Free Dead Ringer by Ken Douglas

the two men sitting across from him. It was obvious the two were a couple. Good. Gordon hadn’t found anyone yet.
    “ What happened to you?” Jonas, the Swedish bartender, was a big man, sometimes gruff and closing on sixty. But despite the appearance he tried to give off with his plaid shirts, work jeans and lumberjack boots, his heart was as big as he was and it kept his wallet as thin as a beggar’s.
    “ I fell down while I was running on the beach.”
    “ Bummer.” He pierced her with his water blue eyes. “Nick go home early again?” Sometimes on their walks home from the Lounge, Nick came in with Maggie and Gordon, sometimes not, as he had to get up early on Sundays for his magazine program, “Newsmakers with Nick.”
    “ I’d rather not talk about Nick. Just give me a rum and Coke and let me wallow in my misery.” She climbed up on a barstool, reached for a bowl of pretzels, pulled it to her, took one out and licked the salt off it as she stared into those blue eyes that saw everything and missed nothing.
    He nodded, ran a hand through his thick hair. Like most Swedes, he was blond and old as he was, he had no grey. He pulled a bottle of Bacardi Select off the top shelf behind the bar. Reaching the bottle would have been a problem for Maggie, not Jonas. He was a tall man.
    Maggie looked around the bar while he made the drink. Poster size black and white photos adorned the walls. John and Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Mohammed Ali, others. Jonas owned the bar and it was clear where his politics lay.
    Both pool tables were busy. Five or six people clustered around the two pinball machines. Real machines, mechanical, the kind you could get to know, not the computer kind. Gordon loved them. Maggie was starting to.
    “ On the house, because you look like you need it.” Jonas set the drink in front of her.
    “ Do I look that bad?”
    “ You look like you went ten rounds with him.” Jonas pointed to the picture of Mohammed Ali. “If that’s what running does for you, maybe you ought to seriously think about giving it up.”
    “ I’ll take that under advisement.” She looked over at Gordon. “He doing okay?” She wanted to change the subject.
    “ As good as can be expected, for Gordon anyway. A couple of good looking guys hit on him, but he blew them off.” Jonas picked up a glass, dried it, did another. He had several to go.
    Gordon turned, as if he knew they were talking about him. He waved, then came over. “What happened to you?”
    “ You too? I must look pretty awful.”
    “ Go wash your face, then come back out here and tell me about it.”
    “ What about your game?”
    “ It’ll take ten or fifteen minutes for them to figure out what they want to do next. Go clean up. I’ll be here when you get back.”
    She nodded, went to the woman’s restroom and gasped when she saw herself in the mirror. She looked like a street urchin from some third world country. Her hair was disheveled, her face blotchy with dirt and she had an egg-sized welt on her forehead. She ran water in the sink, grabbed some paper towels and washed the dirt off, gingerly dabbing the area around the bruise.
    Her T-shirt was dirty and damp. She couldn’t do anything about that. It might even be ruined. She tried to straighten her hair, but gave up after a few tries and went back to join Gordon at the bar.
    “ I had no idea I looked like that.” She picked up her drink, took a sip.
    “ You don’t seem any worse for the wear, except for that bruise,” Gordon said. “What happened?”
    She told them about Horace and Virgil and how Virgil grabbed onto her shopping cart in the Safeway. Then how she’d seen Horace with the ferret face dancing in the Lounge.
    “ And that didn’t bother you?” Gordon interrupted.
    “ Not really, I didn’t think about it. I see the same people all over in the Shore. It’s not like it was a great coincidence or anything.” Then Maggie told how Horace and Virgil had come after her