... Lest I might think the karmic cup's had my name on it all along, a higher power drags me immediately up the attic steps. The flowing sillhouette of my soft white-boy afro breaks above the plane of the banister's top rail as shards of sun explode through a shattered quarter-pane in the small black-opaqued dormer window. Molten gold light bathes my hand to set the cruel cruet ablaze. It's fetching flame tempts Crazy Kenny who’s rocked his corpulence into a sit & beg attitude.

“A sample ?” he asks.

"Sure, man. My treat!" I say, supressing that gag reaction.

I motion him closer: "This one's for you, dude."

"Is it sweetened?" he asks politely.

As my assuring nods freefalls silently into the jumbo black pitted olives on either side of the split radish Crazy’s been pushing around the middle of his face with a dirty gingham shirtsleeve, I pass the gravy boat right under Kenny's cracked red nose.



Epilogue:

Crazy Kenny steals something from every place he's ever been. You visit him at his basement apartment in Lakewood and as your eyes drift around his crammed single room you recognize something from your parents' house. So, you lay claim to it on their behalf; and he denies stealing anything but says he wants you to have it anyway if you think they might like it. His friends (the ones he manages to keep) consider him a relatively harmless kleptomaniac. Meaning, now we all basically keep our eyes out for each other's stuff and return what looks familiar to one another's houses without saying anything to him anymore. I've even benefited on occasion from friends having "returned" things to me of a better quality than those that have gone missing. Similarly, I've had items dropped off that I never owned previously, ... things which may actually be Kenny's!

Staehr came directly from an overnight at Kenny's place with a bag of stuff this one time, but it was weeks later that I finally connected the coffee cup Barry’d left behind on my windowsill to my memory of a particular morning in a certain old house in Kent.


129 ...


Barry Staehr passed away on June 26, 2003... but not the memories. B.