The Most Interesting Person in the Room

Victor was a small, round man with hair the colour of a golden retriever. He owned and managed a tavern in Shrewsbury, England and lived in one of the suites. His suite was dusty and mostly dark, and there were piles up to the ceiling with the various trinkets he had stockpiled over the years. Some would say he was somewhat of a hoarder, but Victor liked to think of himself more of a collector, or a man that valued sentiment. If it had a memory attached to it, he was going to keep it. Besides, it’s not like he ever spent much time in his suite anyway. He went there overnight to sleep and bathe but his days and evenings were spent mostly down in the tavern’s pub area where he served drinks to his needy customers.

“Whisky on the rocks!” one would say.

“Singapore sling!” another would demand.

And Victor, devotedly, would make them. Once his customers were as drunk as a skunk, he’d show them to their rooms for the night. Then he himself would retire as well. His bed, merely two mattresses stacked on top of each other on the floor, allowed him to rest long into the morning. Oftentimes he wasn’t up and dressed until after noon.

It was a rainy spring evening and Victor was manning the bar by himself as he always did. Then, in came a man with a gun. Victor instinctively put his hands in the air, and the man laughed.

“That’s not why I’m here,” said the man.

“Then why are you here?” Victor responded, voice quivering with nervousness.

“For a drink, what else?” said the man.

The man set his rifle on the bar and sat himself in one of the barstools. “Vodka, straight,” he said.

Victor poured him the shot which the man took like nothing. “Another,” he said.

The man was wearing an animal’s pelt around his shoulders. “Fox. Hunted him myself,” he said, noticing Victor’s curious glances.

Victor began to relax. “You’re a hunter then, are you?”

The man simply nodded.

Victor didn’t know whether to strike up a conversation with this mysterious man or just serve him his drinks and leave him alone. Something in his face showed that he was kind. Maybe it was the laugh lines on his cheeks or his warm and inviting brown eyes. He studied the man further and noticed a scar that went all the way from the tip of his middle finger up through his forearm, where it disappeared under his heavy jacket.

Victor stared at the scar and until he was startled by the man reaching his scarred hand out in front of him, initiating a handshake. Victor shook his hand and willed himself away from the man’s scar and instead looked politely into his eyes.

“Name’s Pinky,” said the man.

“Why do they call you that?” asked Victor.

“It’s my name. It’s what’s on my birth certificate,” replied Pinky, laughing a little.

The name ‘Pinky’ did not suit this man. ‘Pinky’ made Victor think of someone who was delicate and skittish, not a hunter with a rifle, a fox pelt, and a mysterious scar.

For the first time ever in his tavern career, Victor poured himself a drink and sat on the stool beside the man. He wanted to know more. Even so, he wasn’t sure what to ask first, so for a while, he remained silent and looked over Pinky thoroughly. Every inch of him was interesting. Every molecule in him had its own story that the piles in Victor’s suite would envy.

Despite his gruff look, Pinky’s body language and facial expressions showed that he was deeply relaxed. He sipped his drink, straight vodka, and looked eternally peaceful. He rolled his neck back and forth and then stretched his arms and shoulders like a cat. His breaths were slow and easy and occasionally he’d let out a satisfied sigh. Then he leaned back and turned his body to face Victor. “And your name?” he asked.

Victor hadn’t even realized that he hadn’t told the man his name. “Victor,” he squeaked, sounding mousy and hesitant, as if he wasn’t used to calling himself ‘Victor.’

“Victor,” said Pinky, “that was my uncle’s name.”

Everyone else in the pub fell away as Victor focused solely on Pinky. The drunken chatters of other pub goers turned into background noise, the same as the morning calls of crows or the constant dripping of a leaky tap would. His gaze fell back towards Pinky’s scar and everything in him was screaming at him to ask, yet he suppressed it and let himself only look for the time being.

Outside, a boom of thunder rumbled lowly, growling like a beast.

“Guess I’ll have to stay the night,” said Pinky.

“Whenever you’re ready I’ll show you to your room,” Victor told him.

“Night’s still early,” Pinky said airily.

Once Pinky had finished his drink, Victor got up and poured him another one, then sat again at his side, wanting to ask so many questions that he didn’t know which one to ask first. Pinky seemed content to just sip his drinks, occasionally coughing heavily like a seasoned smoker, while Victor continued his silent study. From behind him, the background noise was interrupted by the yelp of a drunken woman. She stood up, took off her hat, stumbled a bit, and approached the bar.

“Pinky!” she cried out excitedly.

Pinky turned. So did Victor.

“It’s me!” she said.

The skin on Pinky’s face appeared to tighten.

“I’ve been alive a lot of years and met a lot of people,” he said, “you’ll have to remind me of who you are.”

Victor took in the scene and unconsciously slid his barstool closer to the woman to get a better look. Soon he noticed a scar on her face thay skewed her upper lip and made her nose crook to one side.

“Maggie,” she said, “from the well.”

Pinky and Maggie embraced in a long hug and he beckoned for her to sit beside him.

Victor’s body was buzzing and vibrating. Each time he thought of a question he wanted to ask, a new one came to mind and took its place. Then, much to his dismay, Pinky set a couple bills and some change on the bar, and he and Maggie went outside into the storm, leaving Victor sitting alone on the stool. He went back behind the bar and wiped some glasses with a damp cloth. Most of the customers were either ordering their last drinks or asking for a key to an unoccupied suite where they would settle down for the night. All the while, Pinky and Maggie remained outside. Victor held on to the hope they’d come back in and they could continue their conversation. Afterall, Pinky had said that he would stay the night.

Late into the night, Victor remained alone at the bar. His drunken patrons had either gone to their rooms or left entirely. He washed and then rewashed cups, trying to pass the time, and the storm increased in severity. The thunder grew louder, rain heavier, and lightning brighter. Waiting eventually took its toll on Victor and he too retired to his room. Though he lay on his mattresses and closed his eyes, he found himself completely unable to sleep. Once in a while he would sit up and try to reposition himself to get comfortable. The piles in his suite arched over him like mountains in a manner that was somewhat intimidating. Victor was no longer comforted by his many things and felt as though he was suffocating in them. He wouldn’t be able to take in a full breath of air until left his piles and went back to the bar. That’s precisely what he did.

Seated at the bar and looking to have helped themselves to more drinks were Pinky and Maggie. Victor rubbed the dark circles under his eyes away with his balled up fists and joined them at the bar.

“Victor!” Pinky shouted out jovially, as if he and Victor were old friends.

Victor politely introduced himself to Maggie as the tavern owner.

“I know who you are,” Maggie said, giggling pleasantly, “I’ve been here many times before.”

A lot of people came and went throughout the years. Victor couldn’t possibly be able to remember every patron he’d ever served a drink to or sent to a vacant room. Still, he was positive that he had never seen Pinky before. Pinky was far too interesting. Victor would have remembered meeting him.

A question he had been aching to ask all night finally surfaced. “The scar,” said Victor, pointing to Pinky’s hand, “how did you get it?”

“Same way she got hers,” replied Pinky, nudging Maggie playfully with his arm.

Victor paused and waited for an answer. He said nothing in return and allowed the quirky pair to speak again when they were ready.

For the next several minutes, Pinky told a story from his teenage years. Victor listened intently as he related his heroic tale of little Maggie, only seven years old, having fallen down a well and scraping up her face pretty badly on the way down. She cried and screamed for help and Pinky, the then fourteen year old, rushed to her aid. He was out shooting sparrows with his dad’s old gun in the same field where the well stood. Bravely, Pinky descended himself into the well to rescue Maggie, but unfortunately broke his hand during the rescue. Maggie as well appeared to have a broken nose. Pinky took both himself and Maggie to see a doctor and once his hand was in a cast and Maggie’s worried grandparents had shown up, he left to retrieve his gun and go home. Pinky had never formally introduced himself to Maggie but later, when she asked her grandfather who her hero was, he told her “that’s Pinky. It’s what’s on his birth certificate.”

Pinky had never learned Maggie’s name, though all these years later, Maggie had always known the name of the handsome and strapping young man who broke his hand to save her from the well.

Victor was in awe. He wanted to hear every story Pinky had to tell. He wanted to just sit and listen as Pinky told him more stories from his life. Things backfired on him however when Maggie instead asked Victor if he had any heroic and daring stories from his own life that he’d like to share. He didn’t have anything nearly as good as that, but he pulled out a story that he could recount about a childhood experience with a well.

Victor was skipping school. He was in elementary school and found it entirely too difficult for him. He felt as though he were in college with no formal training. He hated school. Rather than attend his classes one sunny Friday morning, he played in a field, looking for grasshoppers and throwing sticks to imaginary dogs. One grasshopper, a particularly hefty one with a darker shade of green than any of the others, hopped away from his grasp. He chased the grasshopper, unsuccessfully trying to recapture it, until it hopped down a well. Victor climbed up onto the well and tried to stick his head down, but the shot of a gun echoed through the empty field and he fell back off of the well and into the grass. Trying to shake himself out of the daze he was in, Victor felt an abrasive grip on his shoulder and was picked up off the grass like he himself were a tiny grasshopper. Standing menacingly above him was a teenage boy, baring his teeth and red in the face. The boy, one hand in a cast and mobilized by a sling, warned Victor not to play near the well as a little girl had recently fallen down into it and been badly hurt. Victor was afraid the boy was going to shoot him but instead he just pushed Victor back down onto the ground and walked away. Victor immediately returned to school. He didn’t skip for the rest of the year.

Halfway through his story, he realized that there was a connection here far deeper than he anticipated while at first telling it.

“After a good night’s rest, I say we go visit the well tomorrow in the daytime. I believe we have some respects to pay,” suggested Pinky.

When Victor returned to his suite once again, he found himself able to sleep nearly instantly. He woke up to the sun shining through his window and warming his face, which was somewhat unusual given the penetrating and tenacious darkness that never seemed to leave his suite, and met Pinky and Maggie downstairs where they were sharing a foamy beer for breakfast.

The trio ventured outside. The grass was still wet from the heavy rainfall the night before. Pinky and Maggie held hands as they walked, and Victor trailed awkwardly behind them. Pinky and Maggie prattled happily the entire time. Victor was silent. However, when they reached the well, it was Victor who spoke first. Again he was full of questions, but this time he knew exactly what to ask first.

“And how do we pay our respects?” he asked.

Pinky stared downwards, hands clasped behind him. The skin on his face appeared to loosen.

“I suppose we all do it in our own ways,” said Pinky, surprisingly hollowly.

Maggie threw a coin down the well and made a silent wish. Pinky shot his gun once into the air above them and then lay it on the ground at his feet. Their respects were paid. Now it was all on Victor.

The stones on the well were old and mossy. Many were cracked and dusty. Victor reached down and tugged on one that looked just about ready to fall out anyway, yet it wouldn’t budge.

His new friends diligently bent down to help him. The three of them tugged at the stone together until it fell out onto the grass, precisely where Pinky pushed Victor so many years ago. From there, they parted. Pinky shook Victor’s hand and gave Maggie a tender kiss on the cheek before he and his gun disappeared into the grassy hills, the dew remaining from the previous night seeing him off. Maggie left in the other direction. When the wind would pick up, even slightly, she would grab onto her hat, holding it to her head.

Victor added the stone to one of his piles. Maggie and Pinky continued to visit the tavern every now and again. The stone was eventually lost in the hoard of all his other collectibles until he discovered one day that he was completely unable to find it. After that, neither Pinky or Maggie ever visited him again, and the well was demolished when the grassy field was turned into a library. No library book could ever be as interesting as the scarred man with the fox pelt who could take vodka like it was nothing, so Victor never even bothered.