The Railroad by Neil Douglas Newton Read Free Book Online Page A

looked like blood on the left rear door of the car. Her husband was being questioned though no suspects had been officially named.
    It had just the right eerie ring to bring my hard won sense of calm crashing down on me. It seemed like the perfect post 9/11 creepiness. More than I wanted to think about just then. I went and made myself another drink.
    *
    “You have to come out drinking. It's Saturday night. Stop being an asshole.”
    Dennis was my best friend and the only one who could have shaken me loose from my self-imposed exile. Since my walk in the park with Barbara, I’d avoided her and everyone else. I felt something like a virulent flu growing in my insides; though it wasn’t physical, it felt just about as bad. I suppose I could have taken an easy out and called it Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. A diagnosis makes everything easier.
    After a couple of weeks of my not calling him, Dennis decided that he’d had enough. He worked on me for ten minutes on the phone before I saw the wisdom of his words: I wasn’t being me and I wasn’t being healthy; only getting back on the horse would help. I wasn’t sure that I believed him, but I wanted to. So I went a few blocks over to the “Isle” as we called it. I had always felt a strange pride in going there; it was a real New Yorker’s bar, unknown by most of the yuppie swarm, old, and in its own low-life way, exclusive.
    The ceilings were genuine old New York tin, the floors tiled and the booths separated by glass partitions. There was nothing interesting around it worth speaking of, inhabiting, as it did, a block of warehouses and wholesale businesses. It probably had looked much the same since it was built.
    I was keenly aware of the churning in my guts that had been my constant companion for the last few days as I made my way down the floor between the bar and the booths. I found Dennis and another man in conversation halfway along the bar itself. Dennis smiled. “I saved you a stool, dude.”
    He  signaled the bartender. “I thought that drinking together would help you remember what you do for fun.”
    I snorted, and then nodded at our bartender. Colm was a typical New York Irish bartender; half friend and half server. After a couple of years of coming to the Isle, we’d established a good rhythm. Colm poured with a free hand, charged us almost nothing, we gave him ridiculously generous tips and everyone was happy. I had even availed myself of his services as temporary therapist on a couple of nights when Barbara was too much for me to handle.
    “How’re you doing, Mike? Haven’t seen you for a few days, can you believe this shit?” He nodded at the television above the bar, blaring 9/11 news like some infomercial.
    “I don’t have any choice but to believe it,” I told him.
    “Mike was down there when it happened,” Dennis told anyone who happened to be listening.
    “Oh shit!” Colm commiserated. “I’m sorry, man. My brother-in-law was down there and he told me it was horrible.
    I felt some eyes boring into me. “It was. But right now I’d like a drink.”
    “Certainly, Mike. What’re you having?”
    I looked up at the rack to see if it was there and Colm smiled. “We just got some in. I kept it under the bar for you.” He reached down and lifted up a greenish bottle, the seal still over the cork.
    Dennis grunted. “Not that again, Mike.”
    Colm held it under his nose. “When I was little the old folks by the coast still would burn this stuff to heat their houses. This brings back memories.”
    “It brings back my lunch,” Dennis mumbled.
    Colm poured me a stiff one, making a show of it. There’s nothing like being treated like you’re special in an Irish bar; for a moment I forgot what was eating at me.
    “What did they burn?” Dennis asked. “Whiskey?”
    “No. This is a single malt from the Isle of Islay. They burn peat moss to give it its special flavor.”
    He read the label. “La Phrug?” he said, butchering the