The Trouble With Harry

The City Cafe shut down in 1988, and the owners of the revived Backstreet Grill have never caught a glimpse of Harry. The breathing door's been sealed shut. The bar's been replaced with a dry-walled prep station where unsuspecting waitresses shout back to the grill for hoagies and fries. Robert, the head cook on Sundays, dismisses the shady chronicles with a spatula's wave, figuring Harry as "just some guy with three sheets to the wind who never left the bar," and his biographers as "a bunch of guys who must've been drinking alongside him." It's no wonder, with such cynics around, that Harry's been keeping a low profile lately. But when the wind's right, and the stench of river sludge fills the air, as it did in the days when Harry shuffled his route in the flesh, they--his true believers--say his ghost is still thirsty for company, waiting in the invisible for the right kind of mortals to happen by.