/yesod

Tag: old friends

  • lounge act

    Woke early this morning with a handful of broken fragments from last night’s dreams, losing little shards as the day progresses, memories and images slipping through my fingers and lost for good.

    Here’s what’s left…

    …a heartfelt farewell from one of my clients, almost paternal in how touching his words are…

    …my wife and I stop off at a local bar set up in a aluminum trailer on the outskirts of town, an absolute shithole under new ownership — the proprietor is a short, pudgy twerp utterly clueless and out of place in his red satin tuxedo. I recognize him from a dream when I was very young, when he had a suave and menacing manner. His name is Kincaid. I haven’t thought of him in thirty years.

    While he vainly tries to chat up my wife, I’m cornered by a heavyset woman in a ball gown. Despite her ragged, bottle blonde shag haircut I recognize her as an acquaintance from my local theater days.

    I barely know her but she acts like I’ve been on her mind every single day of the past ten years. She tells me she’s singing now — the “talent” to keep the patrons happy. I make the mistake of saying that we’ll come by to hear her perform sometime, spurring her into an impromptu rendition of an old torch song.

    She fills each note with so much feeling that I’m mildly impressed — at least until she leans forward, putting her knee on the seat next to mine and. She takes my hand, staring deeply into my eyes as she sings…

    …I wake, a little embarrassed for her and a little puzzled by the reappearance of Kincaid after almost thirty years.

  • cages

    …passing through one of the seedier parts of town, I stop off to visit with an old friend from college. I’m surprised to find him here, in such strained circumstances.

    We sit out on his little patch of front yard and chat for a bit, but it quickly grows tiresome. He’s consumed by self-involved bitterness about the past and where his path in life has led him.

    Looking for any point to distract the conversation, I mention that one of our common college friends — a guy I’ve known since junior high — has died, at a very young age. Not too much of a surprise, I explain. He ate and drank like a teenager.

    Soon enough I make my excuses and my escape, leaving my friend to sit alone in his aluminum lawn chair inside the little cage of chain link surrounding his house.

    It’s a relief.