Cecilia

  A one very confident M. Gyles Monroe ambled into the Beer Kitchen, humming and hopping like a rabbit in heat. He approached the bar forcefully and sat down on a stool. "Ahhhhh," he said. The bartendress was fixing libations, shaking mixers in either hand. She smiled and cooed. "Hello!"
  "Hello, Dear!" He requited. "How's it goin'?"
  "It goes." A frank edge.
  "Yes, that it does and that's all fine," he gesticulated the idea of space and serenity undulating his hands back and forth over the bartop.
  "Yessss, yes yes yes. It better be goin' rather than not."
  "Yes, ma'am. So it goes."
  "I'll be just a minute, sweetheart. I gotta get goin' here."
  "That's fine. Take your time. Go."
  He searched the bartop for some remnants of reading material. He looked left. He looked right - Kansas City Shuffle. Ah-hah, a crumpled few pages of KC Star lay lonely and some what interesting. He snatched it with one hand, and as a precaution he perused ere he delved. Good news is no news. So he was careful and cursory. Let's see, ingratitude about what the president  - a human being - was doing. Hmmm, sport's pages. Nope, no need. The Superbowl was over. Christina Aguilera bombed during halftime. Gee, the poor dear, couldn't live up to the media's chronic, hyper-critical self image and the affectations of patriotism haphazardly singing that silly song. She just erred in public, and visibility of that magnitude deserves perfection. Alas she was human and every body has to laugh. If she has any sense she would too. He felt a brief pang of sympathy and moved onward. He found nothing of laud or interest. He put it down, but words make great combinations, so he eyed the paper intermittently to fill the gap of time occupying the server, the time she was spending not making him his drink.
   "Okaayy, hon, what can I get you?"
  "I need no drink."
  "What?"
  "What?"
 "Sir, are you playin?"
 "As much as I can."
 "Excuse me?"
 "As much as I can."
 'Sirrr, this is a bar."
 "I'm well apprised of this."
 "Whaddya want."
 "Oh, yes, I've got a hold on it," he grabbed at his head a la thinking man. "Got it! I'll take a Cecilia."
 "Sir, I don't know how to make that drink."
 "What? Do you know who I am?"
 "You are, but I guess I'm only half aware."
 "The audacity. Make me a Cecilia on the rocks - and make it a double?"
 "I don't appreciate the way you're speaking to me."
 He gasped in the throes of passionate anger. "I'd like to speak with the owner."
 "Sir, I think you should leave."
 "Not until I've had my revivement! Be duly advised I have connections."
 "Ohhhh reallly, " she said through clenched teeth.
 "Yessss," he shouted stressing the s as much as was orally possible.
 "Sir, the owner's not here."
 "Put him on the phone then."
 "I'll beee right back."
 "Ohhhh, fiiineee, just take youuurrr time."
 She went to fetch the blow, the hardline. Muttering and anathematizing. His name had much to do with it. "Sum....fuckin', basterrrddd, goddamn...I'll show you," and so on.
  "Take your time, sweeeet heart!"
 She brought forth the hardline, pausing, standing affirmatively direct, ready to sic the dogs on him. "You wanna talk to the damn owner?"
 "Yessss!"
 "Fiiinnnne!" she slammed the phone onto the bartop and spun round, her back facing him, her arms folded tightly and resolutely.
 "Ohhhhh, people still carry hardlines, eh? But you don't know how to make a Cecilia? Outrageous!" His fist hit the granite bartop for emphasis.
 "What's the number?"
 She spat it out at him.
 "Thank you sooo much."
He dialed and waited for the cue. "Hello," a placid voice came on the line.
"What? This is M. Gyles Monroe!"
 "Yeaahhh. You wanna talk to me about somethin'?"
 "No! What can I get from an absentee owner that I can't get from a present manager?"
 "Sir, what's that supposed to mean?"
 He gasped, "Think on it, man, think on it."
 "Don't worry. I'll be losin' sleep."
 "Hahahaha!" he hung up the phone and motioned for the bartendress. "Madame, here's your instrument."
 "I'm not gonna do anything stupid, asshole."
 "First audacity and thitherto cowardice!" he harrumphed. She reached under the counter suggestively.
 "Stooop, wench, that's a gun I presume."
 "It's a mixer, fool."
 "Of that I have no doubt, but it ought to be a gun. And you don't know how to make a Cecilia. God almighty, the people in this place. The the - theee incompetence! Before you reach for that mixer, madame, I'll have you know I have a lawyer who has a good time chewing you people up and spitting you out. Bring me the manager."
 "Rigght away, sir."
 "Make haste, wench."
 The mangager, a wisp of a whimp, approached in a vest and tie. He too had his arms resolutely folded, his eyes full o' business.
 "Your blundering bartendress doesn't know how to make a Cecilia!"
 "Sir," his voice was laced with felix domesticus, ready to pounce a furry toy, "I've been a manager a long time, seasoned in one damn bar after the other, and even I don't know how to make a Cecilia."
 "Well, you ought!"
 "Whyyy, ummm, don't you tell us what it is."
 " A splendid idea, man, splendid indeed. It would help the customer service around here."
 "Finnne," his claws were drawn and he was rearing for the kill.
 "It's water with lemon."