Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

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He didn’t call ahead for an appointment. He didn’t knock. He just eased himself through my partially opened office door and said, “I’ve got a little business for you, Mr. McCain. I mean, if you’re interested.”

He scared me. When I describe him you’ll wonder what I’m talking about. How somebody his size and his manner could scare me. I’m no tough guy but I was surely tougher than he was. And yet I got spooked because he was so odd, so wrong somehow.

There was something unclean about him, dusty, that pale complexion, those dead grey eyes, the heavy black topcoat that fit him hobo-like. And yet it wasn’t frayed or dirty. And the voice that wasn’t much more than a whisper. I’d heard that a lot after both wars. Men who’d had their throats and larynxes damaged. He was a black-and-white photo in an old, old book come mysteriously to life.

And in case you think this spectral appearance took place during a window-rattling midnight thunderstorm—it was eight-thirty a.m. on a sunny October day.

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