I step inside the Blue Moon. Fernando sidles up to me. “Hey. Want some bud?”
The bar is a well-known cannabis marketplace. I give a furtive nod. Fernando disappears into the shadows, then re-emerges. A tiny Ziploc bag slides into my palm.
I hand Fernando a twenty. His eyes dart around the Moon’s corners. It’s ridiculous, as the bartenders know exactly what we’re doing but don’t care.
I love a microbrew with good weed. No wonder the Moon is my favorite tavern. We’ll all smoke outside, in the alley. Nobody knows yet that gentrification and a pandemic will ruin everything.
Leah Mueller's work appears in Rattle, NonBinary Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Citron Review, The Spectacle, New Flash Fiction Review, Atticus Review, Your Impossible Voice, etc. She has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net. Leah appears in the 2022 edition of Best Small Fictions and was nominated for the 2024 edition. Her two newest books are "The Failure of Photography" (Garden Party Press, 2023) and "Widow's Fire" (Alien Buddha Press, 2023).
Website: http://www.leahmueller.org