The Quick and the Dead
Anthony Rathe had been sitting alone with his memories for the last half an hour. He had been provided with the glass of Pinot Noir which he had ordered but he had not tasted it as yet. He had hardly registered the waiter placing it down in front of him, although he knew that he had mumbled some words of gratitude. The people who passed his table barely glanced at him, as though the sight of a man drinking alone in a hotel bar was something so common that it failed to arouse anybody’s curiosity. Whether that said anything about the modern world or not was a question which Rathe might have enjoyed debating at any other time in his life, but now he gave it even less attention that those same people gave him. His mind was elsewhere, drifting back over time, taking remi
