artist rendering of the proposed addition to Mt. Rushmore
Agnew on Mt. Rushmore
For nearly two decades, Satan drifted up and down the Strip, playing half the cocktail lounges in Vegas. The last couple of months, he’d headlined a revue at the Tahitian Princess’s Tiki Lounge as Johnny Mañana. He worked afternoons and early evenings before The Fab Faux, a Beatles tribute band, came on at eight. He was there now, winding down his second set with a medley of Rat Pack hits. He finished with an especially over-the-top cover of Sinatra’s “My Way,” tugged curtly on the brim of his black fedora to acknowledge the smattering of applause, and made his way to the stool where he regularly caroused between sets. Crozier, the beefy ex-sailor tending bar, had a tray of drinks waiting.
Satan raised a shot to eye level and watched shards of ice dance in the dimly lit room. The recipe was an incendiary concoction of his own invention, dubbed a Freezer Burn during a particularly rowdy evening with several Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders. It was equal parts Stoli pepper vodka and cinnamon schnapps, both right out of the deep freeze, spiked with Tabasco. He had, after numerous failed attempts, finally succeeded in teaching Crozier to make them just right.
Satan glanced up, catching his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. He had a narrow, pinched face, a pencil-thin mustache, and jet-black hair combed straight back. Devilishly handsome in a sleazy, bad boy sort of way, he was pretty much a regular guy, except he tended to make love with his socks on, having figured out several millennia back women found the whole cloven-hoof-thing a real turn off.