Back in 2014 I stopped by Frank's Lounge. The venerable owner was in the corner. He was speaking with Homer about the passing of customers. It happened often. Most of the regulars were over sixty or thereabouts. We all thought we were going to live forever.
"I heard Linford is gone." The old Jamaica has returned to the Blue Mountains in the Here-After. "I heard it from a bartender at Che Lola on Myrtle Avenue."
"He drank over there?" It was a good twenty minutes away through Fort Greene Park.
"The bartender was cute."
"Cute as Rosa." Frank nodded his head to his main attraction.
"No." Rosa was a Shaolin goddess. "But Rosa doesn't work every night of the week."
"When he die?" Shaynay asked from the corner. The beautiful 'chang noi' called me 'White Chocolate', because I used to come into the bar with Austrian candy from the Plaza Hotel.
"Saturday I think."
"You know Linford played 102 all his life."
"No, I don't gamble." I don't play the numbers, but if I did I would play 109. The number of my parents' house on the South Shore of Boston.
"What number you think come up Sunday?"
"102?"
"Straight."
"Damn, those number boys know everything."
"You got that right, White Chocolate."
We drank rum for Linford.
One shot.
Good luck for a Jamaican on the other side of life.
102.
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