Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 122030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122030 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
I have to cover my mouth to stifle my laugh.
“I know.” She looks away, grinning so big I can see her smile reflected in the window. “It’s dumb.” She looks back at me. “But it’s like that, right? Like we’ve pulled each other into a foxhole and lived to talk about it.”
“Yeah. But it’s weird, ya know?”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Anyway. You feel like my best friend when I was twelve. Which is kind of meaningful to me because I don’t remember anything from when I was twelve.”
She squints her eyes a little, playing these words back in her head. It’s a strange thing to say, and I expect her to ask questions about it—maybe even hope she asks me questions about it—but she doesn’t. She just stares at me and says, “I hope you feel better. It wasn’t a deep foxhole. Probably not deep enough. But I did pull you in.”
And that’s a weird thing to say too. But I don’t ask her questions either. I just say, “Sorry I got sick on you. But thank you for playing nurse. I feel pretty great now.”
“Do you want to come up while I shower?”
“Only if you want me to.”
“Yeah.” She smiles again. And this time it’s not forced, or thin, or wide. “Yeah, I do.” It’s just friendly.
We get out and go upstairs to her place. “Do you know,” she says as we walk inside, “that I have only been in this place for a total of six hours and the rest of my life here in White River has been spent with you?”
I follow her into the apartment, closing the door behind me, then look around. There’s one big room with a galley kitchen, a dinette table with three chairs, a flower-patterned sofa that looks like it might’ve been born around the same time as me, and a TV from the seventies that has an actual antenna on top of it. I let out a breath. “Wow, your place is much nicer than mine.”
She laughs. “I’m not sure that’s a compliment. Your place is a dump. And this place is… also a dump.”
“But a much more hygienic dump.”
“For sure.” She picks up a backpack, places it on the dinette table, and starts rifling through it, eventually pulling out a small stack of clean clothes and a towel.
“A backpack.” I didn’t really mean to say this out loud. But there it is.
“Yeah.” Syrsee sighs. “I travel light.”
“I guess you do.” I mumble this as I walk over to a record player sitting on an old-fashioned TV tray under a window, then bend down and start flipping through a stack of albums.
“I’ll be right out. I won’t take long.”
I look over at her and smile. “You take all the time you like, friend. I’ll be here.”
She pauses, smiling down at me. “I’m really glad you’re feeling better. But… if you feel sick again, tell me, OK? We’ll… rest. Until you feel better.”
“I’m fine. Go shower. I feel like I’m starving.” Which is weird.
She eyes me cautiously for a moment. “OK.” Then she disappears inside the bathroom and closes the door. A couple minutes later, the shower is going and I’m slipping Pink Floyd’s The Wall out of an album cover and placing it on the turntable. I eyeball the grooves in the vinyl and set the needle down on the last song.
The cheap, built-in speakers crackle as ‘Comfortably Numb’ begins to play.
I scoot back, leaning against the couch, and stretch my legs out, letting myself get lost in the music and the memories that come with it.
I went to this concert in 1980. In LA, no less. It was fucking amazing.
Syrsee wasn’t even born then. Wasn’t even a blink on the radar. And if I was still human, I would’ve been fifty-one.
In scion years I’m sixty-five but in human years I’m… ninety-three. Damn. I’m old. That’s a pretty big age gap. But I don’t feel old. In fact, I feel very young right at the moment. Very… satisfied, actually.
I close my eyes and let my mind wander. Not to the distant past because that’s pointless, but to yesterday morning when I was out hunting down breakfast for Syrsee.
The guy at the church. What was his name again? I open my eyes and blink. “Joshua.” I say it out loud.
We’re not going back to the food pantry for breakfast. It’s Sunday, which means there will be offers of church, and I would like to avoid those. I look around for a clock, find a digital readout on the stove, and realize it’s barely seven AM.
The bathroom door opens and Syrsee appears in a cloud of steam, all fresh, and smelling good, and looking dangerous in a pair of black tactical pants and a dark-gray long-sleeved thermal. She’s got her boots in hand as she walks across the hardwood floor, plopping down on the couch, close enough to me so that her knee bumps my shoulder.