Short Stories to Entertain

  One of the hottest days for years and the air was oppressive. Inside the old workshop building, with its corrugated iron roof, the temperature was approaching forty degrees. Even though it was a cavernous space and the doors were open the static air was overpowering, alive with humidity and energy sapping. Dillon Walton slid out from beneath the twenty-five-year-old blue Ford rust bucket on an old battered red creeper with casters squealing and announced to the owner who stood sweating in a suit and tie. “Sorry mate, it's a total. Needs thousands of work and the old crate is only worth a monkey at best,” he said, wiping his face with a damp towel and unbuttoning his greasy overalls.

  It was the summer of 1924 and Captain Joshua Bartlett was in New York in the lobster restaurant, the one near Madison Square Garden, with the waiter saying, “ I s that one - pound or two-pound lobster sir?” Having a British appetite he replied . “ O ne pound please and hold the salad dressing.” Necessity had taught him the phrase - he had drowned in vinaigrette too many times that week. Staring out the window watching the pavement go by his gaze caught on a couple under the lamp post talking briskly and passionately as Italian New Yorkers do, gesticulating, dressed for the evening but going nowhere, probably disagreeing about nothing in particular before strolling off with his arm around her waist and his jacket hung over his shoulder.