A Real Pro

A Real Pro
By
James Robert Smith

He went slowly
to the coffee table and began
to carefully lift each bottle of beer.
Goddamn.
Some of them were still half full.
He was going to have to drink a lot of beer before
tossing those bottles.
Fuck.
He hated drinking with people who
weren’t alcoholics.
They wasted too much of
his beer, and it didn’t matter if they’d brought it.
It was his house and they came
to see him, so it was his beer.

Now he was going to have to swill
it all
before he could clear the bottles
out.
Warm beer.
Feh.
He’d have to watch for cigarette butts,
he realized,
raising the first bottle to
his lips.