Ken Douglas - Ragged Man

“ You sure that’s the best?”

“ I can’t live in that house without Ann. Everything there reminds me of her, the house, the furniture, the Jeep. I have to shed it all.”

“ Maybe that’s not such a bad thing, being reminded of her. She occupied a large chunk of your life.”

“ What time you seeing Sherry?” Rick asked, changing the subject.

“ Lunch at one.”

“ When are you going to let it go?”

“ Never.”

“ Jeez, you gotta get her out of your mind.”

“ I can’t. It must be love.”

Evan had been in love with Sherry Quilvang since a cold New York winter day in 1986 when he’d stumbled into her at the Record Rack. He had been making a cold call and she had been the girl behind the counter. Although he had fallen in love with her at first sight, she had been in love with her employer, who also happened to be her husband. Over the years he’d become her friend and confidant, and, during her rocky marriage, had spent many an hour over a bottle of wine acting the big brother.

“ I gotta pack.” Rick offered his hand and Evan grasped it. “Thanks for the use of the place, you’re a good friend.”

“ You’d do the same for me,” Evan said.

“ Will I see you before I go?”

“ No, I have to go to the Village and drop off some CDs before I meet Sherry.”

“ Good luck.” Rick turned and went down the stairs.

“ I’ll see you in California next month,” Evan yelled after him.

“ Looking forward to it,” Rick shouted back, then he was out the door.

Alone again, Evan removed the magazine, laid out two more lines, then inhaled them. Feeling as good as he thought he was going to get, he donned a black leather jacket and bounced down the stairs and out the front door. He walked around to the back, flicking the button on the garage door opener and climbed into his BMW. He was halfway down the street before the door thudded shut.

When he rounded the first corner, a red Toyota started and followed. It stayed with him all the way to the train station.

Sitting across from Sherry in the restaurant, he felt the tension, something was different. She kept changing the subject and fidgeting with the menu, and the way she kept crossing and uncrossing her legs was putting him on edge. He wondered what was bothering her.

“ Would you like to start with a drink?” the approaching waitress asked.

“ I’ll have a double vodka martini, straight up, no olive,” Sherry said.

Evan was taken aback. She usually only drank wine. Something was definitely up.

“ And you, sir?” the waitress asked.

“ Make it the same.” If she was going to drink doubles, then he was, too.

The waitress left and Sherry buried her face in the menu.

“ What’s up?” he asked her.

“ Nothing.” Her perfect teeth barely squeaked through a loose smile. He noticed a drop of sweat making its way from her hairline down her forehead. She was wound up tighter than Mick Jagger’s pants.

“ You sure?” he asked her.

“ You know, we’ve never been on a real date.”

“ I don’t think your husband would appreciate it.”

“ You’re probably right, but I don’t think I care anymore.”

Evan was stunned, he felt like he’d been hit with a hammer. In all the years that he’d been having lunch with her, she hadn’t once suggested that she was interested in anything more. Greg and Sherry were the perfect couple. He was a great guy, confident and sure of himself, allowing Sherry to have her own friends. The man hadn’t once hinted that he objected to his twice a month lunches with his wife or their frequent phone calls. If Sherry was his wife, he’d watch over her like the environmental wackos watched over the California gray spotted owl.

“ We took in a mint copy of London Roundhouse last week, the original Trade Mark of Quality version,” she said.

“ Really?” she had his full attention. He had one of the best collections of Rolling Stones records in the world, but he was missing that one.

“ That’s the second TMQ Stones record, isn’t it?” she twinkled.

“ No, the third, European Tour was the second.”

“ And Rick really didn’t save any copies of his stuff?”

“ No.”

“ Doesn’t he know that some of the original TMQ records are worth hundreds of dollars?”

“ He doesn’t care.”

“ He should, he could have made a fortune by just hanging onto three or four copies of every record he made.”

“ He has enough money.”

“ It must be nice.”

“ He has problems, like everybody else,” Evan said, pushing his chair away from the table. “Excuse me, I have to go to the restroom.” She smiled at him as he rose. God, he loved her, he thought, as he made his way through the restaurant toward the men’s room at the back.

He pushed open the swinging door, glad the restroom was empty. He took the first stall, flipped down the toilet seat and sat without taking down his pants. Anticipating the rush, he took a small paper bindle out of his shirt pocket, carefully opened it and set it on his knee. Then he eased a crisp hundred out of his hip pocket and rolled it into a tight pencil thin tube. Already loose, he lifted the bindle of white powder and, with the rolled hundred to his nose, he inhaled twice, once in each nostril. Feeling better than he had in years, he closed the bindle and put it, with the hundred, into his shirt pocket.

If he was going to be drinking doubles, he’d need the coke. The white powder kept him sober, but it was a delicate balancing act, walking a thin line between the stimulant and the depressant.

On his way out of the bathroom, he stopped by the wash basins to check his hair. He quickly ran a comb through it, making sure there were no tangles. Then he bent forward, into the mirror, to inspect a pimple forming at the bridge of his nose.

“ Those are the worst kind,” a voice from behind said.

“ You don’t know if you should pop them or leave them alone.” Evan checked out the voice’s owner in the mirror.

“ I pop them,” the man said.

“ I tend to leave them,” Evan said.

“ You’re Evan Hatch, aren’t you?”

“ Do I know you?”

“ We met at Beatlefest, last year.” Beatlefest was the yearly gathering of New York’s Beatle fans. They swarm into the Hilton Convention Center to buy, swap, and sell Beatle collectibles. Like the Star Trek conventions, which Evan also attended, they got bigger every year.

“ I met a lot of people there, it’s hard to remember them all.”

“ Storm, Sam Storm.” The big man held out his hand and Evan shook it.

“ I gotta go, I got a girl waiting.”

“ Maybe I’ll see you around,” Storm said.

“ Maybe.” Evan turned and left the restroom.

“ What took so long?” Sherry asked when he returned to the table.

“ I met a guy in the john that I knew.” He didn’t want to tell her that he’d been sitting in a toilet stall, finishing off the gram of coke that he’d started earlier in the day.

“ You know I was thinking,” she said, “if I went through your Stones collection, I would know exactly what you had and the next time we got something in, I’d know for sure whether you had it or not.”

“ What do you want to do that for? You know exactly what I need.”

“ I know, I’m just looking for an excuse to go to your place.”

“ Why?”

“ Evan, you silly, can’t you tell when a girl wants to go to the submarine races?”

“ I don’t understand.”

“ That’s what we called making out in high school, the submarine races.”

His tongue was planted firm against his bottom teeth, temporarily frozen. This was a moment he thought would never happen.