“Good lord, is that you, Al?” Tom Huff shouted across the railroad car as the train click-clacked away from Manhattan.
“Sure as hell is. What’s up, you look a bit peaked. Sit here, Tom.”
Tom crossed over to Al. “Hey, old buddy, don’t get up.” They shook hands and Tom sat down. “Meeting you on a train like this reminds me of old times.”
“Yah, seems it was only yesterday…”
“Hell, it was a thousand yesterdays!”
“Mister, we had some wild high times rolling in the dough, trading. Heck, don’t you miss your end of the year bonus!”
“Remember when we used to say ‘have your girl call my girl and we’ll do lunch’?”
“Righto! Now my girl’s a call girl, and I lunch in a dumpster!”
“You always were the lucky one!”
The train whistle roused them from their reveries as it slowed to a stop. Al stood up in his filthy patched Brooks Brothers suit. It matched Tom’s former Wall Street attire perfectly. “This is where I get off.”
He slid the boxcar door open. Jumping down he yelled up to Tom. “Have your call girl call my call girl; they can afford to do lunch!”
John Brooke, an expatriate Canadian living beside the Sea of Cortez in Baja California Sur, Mexico. He was an advertising scribbler and is now a writer of poetry, short, shorter stories, novels, and screenplays.
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