the Haven
"Somewhere in this four horse town," Monty "Carlo" MacAllister is telling me, "there's a place where you can smoke a cigarette that's been deep fried in trans fats. Where raw, live game is hung on the walls and what you shoot down is what you'll eat. An experience so pure and bloody it's like fucking a virgin," and he begins to caw and the caws turns into coughs. Then Monty is quiet, he's reminiscing. He's wherever he is, in his head, ocean waves are crashing, tropical birds are turning into neon streaks along the horizon. Margaritas as long as your arm. It's paradise.

Monty MacAllister is some kind of a local legend, a real war story, the only certified ghost to haunt anywhere with a cheap tap.

Most nights he's here, at the Pilgrim. Probably because of the old leather, the weathered oak, the rugby games on the television. He still comes around in his pith helment and jodhpurs, got one real wild eye and one he claims was took by a tiger. Most nights he drinks bourbon, or gin, recounts adventures to no one in particular, leaves a little sadder than he came in.

"Tell me about this place, Monty," I'm asking. "You ever been there?"

"Course!"

"C'mon. What's it like."

He pulls his entire mustache up and away from his face, like parting a curtain, and this is how I know he wants to make a statement so clear it is unmistakable. "It's a gentlemen's club. Honestly. Earnestly. Not of the whorehouse variety. It's nothing but walls of brown liqors and maps. Hemingway drank there. Kerouac. Lincoln. Mozart. Christ. There was always fresh jazz wax on the Victrola. And at some point, every evening, a game would occur, wherein every patron in the bar would tell a story, embellished just enough to be a better boast than the last man's. Terribly complicated scoring rubric, takes a lifetime to understand of course. There's points awarded for difficulty, for continuity, for plausibility, for politeness. There'd be several rounds, and eventually each man would get blind drunk and filthy with exaggeration. Then Hobarth, the bartender and proprietor, rings this brass bell and declares a winner, who gets one slight sip of of a thousand year aged brandy. Then there's greco roman wrestling until blackout or morning."

I'm stunned. Speechless. "So where is this place?"

"Oh, here and there. It slips through the fog, never settles long enough to gather moss." MacAllister winks at me with his wild eye, sucks another shot of bourbon through his mustache.