“Long ago, long ago” he said, or rather muttered, to himself over and over, all day.  To see him now was a sad vignette, a tragedy within a tragedy, a moment within a life.

Once he was tall and straight, with a Clark Gable mustache and an eye to the future, but now…

Living in the past is not really what it is, more like living in moment, past and future unimaginable,  in a room with a window but no door.

Sometimes he went outside, on his bicycle, to scrounge around for things you can find when your head is down. The averted gazes of others left a wider space for him to operate, though operating often just meant looking for discarded butts. He knew that he knew many of these people, and that he was not entirely unrecognizable under the beard. He also knew they wouldn’t confront him. He’d burned enough emotional bridges to insure his relative isolation, and the hat and beard did the rest.

Long ago he didn’t have to hide. He wore loud clothes in the club, he dropped names, he chased pretty girls. The quiet confidence of that age is gone, another tragedy within a tragedy.

-Danny Grosso