Brother B. carried Fancy to the rear of Greek Steve's Bar, and returned to sprinkle sawdust along the floor. Then he bought a drink for everyone in the place, but did not drink with a man of them; and when they had drunk he sent all of them out onto the street for keeps.
He locked the door, poured himself a shot, turned on the juke, and sat alone beside it, among the empty chairs, thinking of his own life and all the days to come.
When morning came he was still sober, but the juke had long stopped playing. Although he had drunk steadily all night, he had never felt soberer in his life. Moving like an old man, although he was barely forty, he put the chairs on the table and his cap on his head. Then he went to the register, punched out NO SALE, and closed his doors forever.
—"The Face on the Barroom Floor," Nelson Algren, collected in The Neon Wilderness, 1947
So strong the American Loneliness.
It’s like Nighthawks
but in words