You looked like the Marlboro man.” Melissa leaned on her elbows over the bar, giving George an eyeful of the breasts that had, as far as he could tell, held up well through one husband, two children and thirty years.He would know. He’d seen the original, pre-baby versions up close and personal back when handsome studs still sold cigarettes from billboards and magazine ads, free love was still mostly free and he’d been a very young man reveling in the hedonism of the times.He’d come a long way in the three decades since his first foray into the wild world of bar life as a wide-eyed seventeen-year-old kid. He’d sown his share of oats, worked his way up from busboy to bartender to eventually buying the business and the building from its original owner. He married his college sweetheart and raised a son—who’d recently graduated college and was already doing very well for himself as a programmer for an internet conglomerate in California. He and his wife had divorced as amicably as was possible a few years earlier, and he’d come full circle to living in the apartment upstairs.And while he didn’t revel quite as wildly as he once had, he did enjoy the perks of owning a respectable bar in a still-thriving middle-class neighborhood—a free drink when he wanted one, staying up all night and sleeping late guilt free, and the attentions of an attractive female patron when the opportunity arose.“Yeah, then that son of a bitch Selleck came along and did it better,”
