Winter Sun

It’s one of those winter mornings when the sun sleeps late.

Gets up groggy and bleary-eyed, mouth tasting like an old sweat sock, shuffles out to the kitchen in ratty bathrobe and rattier slippers, gulps down hot coffee.
No cream, no sugar.

Feels like he must be fighting something. He lolls around on the couch, doesn’t bother to shower or shave. Gags down a piece of cold, left-over pizza – why the hell did he order anchovies? – and more java.

Huddles under an old afghan and tubes out.
Flicks the remote like watching a series of badly-edited random flashbacks from the late 6o’s. Tries re-runs of some cop show. Doesn’t hold his interest for long. Pops in some tried and true porn.
Vidi, vici, veni.
No dice.

Tries a book.
The words refuse to keep still, scurry around on the page. Reads the same sentence a dozen times...

By 3:30 in the afternoon, he’s dozing off.

People are looking up, with gritted teeth, clutching their clothes around them, saying, “Hey, Pal, how about a little heat, huh?”

But he ignores them, the way a career bureaucrat, ignores a guy bleeding to death right in from of him: not my job.

By 6pm it feels like midnight, and he hits the rack early without having done a damn thing all day to justify his existence.

Tomorrow, he tells himself. I’ll make a fresh start tomorrow.
Clean up my act.
Tomorrow.
Or maybe the next day.

sj