"It'll be okay," Fred Jones said somberly to his old friend who was seated on the stool next to his in the small local tavern," you can go. Really. I'll be fine." Fred took a long drink from his bottle of cheap beer after he said this as though speaking took a lot out of him and he needed to replenish his strength.
"Hey now, Fred, that," Norville 'Shaggy' Roberts assured him,"like, won't be necessary, really." The little round glasses in the style once favored by John Lennon which Shaggy now wore started sliding down Shaggy's nose and Shaggy adjusted them absentmindedly. Shaggy had found out several years ago that his eyesight was beginning to grow worse and worse as he grew older and Shaggy had been forced to get glasses. Similarly, aging had caused Shaggy to keep his head closely shaven to hide the fact that he was going bald. Shaggy currently wore a green tie-dyed shirt with the logo of 'Scooby Records'(the successful chain of music stores which he owned) on it, a denim jacket, tan khakis, and some rather expensive sneakers that he hoped would alleviate somewhat the pain that he had lately been experiencing in his feet.
Aside from some wrinkles, Fred actually still looked very similar to the way he did as a youth. He currently wore a white sweater with a blue button-down shirt underneath, blue jeans, and brown loafers so his outfit was also much like the way he had dressed back in his younger days.
When Fred and Shaggy were youths, they had both been members of a private detective agency and had traveled the country looking for injustices to fix and criminals to expose. To both of them, those days seemed like a magical time. Those days ended when the work available to activists of the sort that Fred and Shaggy did with their group decreased dramatically in the considerably less idealistic seventies and they and the other members of their group had started feeling to old to travel the country in a van. Also, the death of 'Scooby', the Great Dane who had served as a sort of mascot for the agency and who Shaggy later named his record store after, had contributed greatly to the breakup of their private detective agency.
"Hey," Shaggy said as he nodded towards the other side of the bar,"why don't we go over there and talk to them? Maybe you'll hit it off with one of them. The blonde one sure has been watching you." The individuals which Shaggy indicated were three moderately attractive women who appeared to be only slightly younger than Fred and Shaggy were. All three wore sweatshirts with the logos of the stores where they were bought on them.
"Eh," Fred replied dejectedly,"what's the point? It'd only be a matter of time before they decide to ditch me. I haven't really hit it off with anyone since Daphne. God, I miss her!" Fred and Daphne had married shortly after the detective agency that they were all a part of closed down. The two of them had been sweethearts since high school and everyone said that it seemed like a storybook wedding. For a while, at least, it even seemed as though they would live 'happily ever after'. Fred was started work at a new job with an investment firm that was run by Daphne's father shortly after Fred and Daphne had finished their honeymoon. Daphne gave birth to a baby girl a few years after they had been married and they decided upon naming her Vanessa after one of Daphne's relatives.
Their troubles seemed to start sometime in the late eighties. The recession was which held the country in its grip failed to spare the investment firm where Fred was employed. One cold and rainy morning, Fred was called into his supervisor's office. As he entered neared the door to the office of his boss, his felt his knees shaking harder than they ever had when he had faced the myriad foes which he had come up against when he and his friends had operated their detective agency.
Fred's supervisor, Mr. Jensen, greeted Fred in a friendly but gruff manner and beckoned for him to sit down. After reciting what was clearly a speech that he had given many times before about the tough times that their company was going through and the difficult decisions which they were forced to make, Mr. Jensen described Fred's work as "competent, but uninspired" and said that the firm was regrettably going to have to let Fred go. As politely as he could, Fred mumbled something about how he understood and was thankful for having had the opportunity to work at the company as long as he had. Fred then went back to his desk and resumed his work even though an air of futility hung over it since he couldn't get the knowledge that he would be out of a job in two weeks out of his head.
Starting that evening, Fred saw a different side of Daphne. An ever-increasing amount of their time was spent quarreling. Usually, this was about monetary issues but an endless variety of other topics seemed to be more than capable of starting heated arguments between them.
After this had continued for a rather short period of time, Daphne filed for divorce. A team of high-priced lawyers which her father had hired for her saw to it that Daphne retained possession of almost everything that either of them owned and also that Daphne also was awarded full custody of their child. Daphne married another employee of the investment firm which Fred had worked at and the two of them raised Vanessa together. Fred saw Vanessa extremely rarely and when he did happen to get a chance to see her it was as though his own daughter, who had once eagerly ran to greet him when he returned home from work, was now a complete stranger to him.
In the bar where Fred and Shaggy currently sat, Shaggy noticed the sound of the guitar intro of a song which had just played twice already starting up once more.
"Cripes, Fred, how many times did you set the jukebox to play that song," Shaggy asked in exasperation as he wearily rubbed his forehead.
"Only about five or so more times," Fred said sheepishly,"sorry about that. I just couldn't help myself. Even after all this time, I still miss Daphne so much."
The song that was playing was 'Time in a bottle' by Jim Croce. Shortly after it came out, both Fred and Daphne had begun referring to it as "our song".
"If I could make days last forever, If words could make wishes come true," Jim Croce's voice crooned from somewhere inside the jukebox as Fred and Shaggy sipped their beers and attempted to avoid making eye contact with the other bar patrons who already seemed to be growing visibly irritated at having to hear the same song over and over again.
"Y'know," Fred said sadly,"I envy you and Velma. I really do, man. You got a good thing going, there, Shaggy. You really do."
"Aw," Shaggy replied,"like, things'll work out for you, too, ol' buddy. Just you wait and see, really. You'll be fine. I guarantee it. You'll get past all this."
Shaggy and Velma had also gotten married shortly after their detective agency had shut down. The two of them, however, remained happily married to this day. Shaggy had his business and Velma taught Math and Science at a local university.
Fred, of course, had been much less successful. After he was fired by the investment firm, the only job which Fred was able to obtain was that of a security guard at an office building. A few leads to jobs which looked like they would pay better and be more fulfilling occasionally presented themselves but never seemed to pan out. All the other security guards who worked at that job saw it as a pointless activity which they were forced to do to get paid and treated it accordingly. The attitude with which Fred approached the job was the diametric opposite of that. He diligently studied all the monitors in his little cubicle searching for some sort of trouble that wasn't coming and always filled out whatever paperwork he was asked to fill out neatly and thoroughly. Fred learned the names of everyone who worked at the building and cheerfully greeted them when they arrived.
None of this prevented the company that owned the building from firing him when they saw that they needed to cut costs and a security guard at a building where nothing seems to happen began to look like an unnecessary expense. Coincidentally, the lease to Fred's apartment was up around this time and he couldn't afford the money to renew. Fred hated imposing on anyone but he didn't see any alternative. After a quick phone call to Shaggy, he arranged to stay with him and Velma for awhile until he was able to get back on his feet.
The reason that Fred hated staying with Shaggy and Velma went deeper than his reluctance to impose on anyone. He hated the way that their happy marriage reminded him of what he had lost with Daphne. Fred hated the way that all the cultured and intellectual friends of their's which they were always having over made it clear to him that there was so much in the world which he would never understand. He hated the way that Shaggy and Velma's monetary success always seemed to make him feel so envious. Most of all, Fred hated the stories which they told about their twin boys and the knowledge that they both had known the joys of raising their own children.
"It's not fair," Fred said despondently,"it really isn't. Ok, so I'm not a genius like Velma or all artistic like you. I wasn't born with money like Daphne and I'm not some big dumb innocent animal like Scooby was. So what? I'm a decent guy. I work hard. I always have. Why isn't that enough? Why does the world still keep trying to chew me up and spit me out? Why does...Aw, hell!! I can't even explain any of this right."
"Ok," Shaggy said as he slapped some money down on the counter to pay for what the two of them had already drunk,"easy there. Let's get out of here, buddy." Shaggy subtly guided Fred out of the room as everyone in the bar continued staring at Fred.
Shaggy and Fred walked out of the bar and into the brisk autumn air. Loud, boisterous laughter from the people who were still having a good time inside the bar assaulted the eardrums of Fred and Shaggy as they entered Shaggy's car.
"This isn't right!! None of this is right," Fred thought to himself as he had thousands of times before while Shaggy pulled his used Volvo out of the bar's parking lot and drove past the endless anonymous streets of the rather bland middle class neighborhood where Shaggy currently resided. The girl in a billboard advertising soda pop which they drove past made thoughts of Daphne race through Fred's mind once more. Jim Croce's 'Time in a bottle' started playing on the jukebox in Fred's mind as a dog somewhere off in the distance started barking angrily about something.