At Darlington’s by Richard Bowes (F&SF, October-November 1995)1 is the seventh published story in the “Kevin Grierson” series, and begins with his “Shadow”, a doppelgänger, or perhaps more accurately a secret double who normally exists inside Kevin, getting dressed and going to work instead of him. Most of the rest of the story involves the scrapes and encounters that the drug-using Shadow has with the other people at his place of employment (his boss warns the Shadow not to come in late again; he goes to an outdoor fashion shoot with Les; he meets a woman called Sarah who has a boozer/druggie husband, etc.)
Dropped into all of this mostly scene setting description and verbal back and forth, is a short flashback scene where we see Kevin working as a male prostitute (I think) and waking up to find his drill sergeant client is dead.
At the end of the story the Shadow returns from a drug deal to find Kevin has been drafted.
It was hard to keep track of what was going on in this slice-of-life, and I have little memory of what I did read. I’ve no idea what the editor saw in this (at best) borderline fantasy story, and wonder if it got taken on the strength of its prequels.
– (Awful). 6,750 words.
1. The ISFDB page for the Richard Bowes’ “Kevin Grierson” series.