©2021

Dean, Kirk, Ralph and the Bear…..

Dean in a dinner jacket, tie askew, slim, elegant – martini glass in hand

Kirk – urbane, hair slightly longer than the fashion, over curling his powder blue button down shirt – a cigarette drifting with the smoke – eyes heavy lidded, looking down at the half-empty scotch glass

Ralph, rough, raggedy – cowboy hat askew – unshaven, cigar gripped between his teeth, eyes squinting from the smoke – a fistful of cards, eying the pot in the centre of the table…..

and the Bear – his navy blue double-breasted blazer casually open, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth – a cold beer, rivulets running down the sides of the glass……his goatee trimmed to the max…..leaning back in his chair, watching – waiting

Gathered around the poker table, a tin-hooded light suspended over the centre – a foot beyond the edge of the table was pitch blackness…..one sensed body heat out there, felt the rustle of satin against lace….

The rain splattered timpani-like against the old wood framed window panes.

Somewhere – from the deep darkness beyond, guitar riffs played against the slip and slide of piano notes.

‘So – you in, you not in?’, Kirk asked.

The Bear smiled, flicked the ash of his cigarette into the dead centre of the ashtray

These are – these were, my friends….all dead now, sadly. Not seemingly sadly for them though…….they are where they were most comfortable, some crispy/crunchy log cabin in the Hampshires or Muskoka.  Probably a Tuesday night. For them, time, dates, when,  – made no difference, dead as they were.

They visited me, occasionally. Of late, more frequently. Which was becoming a little more than mildly concerning as I had heard from others, former friends, who came to call, that as the frequency of such visitations increased so did, in direct proportion, the timeframe left available to them, those here, alive and living.

But, I did truly miss them. All of them. Though none of them had met one another before their deaths, they had become, it seems a closed caption of comfortable friends.

But, I had work to get out that night and I would have to wait ‘till my next visit to see how all the betting played out.

__________________________________________

‘So – whaddaya think? Should we….?’

‘Nah. Don’t think so – too risky. But we can ‘listen in’- maybe contrive to help out in some small way.

That was Dean and Kirk in conversation. After the poker game wrapped up, lights were turned out and they were sitting out on the verandah under the fluted metal roofing, each with a smidgen of cognac still in their glass.

Rain had mostly stopped. The occasional dripDrip hit the awning above them and trickled down to the decking.

’It’s too early’, Kirk said, ‘We don’t want to spook him….’

‘Hah! Funny one,’ replied Dean. ’Spook him – guess that’s what a normal mortal would think, yeah.?’

‘Well we do be spooks, we do be.’ Kirk replied.

© 2023 michael moore