Loneliness makes the days three times as long. I’m in the kitchen. I make myself a salami sandwich and grab a beer. My one-bedroom apartment is small. I can eat lunch sitting on the couch or at the table. It’s a round table for four. Shoved up against the wall and the counter with the microwave, it only seats two.
I don’t even have a pet. My brother has a cat. I have never met him—I mean the cat, not my brother. My brother and sister visit me about once every other month. It’s a big drive for them. Two hours. I don’t go to their homes. Family don’t invite you when you’re someone who’s lived my life. I accept that. I’ve learned to live with a lot of things.
It takes a while to eat the sandwich. I don’t have as many teeth as I used to, and food doesn’t slide down easy. My throat clenches when I try to swallow. I take smaller bites, try to chew longer, and sip my beer. Sometimes, a lump gets stuck, and it burns. Even after all that effort to swallow, and lunch is over, only twenty minutes have passed.
I open the curtains in the living room and look for the roof rats. They’re not out. I play the Grateful Dead masterpiece, “Eyes of the World.” I don’t care what people say. The Dead are the greatest band there ever was.
I light up a joint and settle on the couch. An empty house is a place you have to fill with some light and music. Otherwise, you’re haunted by your own footsteps and the sound of your emphysema.
After the Dead plays for an hour—"Blow Away,” “Foolish Heart,” “Standing on the Moon”—I call my brother Jerome. No answer. I finish the joint. It’s slow because I cough in between drags. This thing with my lungs isn’t so bad. I’m only fifty-six, but a hard life will give you aches and pains and wear on your organs. That’s what I call them: aches and pains. The doctor says I have to stop smoking weed. One of the human skeleton models hangs from a pole in his office. I call him Bobbie. Bobbie has heard the quit-this-and-quit-that doctor BS thousands of times. I give Bobbie a nod and he grins.
Someone knocks on my door. I look through the peephole. It’s Wes. I open up and regret it because he holds two shopping bags at his sides, and I know they’re not for me. There’s a beautiful woman with him. Brown hair, brown eyes, blue eye shadow, and red lips.
“Let me in,” Wes says.
I let him in. The woman follows. She’s dressed in a tight, short-sleeved, red T-shirt—young breasts—red heels, and an up-to-her-ass jean skirt. Let me tell you, it’s a privilege to walk behind her.
The woman opens my refrigerator. Grabs a beer. Pops the tab. Drinks. Her fingernails are painted black.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“Yvonne.”
Wes pulls my table out from against the wall. He unpacks the bags. Lays the contents out.
“What’s on my table?” I ask. I know what it is. Digital scale, caffeine powder, gram bags, pill grinder, spoons, and cocaine.
“I just need to cut and bag this.”
“I mean, what is it doing on my table?”
He exhales. “I need this.”
Yvonne walks out of the kitchen. Through the doorway, I can see her sitting on my couch. She bounces on the cushions, then goes into my bedroom.
“Hang on.” I leave the kitchen to check out what Yvonne’s up to.
I stop just outside my door. In my bedroom, she’s taken off her shoes and lies on my bed, her head on my pillow. I’ve been with women but haven’t had one lay her head on my pillow in months.
I don’t disturb her. She can stay there. You know when you decide something. Decisions like that are made not just with your body but with your mind and heart, too.
Back in my kitchen, I pull a chair up to my table. Wes mixes coke and caffeine powder in the grinder. He slides the first bag across the table to me. I stuff it in my pocket.
“Wes, I don’t want this in my house.”
“Can’t do it where I live. Too many hands. It’s good here. Quiet. Just you.”
“What about Yvonne? Is she with you?”
“She comes and goes.”
It takes hours to cut and bag the coke. Wes and I share a couple of beers. He gives me money to order pizza with Italian sausage.
When the food arrives I go into by bedroom, sit down on the bed. “You hungry?”
Yvonne stirs. “What?”
“We have pizza.”
She joins us and we eat. Afterwards, Wes packs up, and he and Yvonne go.
“Wes,” I say, “don’t come here to cut anymore.”
“I needed a place.”
I look him in the eyes. “This isn’t that place.”
They leave, and it’s late. I hear something on the roof. I shine a flashlight out there and see a flicker of yellow eyes. When I was twenty, Dad sent me to rehab. I woke to birds singing. We went out for walks. I loved the blue sky and trees. But the bugs showed up. Too many insects buzzing around my head. I hated rehab. Not as bad as prison.
I go out the next day and buy groceries. I make pot roast and noodles. I call my sister, Kim.
She answers, “Hi, Scott.” Her greeting is not unfriendly, but she’s not excited or happy either. Kind of like the love got squeezed out.
“I’m making Mom’s pot roast and noodles.”
“Oh, good.”
“Yeah, she taught me how to make it.”
“Yes, I know.”
“I like that the noodles absorb the gravy.”
“Me too.”
“How are you doing?”
“Good. I’m going to pick up my grandson from daycare and take him to his swim class.”
I don’t know her grandson. Never met him. She sends Christmas cards with pictures of her family. If I ever do meet him, I’ll say, Kid, look at me. Don’t start with drugs. You’ll always be looking for the next dose, hoping it feels like your first one did.
I tell Kim, “Wes came over yesterday to cut some coke.”
Her voice sharpens. “Don’t let him do that. Don’t let him bring drugs to your house.”
“Yeah. I told him no. He has to find somewhere else.”
“Good. Stay safe. Sorry, but I need to go.”
“Okay. Thanks for picking up. Love you.”
I used to deal to support my habit. I had clients. Eventually, I used all the coke I bought to feed my own habit. I could sell this bag that Wes gave me. Or use it myself. It’s on my mind the whole time. It’s like trying to resist having your life hijacked, but it’s already been taken.
I haven’t touched the gram bag Wes gave me.
I’m not much anymore. A fifty-six-year-old guy that maybe shouldn’t even be alive. I mean, if I hadn’t stopped, I’d be dead. But I stopped. Well, except for beer and weed. Beer and weed help me pass these long days.
I stretch out on the couch and play the Dead. Come and join the party.
Someone knocks on my door. It’s Yvonne. I let her in. She carries two backpacks and a six-pack.
“I brought beer,” she says.
I thought I was eating alone again, but she shows up and joins me. I place the pot roast and noodles in the center of the table with an old serving spoon. Most of what I have in the kitchen belonged to my mother. Kim gave it to me. I lay out two plates, glasses, and sets of silverware. It looks like we’re having a real sit-down meal.
Yvonne puts the beer on the table. Pot roast is more delicious when a pretty woman shares it with you.
“Good meal?” I ask.
She nods. “I like the noodles.”
“They’re the best part.”
“Can I crash here?”
“Sure,” I say.
Later, we watch TV. I like old movies. Things I’m familiar with, like Mad Max, and she doesn’t object. I take the coke out of my pocket, and we snort it. I’ve always preferred snorting. It still feels great, even with the cough. I’m like young again, you know. Have the energy of a twenty-year-old.
Yvonne says, “I like flowers. Roses and dahlias and anemones.” She’s laughing. “I like flowers.” She stands up and starts swaying her body. She laughs and sways.
I put “Sugar Magnolia” on to play and dance around the living room. I sway through my bedroom. Back to the living room. Into the kitchen. Sometimes, she follows me. Sometimes, I follow her. This is too good. Too good. Too good.
I wake up on the couch. My arms and legs are stiff and frozen in place. My chest swells when I inhale, but I’m not sure this is my body. Who crushed it? I was so high. So happy. This down is longer and heavier than I remember.
“Hey,” I call out. “Anyone here?”
Yvonne doesn’t answer. I expect she took off.
I’m on the couch, failing to convince myself to get up and take a piss. It’s like I was running with the ball, and the entire defensive line piled on top of me. And they won’t get off.
Coke is harder on you when you’re fifty-six with a bad liver and weak lungs. And the down lasts so long. Each minute takes an hour to pass.
The front door lock turns. Yvonne steps in. She holds my keys, a pizza, and a bottle of whiskey.
She drops the pizza on the coffee table and my wallet beside it.
I move like I’ve been buried in mud and am pulling myself out. I sit up. I reach for my wallet.
“I have no money,” Yvonne says. “I borrowed some from you.”
I didn’t have much cash. Just enough for a pizza and that bottle of Jim Beam she holds. I open my wallet. My food-stamps card is there, but I already used it up.
I stare at the pizza. Pepperoni. She brings in two glasses and pours the whiskey. She eats two times what I’m able to.
Afterwards, she leaves me sitting on the couch. Goes into the bedroom, comes out dressed in pink shorts, cut high and tight like panties, a low-cut crop top, and those red heels. She stops and observes me. Shoves the coffee table aside and kneels between my legs. She unzips my pants.
Time goes faster now with Yvonne here. She comes home in the mornings. I get up and make scrambled eggs or cereal for us to eat together. She sleeps during the day. I go to my appointments with doctors, social services, and food banks. I’m disabled. I can’t work.
While she sleeps, I play the Dead using ear pods. It’s not the same as when their sound rocks the floorboards, but she’s there sleeping. And while loneliness still threatens, she’s like the magic force that keeps my days short.
In the evenings, she leaves and is out all night. I can hear the rats running on the roof. Sometimes doing battle.
One morning, I set the table. As usual, I place the frying pan of scrambled eggs in the center with the serving spoon. She walks in raging. Bruised and high, she yells, “When are you going to let me sleep? Who asked you for breakfast?” She picks up the frying pan with the eggs and hits me on the side of my face. Hot and hard. She shouts, “Leave me alone.” Her voice fills my head and knocks my brain around.
I can’t focus.
I get ice from the freezer. Put the cubes in a bag. Wrap it in a dish towel. Place it on my face. Sit down. Feel the coolness. Grateful she missed my eye: grateful I’m not dead.
Yvonne changes. It’s like that body-snatcher movie. She’s angry all the time. She gets a knife and slashes my jacket full of holes. She slaps me again. She wants money. “Not food!”
I keep my wallet and food-stamps card hidden.
She smashed the living room window. I call the superintendent to get wood to cover the hole before the rats come in.
“That woman’s not supposed to be here,” he says.
I don’t answer him. I call my brother Jerome.
“You let a prostitute move in?” he says.
“She was kind and beautiful, and we were getting on fine.”
“Are you high?”
“Just beer.”
I can hear him roll his eyes.
“I’m lonely,” I say.
“You have no judgment. So either we have to help you move, or we have to get her out.” I hear him typing on his keyboard. “We need to evict her. I guess I can write that up, but if she doesn’t leave, we’ll need a lawyer.”
I don’t know what to say. He’s all business, and I’m the family screw-up. Jerome and Kim have jobs—careers. Homes. Families. Friends that don’t steal their money. And I’ve been the drug addict, the dealer. Guy with COPD, heart disease, a lousy liver, on Social Security Disability. They have been helping me since Mom died. They don’t have to. I know people whose families don’t help.
“Yvonne’s going to kill me if I evict her.”
“It took us two years to get you in a decent apartment. Tell her the heat’s on, and your brother will never let up, and your sister is worse.”
I have chest pains. I lie down on the couch. Days are short. Life seems shorter. A rat is chewing at the wood that covers the window. I hit the board with my fist. “Get out of here,” I say.
It’s a battle. Yvonne throws my underwear in the trash. She pours dish soap all over the mac and cheese I made. She flushes my beer down the sink. Crushes the cans and clogs the toilet. Kim sends me underwear from Amazon.
“Are you home?” she says. “It’s out for delivery. Get it before she does.”
Jerome pays for the toilet repair. “I’m getting ready to retire here,” he says. “Less money for me and even less for you.”
I play the Dead loud. No ear pods. They rock the floorboards and shake the walls. The super calls me, “Turn down the damn music!”
Yvonne puts a metal spoon in my Mom’s microwave and turns it on. When nothing happens, she puts three spoons in there. It sparks. Starts a fire. Destroys the microwave.
“I need you out of here,” I say, coughing. “Get out.”
Kim pays the super to change the locks. I put all of Yvonne’s stuff in a garbage bag outside the apartment door. She shows up. Pounds on my door. Calls me names. I smoke weed and ignore her.
The super changes the door code for the apartment building. Tells everyone not to give it to strangers or “that woman Yvonne.”
Kim pays for the window repair. The super puts rat poison on the roof. I ask him not to. He scans my face. He looks at me as if he will never forgive me. Like I’m the stupidest man he’s ever known.
After that the days stretch out like a long corridor with no doors or windows. Beer, weed, and the Grateful Dead. Coffee, cereal, weed, Steal Your Face. Beer, another beer, a ham sandwich, a little weed. It’s one o’clock in the afternoon. The rest of the day ahead. And only loneliness to sit with.
I go to the drugstore to pick up my prescriptions. There’s a new cashier working there. Not young. Not pretty. But nice, you know. I look for what’s inside a person.
I make a joke about all the change I have in my pockets. Paying for beer and Snickers with dimes and quarters. She smiles. She works Sunday through Thursday, so I go on those days. Two, three, four times a week. Her name is Janine.
We go out for Chinese. One of those places where you stand in line and choose cafeteria-style. I pick fried rice and lemon chicken. We each pay for our own food. We talk about the neighborhood. She’s been looking for a place. I invite her home.
Her backpack is heavy, so I carry it for her. My back groans and my lungs seize.
“What’s in here?”
“My life,” she says.
She comes home with me.
“Can I take a shower?” she says.
“Sure.” I leave her to take the shower. But it’s hard to wait alone on the couch.
She doesn’t complain that the sheets haven’t been washed in a couple of months. We have sex. At first, it’s like we’re all elbows and knees. Banging into each other, but not in the good way. Once we get going, it feels comforting. I’m a little short of breath. She doesn’t mind my wheezing or pausing to suck in air.
We lay together. Janine has scars on her thighs and arms. I feel bad for her. She must have been through something.
The next morning, we get dressed. I tell her I’ll make some scrambled eggs. We’re sitting at the table eating. She says, “Will you marry me?”
After she leaves, I keep thinking about it. You know, ‘Marry me?’ Maybe I should call Kim for a woman’s perspective on this.
I put on the Dead. “Easy To Love You.” I pull my sheets off the bed to take them to the laundromat. Janine’s bra drops onto the floor. I pick it up. Okay. I got this.
