At Harry’s Bar & American Grill, Papa said, an epiphany comes late to each man and best of all in a clean, well-lighted place and best before dawn before the heat of day is best gone and the shadows stretch long and far into the night, la noche misterioso.
“Hombre, nada mucho,” Papa said.
He sat there under the light and the heat of the bulb was weak but it gave off a burnished glow much too weak.
“The light is good and bright and pleasant but the bar floor goes unwaxed,” the waiter said.
Papa sat off in a corner in the shade by the side on a bentwood beneath the bulb that gave light and a shot glass left its ring on the tablecloth. Across the way and through the wooden beads the hills looked like white rhinoceri. Papa brought the glass to his lips.
The waiter looked with despair at the unwaxed floor, and he thought of how Papa of late, now barrel-chested, grown gray, had looked in the shade off in a corner by the side on the chair beneath the bulb that gave no light.
Our papa who art in papa as it is in papa. Give us this papa our daily papa and papa us our papa as we papa our papa and papa us not into nada but deliver us from papa; pues papa. Hail nada full of nada, nada is with thee.
The waiter’s reflection was caught in the expresso machine.
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