Reinventing Mike Lake by R.W. Jones

Instead I figured I’d have to just sit down and drink with the others.  After another, I began thinking of other Hemingway staples I could try.  The Hemingway daiquiris were getting a little too sweet, and I was ready to try something else while I still could.  Plus, I was getting the feeling that this wasn’t a daiquiri type of place, unless you were ordering one for your female companion, one of which I didn’t have by my side. 
                  I automatically went to the most extreme thing I could think of.  I wasn’t even sure if what I wanted to order was legal, but because most of my inhibitions were out the door and somewhere on Greene Street, I placed my order.
                  “Hey Hess, are you able to make me an abs-absith…ummm absinthe.”
                  Hess laughed “You’re walking home, right”?
                  “Ahh, yeah just right around the corner,” while awkwardly pointing in a direction that was most likely nowhere near Frank and Jean’s place.
                  “Okay good enough.  Well the absinthe we give you here isn’t quite the same as what Hemingway drank.  We have a watered-down version, if you will, but in your state I’m not sure it’s going to make that much of a difference.  And with nothing to compare it to, you won’t know the difference anyway” he said with a straight face.
                  Based on the little I knew about the history of the drink, I was hoping for him to lay out an arrangement of silver spoons, or at the very least a cool-looking, hour-glass-shaped glass.  Unfortunately, all Hess had for me was a basic high ball glass.  First he filled it with a green color liquid that came out of a liquor bottle like any other.  Once that was in the glass he took out a champagne bottle adding just a splash before sliding it over to me.
                  “A Hemingway absinthe, sir.”
                  I thought about arguing about my lack of silver spoons, sugar cubes, and interesting looking glass, but thankfully I had enough of myself left to refrain.  If this is what Hemingway drank, it was good enough for me.
                  It was the strongest taste I had ever experienced.  I imagined I looked like I had just taken a bite out of a lemon, only a thousand times worse.  Hess laughed at me, adding, “I wish I had a camera!  You better drink all of that before the ghost of Hemingway comes after you.”
                  There it was.  The hook, line, and sinker for a drunk guy: a ghost story.
                  He judged my expression of confusion, saying “What?  You didn’t think Hemingway would grace that other establishment, did you?”
                  I had seen the Elvira Tombstone in the other room with the pool table, but took it as a joke.  That, Hess told me is not a joke, and with the unique history of the old yellow building I was doing my drinking in, it would be more of a surprise if there weren’t any ghosts.  Turns out Hemingway’s ghost is just one ghost that people have said they saw or heard while working or drinking here late at night.
                  Hess explained to me that the very building we were in was built in 1850, making it one of the oldest buildings in the city.  The first business this building held was enough to make almost anyone believe in ghost stories – a morgue.  In addition to being a morgue it was also the city’s main supply of ice.  I inquired to Hess about how many ice and morgue combinations still operate in the country.  Hess, who laughed, chalked my question up to being drunk. 
                  In the 1890’s they shipped out the bodies and ice, and replaced it with some newfangled technology called a wireless telegraph station.  The station became not only an important part of the history of Key West, but also the history of