Sometime

It had been nine days since he'd lost his best friend, and he was coping the only way he knew how. He would get up, work all day, go home - to drop his suitcase off and change his clothes - and then go out to the bar. A bottle of Gin, that's what he'd order. Every night. The first time the bartender asked him what he wanted, and he told him, the bartender thought he was joking. But the bartender watched as he ordered drink, after drink, after drink, until the bottle was depleted. What was strange was that he didn't appear that drunk. Sure, his face flushed and he spoke more - and louder - than usual, but he was never belligerent or mean or reckless. He was a liability only to himself. There was a woman who came around, from time to time, with red hair and earrings. Her eyes were blue and her skin was the color of porcelain. No one knew exactly what her story was, where she'd come from or what she was looking for, they just called her Red.

It was a bit unusual, her being there, because she was always there on Wednesdays, not Tuesdays. She was always alone, and she seemed disinterested in the company of men and women both. Red drank slowly, deliberately. She had the expression, always, of someone listening for far away music, for something soft and subtle, a lilting mystery concealed in the sound of clinking glasses. The bereaved man was sitting beside her at the bar, halfway through his bottle of Gin.

"I don't feel bad about it," he said. "I thought I'd feel worse, but I don't."

This is just the way it is. Everyone runs out of time, sometime.