Chapter 1

31 January 1989

It was thundering cold, blustery, raining snow and ice the day former lifeguard and US Marine Staff Sgt. Eddie Meyer's walked his last taxi driving tour.

Sgt. Eddie courted death, snorting coke, fucking dime whores, doing anything in his power to die early. He insisted on risk multiplied by risk. And that frozen day, getting, what he called the perfect blowjob Eddie's heart quit as he shot into the girl's mouth.

Henry heard the story of the "blow by blow" directly from the girl. A week after Eddie died, he picked Judy up on a whim as she hitched across the GW Bridge.

All of us knew about Judy. On the street runaway at 14, shooting coke at 15. She fad a kid last year at 16, Little girl was raised by her parents' back in Ohio. Judy couldn't take it so she returned to the streets two months later.

She told the driver Fat Frank that she loved Eddie and only went back on the game, using her favorite British slang, when she lost her fast food job. I would fuck Eddie just because she said. I am sad he died. He always made me laugh. Other said, that Judy was full of shit, which her pimp fucked with Eddie's drugs when Eddie got to close to Judy.

Others, and there are always fifty stories for one truth, say Judy fucked Eddie up when he refused to take her in his cab to cop. Truth is always fragile.

She seemed sad, as Henry told the story to Aaron and Angela later that night. Sure, she could be lying. Then again, all I gave her was a free ride to the city. I didn't even wait, he said.

She got out, and looking almost dead herself, pushed her head back into the cab, through my open window, and asked me if I would wait while she copped. Said told me, smiling, kissing me on the cheek, that if I waited she would give me what she had given Eddie. I laughed at her, and sped off, and I could see she was laughing as well. And I wondered why I let her kiss me on the cheek.

Henry loved his stories called them his shadows. He saw the good Sgt. as the perfect ghost. He was dead before he lived, Henry thought when he learned how Eddie had died. And saying that, they he remembered how they shared war stories, and how he believed everything that Eddie said.

Eddie would slap Henry's back, after each story, and carefully ask Henry why the fuck he drove a cab. Eddie would add, finally, yea I know you got fired for fucking some underage student, but what's the other reason. Man, you're out of place here, but hen again, being out of place, fits. We're all out of place, so you might as well enjoy it, and he would offer Henry a hit, or a line and Henry would carefully accept the joint and refuse the coke.