On a Side Street

"I was not Mr Mary Pickford,"

he said, head slightly down,
fingers tracing the moisture on
the whiskey glass.

It was his third.

"I came here with Matt and Tom and Joe
to find a better life,
and I made a name for myself.

My own good name, too;
not some phony moving picture name
like Gladys had."


He paused, eyes clouded over with memory.

"Joe, God rest his soul."


He slapped a few bills on the counter and
slid off the stool,
walking out into oblivion,
the nitrate dust of almost three hundred films
beneath his heels.


Katherine would be waiting.
 

Owen Moore