Play It Again Read Online Free PDF Page A

film he’d seen in the other bar…
    A face. A familiar form. Some shadow from the past—
    No. It was no good. He couldn’t grab hold of it, bring it into focus.
    Maybe it was just that he’d been drinking for the last few hours. Maybe that had driven it all out of his head.
    But R.J. had a bad feeling that even if he stopped drinking he would not remember. It was too shadowy, too elusive—
    “Why don’t you go on home, R.J.? You had enough to drink.”
    The waitress was the only person he’d known since Billie Sue who could stretch a one-syllable word into three. She was a teenager who hadn’t shed the Georgia shantytown of her birth. “Doreen, there’s no such thing as enough to drink,” he said.
    Experience told him he was in shock, that he had to fight it or go back under. He made an awkward effort to straighten his collar and brushed away the blade of hair slashing across his forehead. His clothes were a mess, his eyes scorched.
    “You want some comp’ny, then? It ain’t good to drink alone.”
    “Gotta do it alone, sweetheart. Like living. Like dying.” He took a belt of whiskey and shuddered like a wet dog.
    Doreen wiped his table. “You jes’ let me know if I can help,” she said and went behind the bar to talk with McInerny.
    R.J. saw their reflections in the beveled mirror. The Pirate would foul his whiskey with water for the rest of the voyage. Damn.
    Doreen’s heart was in the right place, though. She was a good kid. They all were. He’d never met a cocktail waitress he didn’t like. R.J.’s mother had been a cocktail waitress in the old days, between high school and movie stardom. He remembered a picture of her in a movie magazine, wearing a skimpy cocktail outfit with a cotton tail on her cute behind.
    R.J. remembered a lot of things about his mother. In particular he remembered that last strange lunch with her almost a year ago. Her reaching out to him. Him not believing it.
    He sniffed the lingering fumes in his glass. At least he wouldn’t have to identify the body. Uncle Hank had seen to that. Just like he’d been seeing to so many things for thirty-some years, since that day he’d noticed the lonely boy on the movie set and taken him under his wiry brown wing.
    And he’d been there ever since. When R J. got into trouble at school, it was Henry Portillo who showed up to whip him into line. Belle was too busy, of course, although Uncle Hank would not listen to R.J.’s bitterness about that.
    And when R.J. finally graduated, it was Henry Portillo who sat on the cheap folding chair with a Kodak and a proud smile.
    He was always there, always doing the dirty work when Belle was too busy—always—and when R.J. needed a friend.
    R.J. was glad to have him do the dirty work now. The police would have come knocking at R.J.’s door had they known of the blood relationship, but R.J. used neither parent’s name in his profession. He’d have to face them sooner or later, but he would just as soon steer clear of the police for a day or two.
    The door opened and a gust of wind-driven rain blew into the room, ripping the smoke apart. Disgruntled voices moaned and cursed, and a man in the next booth yelled an obscenity, then boxed his companion on the arm. She was thin, with stringy bleached hair and dark circles under her eyes that even her heavy makeup couldn’t hide. He was just an everyday jerk.
    “What the hell was that for?” the girl complained, rubbing her arm. R.J. heard their conversation beneath the plaintive voice of Michael Bolton from the jukebox.
    “Give us a kiss,” the jerk growled.
    “Okay, but cut the rough stuff. I don’t like it that way.”
    “Sure, baby. Call me Rex.”
    “You wanna play rough, Rex, I got a girlfriend who specializes. I can give you her number.”
    “Don’t get all riled up. Here, see how this feels. A hogsleg a girl can get a handle on.”
    “Wow,” she said, her hand sliding under the table, “that’s a big one all right.”
    Jesus,