorescent green Natasha.
Cam grabs a four-ounce taster glass and pulls the tap. “This is the Hoboken Lager. It’s not a pilsner like the Natasha, but it’s close.”
Milos holds it up to the light. “Good color.” Sniffs. “Bouquet’s decent.” Sips and left-rights his eyes to locate its flavor components. “Do you have anything with more…‘balance?’”
The fly buzzes Milos’s head. “I know his type. Can’t stand ‘im either. Fancies himself the grand arbiter of taste, sautéing an insufferable superiority. Criminy!”
Milos explains: “I get it. IPAs with their extra hoppiness, or higher gravity beers that have a strong malt note, they hide deficiencies.”
Cam pulls another taster. “Flying Pterosaur. See if it has ‘balance.’”
“Bugger’s distracted. That’s my cue.” The fly buzzes the empty taster and six-leg lands on the rim. “Bloody ‘ell,” she cries and slides in. “‘Weak Shoulders’ must have balmed his lips.” Still, she takes a big gulp from the swim. Scurries up the side, burping, “Not bad a’tall; balance is overrated.” Involuntarily, her wings zizz. “Here he comes.” She zaizezzes up to speed, lifts free before Cam can flatten a hand on the rim to trap her, and lands safely on the back wall. “Not unlike the time I found myself in the tar pit dregs of last-night’s stout.” She shudders at the memory.
Milos holds the glass up and gulps. “Yeah.”
“You like it?”
“Yeah, it’s too San Francisco 2015.” He presents his iPhone for Cam to see a review he’s pulled up.
The fly braves herself for a sortie, launches and yells, “Make way! The Queen’s flown the throne.” Lands on Milos’s “too San Fran” glass. “The lads are pretentiously distracted, you see.” Scuttles down from the rim and imbibes a bottom drop. “Flying Pterosaur! Ah, fine beast. Brother of the skies, skilled hunter and, yet, brought down by…” The fly pulls one goo-dripping foot up, then another. “Oo-ps.” She skid-scurries trying to get unstuck, gains traction, and motors up to the rim. “Whew.” She crouches. “Feel for it.” Her body hairs align. “Wait…now!” She leaps in front of Cam’s swatting phone, churns her wings into the air cushion and “surfs” into neutral space, where she glides languidly, wings held just so, like a pterosaur to the far end of the bar. “His annoyance, my deliverance. Sublime ride.”
“…It’s a hoppy porter,” Milos critiques another taster.
“Blue ribbon porter.” Cam counters with a face scrunch. “Didn’t do it for you?”
“It’s—” Milos shrugs disagreement, no quick repartee at hand. He swipes his iPhone again and presents another review: “Here.”
“Letting the reviews do the talking for him. What a wanker. “Easy sippins for me.” Rubs her eyes. “Me composite hexagons are itchin’.” She has an allergy to something in the beer. After rubbing them once more, she focusses on a reflection in the ale glass and observes, “Cheeky smile, svelte of wing, quite ‘fly’! Hee hee. Aye lass, ale suits ya’.” Loneliness has driven her to self-talk in various voices. “What’s that bloke going on about now? I dare say, he’s got a bug up his arse.” She slaps a tarsus-hind leg with a spur-mid leg.
“The pilsner,” Milos reads, “accentuates the straw color and clarity, while gathering its frothy head into a bouquet for a great finish. Should I keep reading?”
“I know what a pilsner is.”
“Even if it won a blue ribbon in a local home brew competition, it’s still candy.”
“You don’t like anything that’s not the one thing you like, is that it?”
“I like different variations of good.”
The fly slants her body hairs. “Gotta hear this.”
“Beer was perfected over centuries,” Milos states. “Now, what, it’s too much time and inconvenience to respect the recipe? They hide behind their over-hopped and sweet concoctions with cute names. They don’t have the stones.”
Cam has his arms folded, remembering the last time he got ranted into an argument, when he suddenly flat-hand slaps the bar, startling Milos.
The furiously fast fly loop-de-loops away. “Before Milos can say pilsner, how many miss-izz iz zhat?” the fly snarks. “Hah ha.”
A woman, mid-twenties wearing a pale-blue tank, walks in from the blaring summer sunlight. Cam visors a hand.
“Mandy?” He says, with a pinch of “thank God.”
“Hey,” she replies over the oak floors, which squeak her ingress between the zig-zag table maze. Purposeful, OCD strides, like she’s playing adult hopscotch. “He can’t just serve pilsners,” Mandy trumpets. “He’ll go out of business.” She’s making an argument to Milos it becomes apparent, speaking directly at him.
“Distract them, me lady, that’s it.” The fly scuttles closer to the other sampler glass. Takes a read, then grabs a quick “on-the-fly” gulp. “Ah, sweet elixir.”
“You’re also teaching customers what to drink,” Milos says, “and—”
“Teaching?” Mandy says in an incredulous tone. “You’ve got PhD brain, Milo.”
“Milos.”
“People like what they like. Taste evolves organically—”
“‘The best is what survives.’”
“You’ve quoted what’s his name before.” Mandy explains to Cam. “We’re in the same program.” In a softer tone, she says, “I’d like a Pterosaur.” To Milos: “I read up on pilsners after our last argument. They were every day, clean-water beers. Hops kept the bacteria in check, and the grains were lightly roasted to save fuel.”
“Lay it on ‘im, Madame Mandy,” the fly encourages. Her proboscis shrinks a drop down to gurgling sounds. “That’s it,” she continues, burping her words in satisfaction and showflyship.
“Way back,” Mandy continues, “the monks—who were the original brewmeisters—threw in all these herbs and flowers and medicinals. The drinkers, which was everybody, hallucinated and got into fights, so all that got nixed when the church authority intervened. Hops was it. Kept the guzzlers sedated.” She toasts: “To sedation.” She takes a satisfying drink.
“Gulpsmacked am I.” The fly smirks then comports herself. “I can hear me gran mum like it was yesterhour: ‘Leave, while you still have lift.’” The fly helicopters, stalls, and drops to the mahogany. “Straight to me head. Let’s try again: wings back, and one and two.” She hovers a meandering, bumbling path into light fixtures and beer signs before alighting on one. “Where were we?”
The door bangs open and a stout man about forty enters. “Brought my growler,” he broadcasts excitedly, patting the giant brown beer bottle as he nerd-walks to the group. “You gotta try it.”
As Cam sets flight glasses on the bar, he says to Milos: “This is Walt. A beer institution. Sip and learn.”
“Mandy, Cam,” Walt requests, “I want your honest opinion,” and noticing Milos, asks “You want to try it too?” He pours everyone a taste, not waiting. They all sip and pick up on something, sip again for a better sense of it.
“You made this at home?” Milos asks.
“Yeah, but before I tell you all what’s in it, whaddya think?”
“I like it,” Cam says.
“Good, if you like Cascade-hoppy lagers,” Milos counters.
“You identified it correctly. What else?”
“Interesting blend of different notes,” Mandy adds.
“What’s the alcohol content?” Milos asks.
“Seven point two.”
“Too strong for a session beer,” Milos pronounces.
“Can’t hold his beer tongue,” the fly assesses, and buzzes Milos a couple of good times, dodging his half-swatting hand. “It’s fun to be—buzz buzz—an annoying fly sometimes. Hee hee.”
They all stare up at the fly, upside down on the ten-foot pressed ceiling. She rubs her feet and twitters her wings in drunken ecstasy. “Top that Milos. Upside down on tin. Drunk as a human.”
“It’s what customers want,” Cam defends.
“It just gets ridiculous when it gets up around ten,” Milos enlightens. “The alcohol completely overwhelms the beer flavors.”
The fly mocks: “Jusz gezz ridiculouszz.”
Milos takes Cam’s towel, pops impotently at the fly.
“That’s all you got?” the fly scolds. “Mother buzz killer! For great-gran, swatted down in her prime.” She drunk buzzes Milos, jousting in before his towel pop and back before he can re-cock.
“Just needs another week or two,” Mandy says, referring to Walt’s lager, “for some of the raw notes to mature.”
“I like those,” Walt says wistfully. “Like licking the batter spoon in mom’s kitchen. And, it has this garden presence; a ripe radishes thing—”
“This is no German radish beer,” Milos insists. “Way too strong.”
“It’s more a vibe,” Walt says. “Walking the garden path in June? Or, like a painter’s canvas taking on a smell component; not all-visual, that sort of thing.”
The fly tightens up her wings and stands in speech pose: “Ladies and gents, our players: Cam spiddles his bits with tone-deaf affects, our ears attentive, our mind in a hang-over hover. Milos is blinded by…” The fly clicks her rear feet together, salutes, “Beer nationalism. An isolationist. This ports us with Mandy.” The fly swoons. “A fine class of lass. Congenial, yet not a batch-master herself and thereby able to sweetly sing her songs of truth.” The fly up-ceremonies with an eighteenth-century leg swirl for Mandy. “Not to forget dear Walt, master of the craft!”
“I’ve never let you try my Pilsner,” Walt says, producing a leather-bound flask. He splashes some for everyone.
Mandy sips, eyes Walt: “You added your special sompin’, didn’t you? This is the guy you need to have session beers with. A real brewster. Consider yourself lucky if he invites you to dip into his beer ‘cel-LAR,’” which Mandy accents Oprah Winfrey-style. She laughs bemusedly at herself, quickly cooked from the samples and the Pterosaur.
“Beer cel-LAR!” the fly sings, holding the note.
Mandy drapes an arm over Walt’s shoulder.
“That’s it, mam. Remembering the real meaning of beer.”
“For this one,” Walt explains, “I went old school. Dialed back half expecting blandsville, then blamo. One gulp and I’m envisioning grilling kielbasas and gettin’ into a serious chat with a comrade about the revolution.”
“It’s real good,” Cam says. “Why don’t you make a big batch and sell it here?”
“All the college guzzlers going like piranhas at my babies? No, but thanks for asking.” He pours Cam another taste in compensation.
“Props on your pilsner,” Milos acquiesces.
Walter refreshes Milos’s glass, too.
“Walter’s a real scouser,” the fly says tipsy-lovey, before commanding herself, “Once more, into the beereech.” She divebombs and lands too fast on the side foam in Walter’s empty glass. Her soggy setae, finding no purchase, skiis her over a lather and down to the proverbial bottom of the run.
“There’s that damn fly. Kill ‘em,” commands Cam.
Walt slams the rim. Holding his hand in place, he sweeps the glass off the bar with the other.
“Hang on auld fella’,” the fly advises herself from within, attempting to steady her skating feet.
Walt carries the makeshift paddy wagon out and finds a patch of urban grass where he does an easy upend.
The fly tries to hold onto a blade but slides down on a raft of foam. “Yee haw,” she says without really meaning it and pity crawls into the shade.
“Overplayed me hands,” she says, peering up from within the grass fortress. Beer drains over her bleary eyes. She reflexively sucks. “Tasty.” The refreshment momentarily invigorates. “Walt’s got somethin’ here. Besides me in the grass. Hee hee.” She fore-arm squeegees her hexagons and some family shame too. “Somethin’ smells. Like me cousins after a rager.” The fly looks around, at herself, sighs. “Done it again. By God I’ve had a go of it. Who says I’m finished, just need to sun meeself a bit. ‘Go on,’ echoes from her gran mum’s dialect and instructs her to ‘Ge’ up.’” She clambers towards the light on a blade. The sun’s opal rays carry her awareness somewhere heavenly, while gravity tugs her claws off their grip. She falls backwards onto a bed of composting grass clippings; appendages “after-buzz” involuntarily in spurts. Her body, unlike her spirit hungers to settle and soon succeeds in finding the inevitable droop and last twitch. With a serene expression, she raspy sleepmutters “I’m dying for a bevvie. Ahh. That’s it…”