Ralph's Revenge

 

 

October 10, 1980

 

Old ghosts always come back and last night one of the worst made his reappearance, haunting me at the club without grace or manners of Shakespeare.

 Ralph, as usual, was drunk, and when he saw me come in, he staggered over, eyeing my girlfriend, Susan, with his customary letcherousness.

 "How's Cathy?" he asked, alluding to a woman I had taken to bed, someone connected with both of us, but whom made the mistake of falling in love with Ralph.

 Cathy, a barfly for a place in a rundown section of Wayne, had met Ralph through a barmaid, and taken him in to live with her. He abused her until she couldn't take him any more. He never got over her tossing him out, following her around, keeping tabs on her, and those she dated.

 Frank, who had witnessed Cathy's whole affair with Ralph, had tried to hook me up with Cathy, figuring I might soothe the ache Ralph left, despite the fact that Frank loved the girl himself. That aspect never worked out for me, but one day when the band played that bar, I met her again. We struck up a conversation that soon deteriorated into lust, and from lust we found ourselves back at her apartment.

 How Ralph had heard about it was not hard to guess. Cathy nearly stripped my clothing off in the bar, and it was only a gentle hint from the lead guitarists that kept us from making love amid the cigarettes and the drinks.

 Cathy may not have had much use for Ralph any longer, but Ralph maintained his rights to her, especially where I was concerned, and when he staggered over to the booth where I sat with Susan last night, his intention showed clearly in his eyes.

 "Just who is this, sweet thing?" he asked, slovering over Susan like a pig over its slock, his fingers flexing as if he could already feel her nibbles and already stroked her breasts.

 I made the proper introductions. Susan hardly took notice of him. She'd come to accept my friends as strange, and let Ralph simmer. But Ralph, a little later, grabbed me by the arm and whispered in my ear.

 "She wouldn't know the difference if I was to take her to bed instead of you," he said, hicuping half way through a laugh.

 I nearly slugged him, and would have had Rocky not caught my idea and grabbed my arms, yanking me away, telling me murder was no answer.

 "He's not worth going to jail over," Rocky told me, as Ralph, still laughing, staggered his way across the dance floor, banging into every pretty girl until he reached Susan.

 She dispatched him without emotion, the way she did the bums who bothered her in Newark, hardly acknowleging his existance as she recrossed the room to me, touching my shoulder with something close to tenderness in her eyes.

 I recoiled. I didn't deserve that touch. I felt dirty and insignificant, as if something of Ralph's filth had crossed over to me during our conversation.

 "What's wrong?" she asked.

 "Nothing," I said and let that thread die, later telling Ralph to stay away from me after the club had closed and we crossed the parking lot to our vehicles.

 "What's the matter, can't take the competition?" he asked.

 I did not answer, but nearly refused to join the others when they asked us to come for coffee, just because Ralph was tagging along. Did he know something? Had he sensed the natural distance that had come between me and Susan over the last month, the kind of distance that would eventually cause us to travel our separate ways. Was Ralph planning to wait, to take her from me in a fit of lust the way I had Cathy?

 If Susan knew any of this, she didn't acknowledge it, but sat discussing politics with Pauly, Garrick, Hank and Bob, while Ralph and I glared passed her across the table.