“How is it you know Sherm again?” Elijah asked, sitting across from Harry at a pretty divey diner that Friday night. He’d called Sherm to set up the date shortly after calling Kirk a couple nights before.
Harry was a tall, thin—nearly anorexic really—man who had to be close to fifty. Elijah figured the guy could be his father. Still, he might as well make the best of the evening. He’d brought it on himself, after all. Smiling, he took a sip of his iced tea.
“He used to babysit my kids.”
Elijah choked, swallowing tea wrong, and started coughing.
“Down the wrong pipe?” Harry asked, sympathetically.
He nodded, even as the waitress came by and started thumping him on the back.
“Do you need the Heimlich?” the plump elderly waitress yelled in his face.
Frantically he shook his head. Judgi
