A few people near the door stop what they are doing to look at us, but it’s just a casual look. We are just regular people tonight. People who fit in. Nothing special about us at all.
“It’s kinda busy,” Pie says, her voice almost disappearing into the rumble of a song I actually recognize. Something about a ball and chain from decades back. “There’s a table over in the back.” She points to a table. Which is technically empty. But the pool players are crowding it, so I point to a section of the bar near the jukebox.
“There,” I say, then lead her through a short maze of tables.
She settles onto her stool, smiling and spinning a little, her cute little combat boots tapping on the stainless-steel footrest attached to the bar.
I hold up a finger to get the attention of the bartender. He nods at me from the other end of the bar, then I take a seat as well.
“How long has it been?” Pie asks.
I have to think back pretty far. “Maybe since this song came out.” I chuckle. “Decades. This place has been a bar for seventy-five years, at least. But I’ve never actually been in here. There was another one Grant and I came to back in the Eighties.”
“Holy shit,” she giggles. “I can’t believe you were alive in the Eighties. What was that like?”
“Bad music, ugly clothes, and lots of seedy pot.”
She laughs. “You smoke pot?”
I shrug. “It was a thing back then.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s still a thing now.”
“Yeah. We were growing it for a while.”
“What?”
“Grant.” I roll my eyes. “He was always trying to make money. Pot in the greenhouse was just one of his many get-rich-quick ideas.”
“Hmm.”
“What? What’s that ‘hmm’ about?”
“I’m just remembering something he said to me that night I had a date with Russ Roth. He was very focused on money.”
“Well, it makes sense if you think about it.”
“How?”
“I don’t know if he was always Saturn—it’s possible that Grant was a mostly normal dude when he first stepped through the Saint Mark’s gate—but he was definitely Saturn when he left.”
“What’s that got to do with money?”
“Oh”—I laugh—“everything, Pie. Money is the actual, literal root of all evil in this world.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“That’s because you don’t have money. Or crave it. Once you have it, the craving just comes along for the ride. You want more. You get obsessed with it. And then, pretty soon, you’re growing pot in a magical greenhouse and corrupting an entire generation of PA teenagers.”
“I’ll take your word on that.” She chuckles. “But what’s that got to do with Saturn?”
“Saturn is the god of money. And FYI—he also ate children.”
Pie crinkles her face at me. “Gross.”
“Oh, he’s gross, all right. But forget him. It’s time to drink.”
The bartender is walking towards us. He’s a young guy. Maybe the age I currently look, which is thirty or so. His hair is dark and he’s got a shadow of a beard, lots of tattoos on all his visible skin, and the words ‘good’ and ‘luck’ spelled out across his knuckles. He taps all of those knuckles on the bar in front of us. “What can I get you?”