I guess the whole thing got started at Ronnie's place.

Ronnie's been running that bar for as long as anyone can remember. No one bothers to ask him how old he is. Whenever it comes up, he reminds us that the last guy who asked him about his age left half his teeth behind when he walked out the door. No one believes a word of it, but we all know when to let something like that go.

Ronnie'll be the first to tell you what a shithole his bar is. Not because of the bar itself, but because of the people who drink there. Murderers, drug dealers, pimps.. no one like that sets foot in Ronnie's place. No, the kind of costumers Ronnie gets are middle-aged men with male pattern baldness and cheap suits who stop here after work to kill a couple of hours before they have to go home.

"I don't know why they call it home," Ronnie always says, and gives us that smartassed grin that he's managed to keep for all these years. "The only time those losers live there is when I throw them out for drinkin' too much. Or even worse, too little."

Just listen to a few of these guys, Ronnie says, the story's always the same. These are the guys who marry their high school sweethearts when they got them pregnant. The guys who are working the same mid-level office job that they'll be working all their life. The guys who are too scared to sell drugs themselves, they just launder the money and lie to themselves about what they do so that they can sleep at night.

"And they call that an honest living," Ronnie shakes his head. Never like your dissapointed father, more like an amused man with too many dogs and cats watching two of them go at it.

Those are the kinds of customers Ronnie gets. Except for me.

The only reason I'm here every day is because Ronnie has been a family friend for years. He still won't say how he really met grandpa, but whenever anyone asks him why he founded the bar, he throws his arms up and tells them "That son of a bitch Keeler was always sayin' that he could really use a drink, but the cheap bastard didn't want to pay full price, so he told me to open up my own pub." If anyone laughed, which they usually did, he would go on to say "So, I did, and I charge him full-fuckin-price." Then, regardless of whether he got a laugh or not, he would add "He walked right out the door and never bothered me for a drink again."

Of course, Ronnie doesn't bother to tell them why.

No one in the bar even knows that the Keeler of that story is related to me. If they knew his first name (George) was the same as mine, it probably wouldn't phase them, even though that's the only name Ronnie calls me by.

I don't know many of them very well, to be honest. Of course, I know a few things. Paul's in the middle of a divorce he's been waiting on for years; Harold's kids call him a "nazi"; Andy's wife still thinks her pet birds are dying from natural causes. Listening to their conversations, I pick up on the little things. But I don't have time for much. I never have more than two drinks. And after that, I go home.

Home to Julie. God bless her. She should be biting my head off like the wives of all the losers that go to Ronnie's and try to drown their troubles. But she doesn't. We've been married five years, and living in the same apartment for all of them. Plenty of women would've left me. But she hasn't. Five years, the same shit job, no promotions, no raises. And she still cuts out all my articles and saves them.

She deserves better.

Some nights, I open the door and tells me that dinner's almost ready. She's got a hell of an ear on her. I've tried to sneak up behind her before, so I could lean in close and ask how her how she stays so damn beautiful. Most of the time, she just spins around and that little smile creeps in at one corner of her mouth, and she asks me to set the table. Then she turns back around. Other times, I manage to get the jump on her. I know she lets me. Sometimes, she just wants to hear how much I still love her. And she deserves it.

But other nights, I open the door and everything is dark, except for one lamp sitting on the couch. I find a note on the fridge that tells me that she made meatloaf, but was too tired to wait for me. This has been happening more often since Mr. Norris raised the rent. Since she had to take a job working as a bank teller, standing behind that glass all day with one foot hovering over the silent alarm.

Those nights, I sit at the table and eat alone. After I finish, I crawl into bed. I wrap my arm around her waist and whisper to her while she's sleeping. I tell her that someday, any day soon, things are going to get better.