“It’s ain’t no scam, that’s the way it works.”
“And I suppose that you just happen to have two coins and you’re supposed to give me one?”
“Truth is, when I got here I only had one and now I think I got two. If’n I do, you’re supposed to get one.”
“What do you mean you think you have two, you must know. What’s this about anyway?”
“Look, I never met you before tonight and if you will remember, we never did exchange names, we just started talkin’. I had no idea this would happen.”
“Yeah,” I interjected, “so now you are supposed to give me a coin, a round tuit, right? A real one.”
“Yupper,” he said, “that’d be right, a real, Round Tuit!”
“So what if I don’t want the damn thing?”
“You will miss the most amazing thing that could ever happen to you in your whole life.”
“That so? So, I take the coin, what’s in it for you?”
“I get to keep mine; I get to go back to Tuit’s again.”
“So, keep both and go twice!”
It don’t work like that, sonny; you got to have a coin to go there, sure ‘nuff, but nobody gets two. ‘Sides that, if’n you don’t take the one for you, it’ll just disappear and maybe take mine with it”
“What, now you’re telling me the one you have will vanish and they won’t let you in without one?”
“Yup, you got to have the coin to go there.”
“Where’s there?”
“I don’t know.”
“This is getting stranger by the minute. You’ve been there but you don’t know where it is?”
“That’s right! Nobody knows where it is; least ways, no one I ever met who’s been there, knows where it is.”
“Come on! You have to have a coin to get there but nobody knows where the place is. How are you supposed to get there? Someone has to take you?”
“Well, sort of… see, they call you and invite you to come and if you have a Round Tuit, you can go.”
My head was already sort of muzzy but now I was really getting confused, “This sounds a little nuts to me, you know!”
“Yeah, I suppose so.” He said. He took a long pull on his drink, reached into his coat pocket again, gave me another dose of that odd expression and said, “Look why don’t I just tell you this whole thing like it’s just a story and then you decide if it’s true or not, OK? That way I do what I think I’m supposed to be doin’ and you get to decide on your own what you think.”
“Yeah, I suppose so,” I agreed, “I’m not going to get any sleep, that’s for sure. Seems fair, I’m just far enough gone to need a good story; and we sure as hell aren’t going anywhere tonight.”
“All right,” he said, “that’s how we’ll do it.”
He got the barkeep’s attention and held up two fingers. The barman nodded and the old cowboy began this story…
“There’s this here bar called Tuit’s and you have to be invited to go, by someone who has already been there. Everybody who gets invited seems to have a fair talent for telling stories and you’re expected to tell a good one or you don’t ever get invited back again. As I said, I don’t know where it is and I never talked to anyone who claims they do. It ain’t here.”
“Not in Denver?”
“Not on this Earth!”
“Sure,” I said, “I did agree to listen with an open mind.”
“Good,” he sighed, “you’ll need it. So, I told you that you have to be given a Round Tuit by someone who’s been there. They know to give you one because they had one and then they have two and that tells them that they are supposed to give one to you.”
“Right, I said, “we’ve been through this part… so then?”
“Well, then, they can tell you about the place, give you your Round Tuit, later you get a call and you can go.”
“Just how do you do that if the place isn’t on Earth?”
“You put the coin in the slot next to the phone when he calls.”
“Which phone?”
“That’s one of the funny things about this. He, that’d be The Tuit hisself, can call you on any phone, anywhere; and when he calls there’s this coin slot that appears right by the phone. Any phone, cell phone, land line, satellite phone, pay phone…”
“Haven’t seen a pay phone in years!” I interjected.
“Yeah, well, don’t matter what kind of phone or where, if Tuit calls, there’s a coin slot next to the phone.”