21 Tales by Dave Zeltserman Read Free Book Online Page A

finished the martini and asked the bartender for another. As I sat there waiting for it, I thought of Dave Stevens, something I hadn’t done in almost two years. While he might look exactly like me there’s something special about him that women gravitate toward. There’s no denying that. One of these days I’ll meet up with him and see if I can find out what it is. Maybe also knock out a few of his teeth in the process.
    My own name is Andy Lenscher. For seven years I sold copier machines in the Mid-Atlantic, and during that time somehow ended up shadowing Stevens. I’d be sitting in a bar in Reston, Virginia or Scranton, Pennsylvania, or wherever, and invariably run into one of Stevens’ pissed-off and furious ex-flings. As best I could figure out, he sold women’s undergarments in the same cities that I sold copiers. I know some of you are probably thinking that this is going to turn out to be one of those split personality stories where in the end I realize I am in fact Dave Stevens. Nope, no such luck. This is just one of those fluky coincidences where the two of us kept traveling in the same cities, and I always had the misfortune of being several months behind him and paying the price for his bad behavior.
    During those years I was yelled at, bitten, kicked, spat on, and punched by some very attractive women I’d never seen before. At first I tried to explain myself to these women, but of course it turned out that I also sound exactly like Dave Stevens. I learned the best thing to do was to keep quiet, try my best to protect my vital organs, and hope their rage would blow over quickly. After one of them tried to run me over in a downtown Bethesda crosswalk, I put in a transfer to another sales district. The problem was my company didn’t want to move me – I was too valuable where I was and had too good a rapport with my customers. They dragged their heels and five months later I was shot at outside a motel in Pittsburgh. Whoever it was missed, but that was the final straw. I quit my job and joined up with a competitor who was able to offer me their Midwest district.
    That was two years ago. The Midwest was far less lucrative than my old territory and I made about half the money that I used to, but at least I didn’t have Dave Stevens to worry about.
    At least until those two drinks were tossed in my face.
    With a sick feeling in my gut I realized Stevens must have switched territories also – probably for his own safety. Once again I was shadowing the sonofabitch. And once again the cosmos was having a good long laugh at my expense.
    I didn’t sleep much that night. After Wichita, I was going to be driving north to Topeka, then Lawrence and Kansas City, and all I could think of was running into more ex-flings of Stevens’. As it was, I was wide awake at six-thirty when the alarm went off. I showered and dressed quickly, and after checking out of my motel, found a roadside diner where I ordered corned-beef hash and poached eggs. I didn’t have much of an appetite, mostly pushed my food around the plate, but the three cups of coffee helped. The waitress, a motherly type who looked like she could be anywhere from sixty to eighty, gave me a concerned look.
    “What’s wrong, Hon?” she asked. “You hardly touched your food. Anything wrong with it?”
    “Everything’s fine. I guess I’m just not as hungry as I thought I was.”
    She gave me a sympathetic smile. “Hon, you should try to eat. And if you want to tell me what’s troubling you, I’m all ears.”
    There was nothing but genuine concern in the smile she gave me. That’s the thing with Midwesterners, most decent Salt o’the Earth types you’ll ever run into. But how in the world could I tell her, or anyone else for that matter, about Dave Stevens?
    “Nothing more than I got a long day ahead of me,” I told her. “But I’ll make more of an effort.” I took several bites of the hash while she stood and watched approvingly. The bill for