Sascha, he thought and he would think it usually when he would try to prevent himself from doing things that he should actually be doing. Or when, like so often lately, he would feel two hands on him that tried to influence the course of the events.
Who else could it be, but his dead brother?
Sascha had to be full of disappointment that the brother he had left behind - the somewhat older Aaron who had survived - was too weak and insignificant to strive.
Just look at him right there! Why would he want to leave before he was anywhere close to achieving what he wanted?
Aren't you supposed to honor me, Aaron? This can't be the best version of yourself that you can be! I´m sorry, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings and apologize sincerely. If you cannot do better, though, then no offense, but how can you live with yourself? If this is the best you can do, then you should have died in my place and I should have been you.
At first the thought that Aaron could hear his long gone brother sounded nice enough. But it never actually was, because Sascha only ever spoke to him when he was disappointed in him. If he wanted to shut him up Aaron had no choice but to stay in the worst of all places: at the counter of a pub, right next to Bob Melanski.
Sascha would only let him leave once he would have found out everything anyone could know about the man two seats away from him, plus a small bit extra just to ensure that he would have a head start. Because, according to their mother, that was what would matter to achievers and considering that life had - oh, so long ago - had to killed his brother off, Aaron would have to achieve at least double as much as would have been enough for a single man, so it would suffice for the two of them: his dead brother and himself.
Don´t fuck it up, he thought, staring at the whiskey puddle on the ground as if trying to figure out if there was any way at all that someone could drown in it: Bob, the bartender, himself or Sascha, and preferably the latter who started acting out in Aaron´s head. He felt his brother´s violent riot in his bones and sincerely hoped that he wouldn't crack his back.
What did he want, again?
As usual when Aaron would wonder, the control would slip away from him like a piece of paper from a pair of hands that had not held on to it hard enough, despite the storm that was approaching. It would be taken away by the first breeze and land on the next footpath, from where a walkerby would pick it up to make it theirs.
Whenever Sascha would take control and Aaron would have to go, it would feel like this. Sitting in the pub right now, with his eyes on Bob Melanski, Aaron wasn´t fully Aaron anymore as Sascha was slowly taking over.
Stop staring, Aaron, stop looking! The barwoman has noticed, and is shooting you distrustful glances now. Bob cannot know! He cannot figure out what you came here for!
To be fair, in reality the barmaid hadn't noticed. Instead, she was moving glasses and cutlery about, before, tentatively serving Bob the drink that he had ordered with a dishcloth. She went about her job with a sense of malice.
What a sluggish effort!
Bob looked down on her dismissively and judged her obviously passionless attitude towards her job, which brought him to think about his own. Frowning, he wondered if he himself still felt a sense of passion for what he was doing. The job had saved him back when he had been recruited. In fact, without it, he wouldn't have survived after Anna and Aria had died, but maybe it would have been better this way. If he had gone to jail for the accident - a punishment that he had been given by the jury - then Bob Melanski would have no longer existed. Only for his bosses he was still here. They had approached him the day the sentence had been spoken to tell him that they could make it go away and give him a clean slate if he were to become their helping hand. His bosses, that meant billionaires who had given him a purpose when Bob had lost everything. They had given him the chance of committing himself to a cause that mattered. But looking down at his double whisky now, pondering the choices that he had made since then, Bob wasn't sure any longer if it really did. He went on to swirl his glass, take it off the counter and down his drink, before signalling to the bartender that he wanted another.
Aaron was staring over to him. He had never been interested in people and was anything but a people watcher, anything but a people person. So usually he wouldn´t take any notice of them and quite frankly he had never looked at anyone as intensely as he was looking at Bob Melanski now. From the corner of his eye, of course, so he wouldn't get caught.
The puddle on the ground was growing, because he followed Bob´s lead. Whenever he ordered a new drink, Aaron got one too and as Bob got drunker and drunker, with his eyes red and somewhere else, Aaron kept pouring and pouring his whiskeys out on the edge of the counter and stayed his sober self.
During all this time he kept on studying Bob. He studied him without his consent, studied him without him noticing it, studied him like he was a star constellation that he had to figure out for his job. And, to be fair, amongst other things it was the prospect of finding work that had brought him there.
Even though Aaron was being cautious, after a few more double whiskeys Bob, at the time drunk enough, sensed that someone was watching him. His vision blurred by the drink he turned his head and looked straight at him. To him Aaron was a stranger. Only a blurry man two empty seats away from him, but - he blinked a few times to get a better picture - what a unique face, with eyes, so deep, so vast, so wild!
Just as Bob had this thought the barwoman built up in front of him and leaned over the counter.
"Listen, Bob, will you do me a favour and finish up? Look around, only you left here and this one." Before she went on, she pointed at Aaron, who pretended not to see it. "Not enough money to be made out of the two of you. I´d rather be with the kids at home."
Bob sighed at her before he sent his drunk, unsteady hand stumbling into his pocket. Seemingly to take his wallet out, but it got stuck. His fingers pulled and pulled, but since they were too sloppy, they lost their grip repeatedly.
An opening, Aaron thought those two seats away from Bob. Should I approach him now? Will I try to help?
As Aaron would usually do, he thought about it for too long, and the bartender was faster. She reached across the counter, pulled Bob´s wallet out his pocket and put it in front of him.
"That was what you wanted to get out, ya?" Right in front of Bob she turned the wallet - old and dirty - like a ferris wheel. "And what now? What do you want with it, huh?"
Bob looked miles away. However, with his eyes half closed, he pressed out an answer.
"Take it," he slurred his words. "Everything that's in it."
Hesitantly Maureen grabbed it, a pitiful smile on her features, as if she didn't believe that Bob would have much to give of anything, but the notes that she ended up pulling out taught her better. With her mouth wide open, but lost for words, she was staring at three 500-notes.
"What the fuck, Bob? Did you rob a bank or what? I cannot take this off you, that is too much!"
She put the money on the counter and slid it towards him. Like a cloth it soaked up alcohol until Bob's clumsy hand, wrapped around a whiskey glass - stopped Maureen´s attempt. As one of the notes flew towards her she just about caught it, shrugged her shoulders and nodded.
"Alright, then," she sighed and grabbed the other notes to put them in the pocket of her leather jacket, "I'll stay open for another few hours." She turned towards Aaron, he nearly felt caught watching Bob and concentrated back on the ground.
Oh, how the puddle down there never failed to calm him down!
"Listen, Mister, it's your lucky day, drinks are on the house tonight. So order something creative, I will get bored otherwise."
She hadn´t yet finished her sentence, when Bob, after nearly missing his mouth when downing his drink, almost shattered the glass as he forcefully bashed it back onto the counter. Maureen jumped, her eyes wide open. As Bob tried to slide the glass back towards her so she would refill it, anger took over her face. She put her hands on her hips and leaned towards his ear, while he was sitting there, slumped. With his muscle tension gone he seemed even smaller than he was.
"Don´t you pull shit like this here, Bob! You can give me all the money you want, but you won't shatter glasses in my pub. I will throw you out whenever I see appropriate, which, by the state of you, was probably around ten minutes ago."