It
is the cold autumn air that wakes him from another dream of them both, that and
the stench from the east side breweries it carries in through the tipped
window. He straightens in the chair to meet it more than halfway with the scent
of his own slow breathing, aware of himself host to an inexplicable four a.m.
hunger here at eight o’ clock.
There
are two shotglasses upon the desk, the inside of neither tacky with whiskey
residue or
Skunk:
Heeltaps
the
word provoking only a fragment of something he takes full minutes to finally
abandon remembering.
One
of the shotglasses he lifts by spreading two fingers inside to opposite edges,
elevates the little tumbler inverted, and begins tapping the thick glass from
off his right temple. He feels this echo from across his skull where the little
hole in his left lobe contains a keepsake pulse of another inebriate and
careless removal of the tiny silver skunk. With his free left hand he pulls at
his ear, stretching the skin to worry a minuscule scabbing from out the piercing,
and then reaches for the open bottle of Jack Daniel’s before him, the absence
of its plastic cap unobserved as he breathes hard at the fumes of whiskey.
Suddenly
he covers the bottlemouth with his own,
hard crack of teeth on glass before he sucks a vacuum into being with
the kiss that when it finally comes loose leaves a parabola of sputum
connecting him still, holding place even through his mutters.
Skunk
(rambling): Oh Jesus Jesus oh Jesus. Jesus I miss you oh I miss you. I miss
you. Where are you? Where are you now? Oh Jesus you cannot know.
His
body heaves on the reflex of sobbing, and the string of saliva bellies out
broken onto his naked chest.
Something
drops long from his nose also, a trail left across his lips and chin.
Aware
of sense, a soundtrack to his morning, as a fly’s high shifting huzz relays its
progress through the condensation thick this side of the open window; any pause
of length creating density enough to stream down into other moisture, momentum
pooling on the frame and spilling over.
Brother
Skunk wonders at this haphazard route of trailing water and the insect’s
fragile aerodynamics, attempting grasp of the latter’s exact capacity for
external wet before the fly will become waterlogged and drown in itself.
From
the foot of the stairs a sudden metallic clatter and its subsequent dampened
echo make manifest the delivery of something more substantial than
demands-for-payment. Skunk rises into what is about to become the first day
after the last day of his own continuous or prolonged pain.
