We Are Scientists

It was the kind of bar where nobody nice goes on the kind of street where nobody nice lives, which is probably what made it so cheap, which is definitely what made We Are Scientists take meetings there. Not that Murray & Cain were cheap, but they could do math just fine. If they were sticking a quarter into a video game machine, they’d just as soon the thrills last for more than thirty seconds. Same with buying a lady dinner. Of course it had been a long time since video games or dinner with a lady cost a quarter, and anyway they weren’t looking for video games or ladies, except in the deep-down quiet way that men always are. They were looking for a producer. Murray & Cain, they’re the guys who started We Are Scientists 13 years ago. Fresh out of college and bored by their day jobs, they figured rehearsing a rock & roll band would eat up the long slow evenings. Only it backfired, because the band panned out. Now nothing eats up their long slow days, except proving that a busted clock is wrong nearly all the time, and if you watch a pot long enough, eventually it boils. They ordered two whiskies, no ice, filled to spilling. Those were for Cain. Murray took a squid-looking thing made of plastic tubes from his briefcase and handed five of the six tentacles to the bartender, who attached them to the five closest taps. Murray stuck the free end into his mouth and nodded, and the bartender opened the taps. That’s when Chris Coady stepped out of the gloom.