Page 7 of Without You, Scotch and Sammy 2

A whole group of us descended on what was once The Shed, and is now the Rollin On Gym, and we stood around like a group of homeless bums as we watched the two guys beat the shit out of each other. It might have been the most fun I’ve had in forever.

Jack might be younger, he might even be bigger, and in the professional fighting world, mid-thirties is old, but in the real world, Bobby Kincaid is still agile as shit, and he didn’t lay down like a rickety old man so Jack could beat on him.

Bobby drops a small nod and wave on his way past, then he moves toward the dark corners of the club. The entire club is packed to regulation; there are people dancing in the light as well as the dark. Bobby’s here tonight making sure nothing bad goes down in the dark.

I stop playing my guitar and my voice cuts off at the same moment Luc’s drums silence and Angelo’s keyboard tapers off, then it’s just Marcus playing the last strains of the song on his guitar, winding us down, romanticizing the crowd.

The lights stop flickering across the room and they stop on me, then I look toward the bar and find Tink’s sassy gaze. She was a girl I met a few years ago in this very club. She was out partying with her girlfriends, and the guys and I happened upon their group. I’d be lying if I said we weren’t interested. They’re a sexy group of women, but it turns out they were all already taken. Tink was in a complicated relationship with the man she now calls her husband, and though she might have been the first woman that piqued my interest in years, it took all of two seconds for me to realize she was in love with someone else, so we fell into an easy friendship instead.

She might be one of the coolest chicks I know.

“Alright guys.” I wait for the moving crowd to quiet and look up at me. “We like to do a lot of covers, because we like to give you all something you know, something you wanna dance to. But we also write our own. This next song is something we wrote in house. It’s a song about a girl I used to know. You know the type; she’s a girl every man probably knew once.” Angelo’s fingers start softly as several of the dancing men in the crowd nod at my words. Yeah, everyone knew a girl like that once. Then we romanticize them and make their legacy something more than it ever actually was.

The romance is better than the real thing.

The guys and I have practiced this a million times before. Even Tink knows this routine by now. She’ll know what song I’m going to sing. She’ll probably even know every word, but what she doesn’t know is that every word I speak is true. Everyone who doesn’t know the teenage version of me would think these are simply pretty words strung together.

Luc joins Ang with his drums, then Marc chimes in as I let my guitar dangle against me unused. I don’t need it this time. This song is just my voice. This song is me speaking to Sammy Ricardo, the teenager who broke my heart, left town, and never looked back again.

Half a second before I step up to my mic, just before I close my eyes and begin telling the story of a tragic love lost, I find Sammy in the crowd just like I do every night we play – still eighteen, still beautiful, still not mine. She’s just a ghost to me now.

Eighteen or eighty, I’ll never again risk my heart the way I did when I was young. I simply don’t have anything left to give.

– Sammy –

Too Soon

I pick up my desk phone as it dings with an interoffice call, and recognize my boss’ voice instantly. “Samantha.”

I drop my pen on the stack of never-ending manila folders and pick up my water bottle. It’s still hot as shit out, though September is rolling on and… well, at least it’s not August anymore. “Yeah, Ed?”

“I need you to come down to my office. Bring the Lytto file.”

Shari Lytto. Sigh. “Okay. Give me two minutes.”

Instead of answering me verbally, Ed hangs up and I drop my phone back into the cradle. Ed’s a good boss. He’s fair, he does his job, he works sixty hours a week, but he’s older and has transformed from the optimistic college graduate that we all start as and has turned cynical from experience. He knows the system now, and though he turns up every day, he knows what we actually achieve is just a tiny speck on the world’s problems.

I’m half his age and I already feel that same cynicism, but that’s a problem for future me. I had a passion for this job when I was a teenager. I’d romanticized what I’d be able to achieve; I’d save all the children. I’d help lock up all the bad people and the world would be a better place because of me. But in reality, I just file paperwork and don’t really help anyone at all.

I down half my bottle of water, remembering that I haven’t touched it in hours and realizing my thirst, then I stand and grab Shari’s file.

It seems like such an innocuous file. Just a plain manila folder, but the inside contents hurt me on a personal level and I can’t even explain why.

I don’t normally let the job get too personal. I do my best and my heart aches for all the children in bad homes, but I can usually set it aside enough that it doesn’t affect my appetite. But not this time. I haven’t eaten a proper meal since I was with Shari in hospital weeks ago. Just the memory of her haunted eyes hurts me. She was literally begging for my help and I did nothing but escape out the door and run home. I hid under the covers like a scared child. I hid from that innocent baby.

Though he was expecting me, I stop at Ed’s office door and tap the wooden frame. His office is bigger than mine, but it’s not fancier. We both have too many filing cabinets bursting full. We both sit in terrible ten-year-old chairs with broken wheels, because the state can’t afford to replace them. He even has stickers on the side of his desk, because he had a soft heart once upon a time, too.

Ed’s eyes snap up and meet mine, and the grimness in his have my heart tumbling. “Samantha, come in and take a seat.”

I step forward and gingerly sit in his visitor chair. I drop the folder on the edge of his desk. “What’s up?”

“That’s Lytto’s file?”

“Yeah.” I slide it forward another inch. “Has something happened?”

“I just got a call from the hospital. Ms. Lytto was just brought in again.”

It’s a useless question, but, “Self-admitted? Is she ill?”

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