As the web page loaded, Alex took a deep breath. One hand around his glass of Jim Beam, he raised it to his lips, and finished it off. The pub around him seemed to vanish into a blur the way the background of a photograph disintegrates into the bokeh.

His screen filled in from the top down. At first, Alex wasn’t sure who the news source was, since the format wasn’t immediately familiar. But then he looked at the address and realized it was the New York Times.

The article began:

“In November 1963, the nation mourned the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. America remembers him as a great politician and leader, taken away too soon by a deep and disturbing conspiracy that involved Russians, the CIA, and the two notorious shooters. Lee Harvey Oswald was famously slain by Jack Ruby while being transported between jails. The infamous grassy knoll shooter, Dmitry Vladimir Averin, also known as David Victor Avery in the United States, incarcerated at Brushy Mountain Penitentiary since 1964, has died today.

The coroner reports that Avery’s death is the result of a small brain tumor that was not detectable before his death. The tumor, said to be the size of a walnut, created pressure in areas of his brain and ultimately caused his death. Avery has no known survivors or associates.

According to sources in the prison, Avery had become increasingly strange and disconnected from reality in the last few years of his life. At one point he insisted he was the shooter, but wasn’t because his body had been taken over by reptilian aliens. Then it became that Kennedy was a reptilian alien and he had to kill him to avoid an alien takeover of the planet. Later he claimed he was the reincarnation of Servilius Casca, first to strike his dagger into Julius Caesar.

Avery became world-wide news in 1963 for his part in the assassination of President Kennedy, along with coconspirator, Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald denied knowing Avery when initially arrested. However, documents later recovered from the residences of both men, all in Russian, confirmed both their knowledge of each other, and revealed more about the assassination conspiracy.

The patronizing peace talks between Kennedy and Khrushchev had been essentially a delay tactic by the Russian government to allow Oswald and Avery to complete their plan, via coordination with George de Mohrenschildt, on behalf of the Russian government. Reportedly, the CIA had engaged Avery, while de Mohrenschildt had engaged Oswald. The idea was to have a redundant shooter plan to ensure the assassination would be successful. After the initial news of Avery’s death, demonstrators gathered outside the prison fence to hold a vigil for the late President Kennedy. “

Alex stared blankly, confused, at the screen. His emotions ran the gamut from disbelief, to confusion, to anger. In his head he thought, “Who the bloody hell is David Victor Fuckin’ Avery?”.

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Alex looked down the bar... at the red-haired Wendy, at the now-drunken gentlemen. They stared back at him, raised their glasses in acknowledgement, and went back to their drinks.

Alex looked back at his own empty glass on the weathered wooden bar. Wendy wandered over.

“What you want another, mate?”

Alex was silent, still feeling a bit in shock. He just looked at her. He couldn’t immediately snap himself out of it.

“You all right, mate? ‘ow bout some water, eh?”

Alex blinked at her. “No. I mean, yeah. Some water. That’d be fine.”

Wendy grabbed a glass from under the bar and filled it with tap water and set it next to his whiskey glass.

“Oh. And yeah. Another whiskey’d be great, love.”

“Sure thing.”

Wendy grabbed the bottle of Jim Beam by the neck, and tilted the open top over his whiskey glass. The caramel liquid splashed into his glass, and released a brilliant fragrance that made Alex rumple his nose for a second.

“Here you are. Cheers, mate.”

Alex put his hand around the glass. “Yeah, cheers.”

Before he put the glass to his mouth, he looked down the bar at the gentlemen Irish whiskey drinkers. They were in their own conversation, which sounded like something about their disappointment with the current Manchester United roster.

Alex stared for a second, then interjected. “Excuse me, mates.”

They stopped their conversation in unison, and looked up at Alex.

“Look... uhm, I know this is probably going to make me sound like a nutter, but do you recognize the name David Avery?”

The gentlemen responded with confused glances at each other, and again at Alex.

“Davie Avery, ye say?”, said one of the men.

“No.... David Avery? David Victor Avery?”

“Oh, oh right...”, said a different man. “Yeah - ‘e’s the bloke what shot President Kennedy in the states, right?”

“Ah yeah”, said another one.

Alex looked at them in disbelief.

“Wasn’t ‘e some kinda commie bloke er some what?”, chimed in Wendy.

“So, you’ve ‘eard of ‘im?” Alex said, his attention now on Wendy.

“Well, yeah. Dudn’t everyone know ‘bout him? Or ‘least ‘eard ‘is name, right?”, replied Wendy.

Feeling outmanned, and confused, and like a man put into a corner he can’t escape from, Alex replied, “Yeah... right, that’s the one.”

Wendy, and the gentlemen kept staring at Alex expectantly.

Alex let the time just pass. He felt uncomfortable. He took the glass of Jim Beam and swallowed a large sip. And he kept smiling at all of them. His posture shifted uneasily in his chair.

“So, what about ‘em, then?”, inquired Wendy.

“Oh nothing.”, was Alex’s first response.

Wendy looked at him with wider eyes, not understanding. She started to turn away, when Alex offered: “I mean, uh. He died, apparently.”

“In prison”.

“From a brain tumor or something”.

“Prolly serves ‘em right, eh?”, suggested Wendy.

“‘Tis that so?”, asked one of the gentlemen.

“Yeah. Uhm. I just read ‘bout it in the paper... I mean, the, uh, online paper. The... New York Times.”, Alex responded.

Feeling his anxiety ramping up beyond control, Alex grabbed the glass, and sucked down the remaining bourbon. He grabbed some money from his pants pocket that he was sure was enough for the drinks and a healthy tip, and placed it, wadded up, next to the empty glass. He grabbed his phone, and in a single, incongruous motion, leapt from the bar stool, and placed the phone in his back pocket.

He stumbled lightly toward the door, and as he walked out he heard Wendy say something like “Cheers, mate.”