Free Let Go by Michael Patrick Hicks Page B

recapture their magic. He tried, though, simply so he could imagine her voice, and even as he looked over the other diners he knew he was tapped out, with no more stories to tell.
    Everett shifted his weight then took out his Kindle and resumed reading a Joe Hill novel while he waited for his fried perch. A few minutes later, the waitress came with a plate of hot buttered rolls, and he took one to nibble on. Mostly, he just needed something warm to occupy his free hand.
    Lucille would have loved a Kindle, he knew. They’d have been able to read and hold hands and never let go to turn the page.
    But he also knew that, eventually, one of them would have had to let go.  
    When his food arrived, he put the Kindle to sleep and closed its magnetic cover before placing it back in his coat pocket, the pocket with the gun. He folded his coat in half, burying that pocket, and turned his attention to the fish.
    He savored the crunch of the crusty golden beer batter, and after the first bite, he squeezed a lemon wedge over the four filets. Even better, he mused. Satisfied, he reached for the ketchup set up alongside a greenish bottle of vinegar at the end of the table, against the wall. He spent a long time squeezing the bottle, piling ketchup into a tall hill beside the fries. He was saving the coleslaw, served in its own small bowl beside the plate, for last. He had always loved coleslaw, and Brown’s made it just right. None of that vinegar base. This was all mayo, perfectly balanced and nicely chilled, the perfect endnote to the meal.
    God, he wished Lucille were here. He wished they’d been able to come back together one last time, before the chemo destroyed her appetite and the cancer finally ate her up.  
    Since her death, food had become tasteless. No longer a thing of joy, eating had become another part of the daily grind, just some manufactured nutrients and chemical energy. He stopped cooking because with only him in the house, what was the point? He ate from boxes, all mass-produced stuff and mostly from the freezer and cereal aisles. This plate of fried perch was the first meal he had actually enjoyed in more than three years, and that, he knew, was mostly because he imagined Lucille across from him, enjoying her food, always a duplicate order of his.
    “How about some dessert?” the waitress, Maddie, asked as he polished off the fish and spat out an errant lemon seed.
    A police siren roared outside, the cop car screaming past. Everett and Maddie turned to look, although from his spot inside the booth, he couldn’t see the car. Besides, by the time he got himself situated to see around the corner of the high-backed seat, the car was long gone.
    “No, thank you,” he said.  
    “When you’re ready, then.” She left a green bill holder on the table and scooted away.
    Another siren wailed past, and then a third. Maybe more, judging by the volume of the noise, which was loud and sounded as though the car had stopped nearby.
    Everett was curious, and he had to fish his wallet out of his back pocket anyway, so what harm could scooting over do? He wanted to take a look. The other patrons, most of them older than he was, seemed just as interested. Based on the hushed but animated conversations at the other tables, he figured this was probably the most exciting thing to have happened in their vicinity in quite some time.
    He found his wallet, in his back pocket where it always rested, and dug out an unsigned credit card and his ID. In plain block writing, he had written on the back of the credit card, “PLEASE ASK FOR ID,” but hardly anybody ever did.
    The ID and credit card went into the small plastic pocket at the top of the bill holder, and he stood it upright at the edge of the table to catch Maddie’s eye.
    “What’s going on out there?” he asked when she came by the table.
    “Nothing to worry about, I’m sure,” she said, a bright, cheery smile on her face. “Probably somebody ran a red light. We’ve