Free The Unlucky Man by H T G Hedges Page A

the smug look on his face. "You’re Harry Katch?"
    He nodded. "Harry Katch owns this car and the apartment behind mine and the garage."
    "Harry Katch," I said slowly, "Must be the single worst fake name I ever heard."
    Unimpressed at this, Corg pointed out the obvious, "He’s a fake guy."
    "Yeah," I agreed, "But I don’t think you’re supposed to advertise the fact."
    Corg harrumphed but I could tell he felt mollified by this exchange. Running a meaty paw over the bald plate of his head he gunned the engine once more and eased us back into motion. Outside the window, the clouds continued to swirl.
     
    Eventually, we had to stop. Driving without end and purpose was wearing away at our collective nerves, but Corg’s especially.
    I’d taken the opportunity to change into my spare suit – an awkward proposition as we had continued to drive - and was revelling in the feeling of wearing shoes once again. However, despite my newfound comfort, I could feel Corg getting more and more tightly wound as the minutes ticked by. I tried to engage him in conversation a couple of times, but each time was stone-walled with sullen silence as he grew increasingly closed off and taciturn.
    We left the car in a deserted street and headed into an unloved all-night diner, the kind of place that catered mostly to long haul drivers and dedicated night-owls, to drink coffee and collect our thoughts.
    The glass front was decorated with frayed pictures of playing cards stuck onto the dirty window and the name above the door said Trixies in a faded, looping script. A lonely bell tinkled despondently as we pushed open the once bubblegum coloured door, revealing a sad collection of faded red booths over a chess-board floor and black and white pictures on the walls of rock’n’roll starts from decades passed. The shell of a juke-box huddled in one lonely corner.
    I approached a disinterested waitress leaning on a spotted plastic counter whilst Corg slunk into a booth with his back to the wall and sat glowering.
    "How’s the coffee?" I asked her with all the pleasantness and feigned nonchalance I could bring to bear.
    She fixed me with a singularly uninterested, jaundiced look. "Best coffee in the building," she said, one eye on a small TV locked in a Perspex cage showing rolling news with the sound turned way down low. I tried to place her accent but came up blank.
    "That so?" I asked.
    "Yep." She sighed and gave me all of her washed out attention for a few brief seconds.
    "Two coffees," I said. It wasn’t the kind of place to sell more than one type or give them fancy names. She reached behind her to where a dirty glass jug was percolating and, if I was any judge, burning into soup, and poured two thick cupfuls.
    "Cream?"
    I looked at the state of the jug. "I don’t think so." With a shrug she turned her full attention back to the television and I carried the drinks over to Corg in his chosen booth. I watched with distaste as he poured five or six shots of sugar from the dispenser then sipped his coffee and grimaced.
    "How’s your syrup?" I asked him.
    "Barely tolerable," he growled back as I took a sip from my own cup and was forced to agree: the gritty, greasy liquid tasted like charcoal that had been roasting for hours then mixed with potter’s clay. I set it down and, in the face of Corg’s continued silence, looked around the diner.
    It had a lost, almost forgotten feel. The booths and plastic benches, once red, had faded to a uniform pinky grey, pitted with cigarette burns and scars. The floor too was rough and neglected, the Formica tiles, black and white and probably deco once upon a time, now shabby and peeling. Much like the coffee, everything seemed to have a layer of grease spread thinly over its surface.
    Depressed by my surroundings, I turned my back on the interior of the diner and directed my attention out of the streaked window instead.
    An almost equally dismal view met my eyes; a cold, grey street, touched with chill early