Ficlets

Madeleine's

Slouched against the dead juke box (really it wasn’t dead, all the lights were on, the slowly changing colours never seen in nature, the fluted columns with rising bubbles) but the owner preferred her own music choices to those of her customers, I contemplated an angelic figure with luxuriant, dark tresses cradling a face with skin so fair as to seem translucent and glowing.

Her name was Ingrid and she was the owner of this tiny bar, located on a back street plaza that seldom saw the tourists so prevalent elsewhere in Palma de Mallorca.

It had taken two days to find this place even with the type of people that I know. There was no sign. From the plaza, during the day it looked much like the houses on either side. A single window with a small La Fin du Monde sign was the only indicator that behind the residential style door was a storied bar. Before Franco’s reign, the house was the best brothel in Palma, some said in all of the Balearics. It was known as Madeleine’s in those days and the name had stayed

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