– Yes – Louis answered in a timid voice.
– Then for the first time at the expense of the establishment.
Thoughts of losing his family rushed into his head again. He answered in a depressed tone:
– Let’s have something stronger.
– One minute – the bartender said cheerfully and with a satisfied smile, raising his index finger.
The bartender began moving bottles from the shelves behind him to his work area. He placed a small glass in front of him, into which he began to pour a bunch of different drinks in different proportions.
While the bartender worked his magic on the drink, Louis looked around. Suspicion was not erased from his face and at the same time his intrigued mind was in no way freed from surprise at the picture that appeared in the seemingly deep forest. He didn’t understand anything. More recently this place was completely covered with trees.
– How long has your establishment been open? – Louis asked.
The bartender looked at him with a grin and replied:
– You are asking the wrong question.
– Which one should I ask?
– You should not be interested in “WHEN?” we opened, but for “WHO?”
At the end he gently swirled the liquid around the transparent walls of the glass, stirring the ingredients a little and placed the transparent vessel in front of Louis, saying in a cheerful voice:
– Here you go.
Louis still looked at everything that was happening with suspicion. And the most suspicious thing was the liquid that rested at the bottom of the glass in front of him and was a mixture of who knows what. He examined the contents of the glass. It contained a cocktail of a light golden hue. With some hesitation, he took a small sip, which was very difficult. Louis coughed and asked:
– What is the name of this drink?
Actively wiping the glasses with a towel until they shine, the bartender replied:
– “Hell of a ride”.
Louis confirmed the bartender’s words:
– The taste is truly hellish.
The bartender laughed.
– This is the strongest thing I can do. As you asked.
Still coughing, Louis suddenly remembered:
– Oh, sorry. How should I contact you?
– Call me Albert, Louis.
Louis looked at the bartender in surprise.
– How do you know my name?
– It just suits you very well.
Ignoring this, Louis continued asking:
– Tell me, Albert, is it always so empty here?
– I wouldn’t say it’s empty here. After all, there are at least two people here. Whether a room is empty or full does not depend on the number of its inhabitants, but rather on how alive they look. Sometimes there is much more life in one person than in a whole crowd.
Louis looked into the glass with a blank look and, having prepared himself, took another sip, after which he once again felt this incredibly daring, burning taste.
– What’s on the second floor? – Louis asked with a grimaced face from the bitterness in his mouth.
– There are rooms there. Our establishment is both a bar and a hotel.
– So that means… all the visitors are probably in their rooms now.
Albert smiled and shrugged. He continued to wipe the glasses endlessly.
Louis continued to take sips until he had drained his glass.
– Excuse me, Albert?
– Yes?
– Can I drink anything else like that? And I would bring the money later. My house is not far from here.
– Well, – the bartender drawled, – I never refuse a client such a request. In the end, we cannot foresee everything, especially when we will need money. Sometimes completely unexpected things happen in life.
– Exactly – Louis answered quite affirmatively. But he said this in some kind of healthy voice. At these moments, a kind of serenity and malicious resentment towards the whole world simultaneously settled in his soul. Moreover, the second feeling gradually faded away. He suddenly almost forgot about his dead children and wife. But then he remembered them again. He remembered, but for some reason he did not feel bitter grief, as if everything had happened too long ago to grieve about it. And it didn’t look like intoxication. He had never experienced such a feeling that all the bad things suddenly stopped tormenting his soul. And this is strange, because Louis has never been known for his callousness in his life.
Even if you drink a barrel of wine, the effect will be much weaker than one glass of this… “Hell ride” – Louis thought.
He drank three more glasses of the alcoholic potion. The first was called “Flight to the Stars”, the second was “On the Path to Ecstasy” and the third was “Living Blood”.
– Apparently, you’ve come a long way – Albert said politely after the fourth glass had lost the last drop of its contents.
Louis nodded jerkily several times, as if something was preventing him from uttering at least one w… wo… sound.
– Let’s pass. You need rest. I’ll show you a room.
The bartender politely led Louis to the stairs and took him to a free room on the second floor.
2. WELCOME
Louis was awakened by some noise coming from below. He woke up and his first thoughts were related to his family. The day began with soul-crushing sorrow. He wanted to shed tears again, but something prevented him.
He left his room and went down the stairs to the first floor.
The bar was full of customers. There were no free tables. Louis looked around and wondered how such a crowd could fit into the establishment. There was nowhere for the apple to fall. From their appearance, he understood that the visitors were not from these places. It was hard to believe that they were from neighboring villages or nearby cities. Most of them were dressed somehow atypically for the current times, and many spoke in unfamiliar languages and strange dialects, and often used long-outdated words. Then it turned out that most of them were not French at all and their native language was different, hence the strong accent. It also looked interesting that among the visitors there were both representatives of the working classes – blacksmiths, grocers, fishermen, carpenters, butchers and other commoners, and people from the upper classes – nobles, merchants, close aristocratic families and even those who looked like patricians of the distant past.
Now it was the completely different establishment. It didn’t seem to Louis to be as nice and calm a place as it had looked yesterday. There was an atmosphere in the bar that he did not like at all. He wanted to get out of this place as quickly as possible, and if he returned, it would be solely to repay the debt to the bartender. This place made him feel intense discomfort, so much so that he even forgot about the loss. How could such different people gather in one place, and even sit with each other at the same table and have a heart-to-heart conversation over a glass? Rich with rich, poor with poor. It has always been this way, and what Louis’s eyes saw, any normal person would consider unnatural and wrong. This is against the established norms of society. But in some incomprehensible way, these people still coexist quite harmoniously within the same room and, it seems, neither one nor the other is in any