There was Mel Torme, Verdi operas, the Pointer Sisters, Linda Ronstadt, Ruben Blades, B. B. King, Blue Grass, Dinah Washington, Sinatra, and odd German stuff that sounded like Kurt Weill gone into a depression not far from my own. You never knew who you might hear from the Bose speakers when you entered the Crisp Dollar Bill. Right now it was Joe Williams singing “Don’t Be Mad at Me.” Billy had been a hippie, a cabdriver, and for a brief time a minor league catcher with a very minor league Detroit Tigers farm team. Best of all, Billy was not a talker. He wasn’t much of a listener either except for his large collection of tapes.

The door of the Crisp Dollar Bill opened and in walked Marvin Uliaks. Actually, you couldn’t call Marvin’s mode of transportation “walking.” It was much closer to a shuffle. In this case, a nervous shuffle.

Marvin had brought an unwelcome blast of sun behind him reminding me that there were hours to go before I could call it a day.

“Close the door,” Billy said automatically without looking up from the copy of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune laid out on the bar in front of him.

Marvin shifted the weight of the oversized book under his arm, pulled himself together, and closed the door. Then he squinted, blinked, and tried to adjust his eyes to the amber darkness.

Marvin’s nose was pushed to one side as if his face were permanently pressed against a store window. His large popping eyes made him look amazed at even the most inconsequential contact with other human beings. Marvin was short, had an unkempt mess of brown hair beginning to show gray at the temples, and was so thin that you wondered how well he could stand up against an evening breeze off the Gulf. I imagined Marvin in a hurricane, arms out, hair blowing as he went spinning in the air, a startled look on his face as he passed the same cow Dorothy had seen on her way to Oz.