Grandpa’s Somnus Sonata

On the plasma television in Scott’s Bar and Grille, where I was imbibing a multiplicity of fermented liquids I watched on channel 21 News as they covered the morning’s most newsworthy event.

That great keystone ground beaver, known as Punxsutawney Phil, thrust its triangular head out of its living chamber--a man made cement den--at approximately 7:30 AM. The handler of said varmint claims he rises every morning at this time but unless the little bastard has an alarm clock I would bet my left walnut that they attach a hose on the muffler of Chevy Impala (pre 1997 emission standards) and drop the other end of the hose down the hole and smoke the little shadow watcher out.

“What’s wrong with him?” Rosy asked.

“I don’t know he looks weird,” I said and sipped from my Troegenator.

Some guy in a top hat and tails held Phil up in the air so all could bow to the buck toothed vermin and in doing so, inadvertently exposed his groundhog unit which looked like a baby carrot. (Was I the only one that saw this?) Did being in the limelight give Phil wood? The handler then placed Phil on an oak stump so that he could examine his shadow and this is a first time I got a good look at his glazed eyes.

“That little bastard’s head is as high up in the clouds as a German Dirigible,” I said.

“Punxsutawney Phil is stoned?” Rosy asked.

“It would appear so. Perhaps he’s not the agreeable little fellow that they portray him to be but needs to be sedated for the big show. I don’t blame him. Who the Hell would want to be roused from bed just to look at their shadow?”

“I don’t get it,” Rosy said. “He saw his shadow so there’s supposed to be six more weeks of winter?”

“It would appear that is the case,” I said.

I turned my attention to my stripper girlfriend, throttled the last of my beer and nuzzled her neck. I playfully batted at her beaded hair.

“Ewe, you have beer breath,” she said.

“You’re neck smells like the sweat rung out of Athena’s gym towel,” I said, trying to be romantic.

“That’s gross,” Rosy said.

“According to mythological tabloids her sweat smelled like select French toilet water.”

She giggled and kissed me on the cheek and I turned my attention to the jazz band positioned in the corner of the dance floor.

The leader of the jazz band dipped back with microphone in hand and the trumpet player’s cheeks blew out like the chewing gum bubble of a pretentious teeny bopper. The piano player’s fingers melded with the keys and grew like great fleshy roots up into the trunk of his soul and limbs of music spread out across the room and I was engulfed in the shade of it and I knew then that existence was a cruel unsubstantiated ruse, that I was a guinea pig in a universal experiment and I was not salivating like Pavlov’s dogs but reacting quite differently to the stimuli. Something unexpected was happening with this one and that great scientist in the laboratory of the heavens was left scratching his head, wondering where he’d gone wrong.

I shifted back and forth on my bar stool because my ass had fallen asleep from sitting too long.

“Are you dancing while you’re sitting?” Rosy asked.

“Yes, I learned this little number in Senegal, Africa from a relatively unknown horde of gypsy pygmies that were said to have introduced John Coltrane to jazz while he visited the country in the early forties. They took me to a place down below Kedougou along the Gambian border to a waterfall and beneath the waterfall in a cave was a weathered tenor saxophone surrounded by offerings to the God they called Coltrane. Amongst the artifacts scattered about were: frankincense, Bic Lighters, bottles of Coca-Cola, plastic spoons, and several G-strings. Unfortunately they wouldn’t allow me to take any photographs so I can’t substantiate this claim so you’ll just have to take my word for it.”

“That sounds made up,” Rosy said.

“A lot of what I say will but don’t doubt me. You’ll only be fooling yourself.”

“You’re drunk.”

“Nonsense, drunk doesn’t start until the coordination leaves, when one starts walking into cigarette machines and jukeboxes and inadvertantly grabs fleshy female parts.”

“Whatever,” Rosy said, tossing her beaded hair back.

I was well on my way to intoxication for I had in me seven glasses of Troegenator and was feeling like the chest beating god of some polytheistic cult and needed only to wrap myself in a grass skirt, tape ram horns to my forehead, jump up on the bar and dance like some Parkinsons stricken tribal tap dancer for the illusion to be complete but alas, such displays are frowned upon in modern society and particularly so in establishments in which live performers are already being offered, so I refrained from acting out on such primitive urges.

“I’ve heard stories about you,” Rosy said, and sipped from her chocolate martini.

“That was a long time ago. You’ll have to take my word that I’m a changed man and besides I’ve heard stories about you. It seems you can’t stay in a relationship, that you’re scared of the commitment or something. Maybe you need a father figure for a lover. If that’s the case I’ll buy a pipe and a smoking jacket and berate you for not doing your homework.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” she said.

“It doesn’t involve PVC piping and hydraulics does it?” I asked.

“What?”

“Nothing, Peanut,” I said.

For some odd reason Rosy insisted that I come up with a nickname for her. She claimed she couldn’t begin to fall in love with me until I had personalized the relationship. Of course she asked me in the depths of a Friday night binge while I was sitting at a bar and happened to look down into the peanut bowl.

“How about Peanut?” I had said.

She had smiled and those brown eyes melted through me heart like two hot buttermilk biscuits tossed into a snowdrift. The possibility that Rosy was the ONE I had been searching for formed legs and ran across the great plain of my mind but as always that cock sucker doubt was waiting, stuck a leg out and tripped the beautiful notion leaving me wondering.

“This jazz band is really good,” Rosy said.

“Very,” I said.

I leaned back and wrapped my arm around her thin waist and while doing so my cell phone began to vibrate.

“Aren’t you going to answer that?” Rosy asked.

“Right,” I said, snatching the cell phone out of my pocket

I read the display. The number was one I didn’t recognize and fearing that it was another woman I’d given my phone number to before I met Rosy I figured I should answer the call somewhere else.

“Excuse me Peanut, I have to go answer this call and I won’t be able to hear at the bar,” I said.

“I’ll be waiting,” she said, and seductively licked the rim of her martini glass.

I flipped open my cell phone. “Hello,” I said, as I made my way back to the bathroom.

“This is Grandpa. I need someone to pick me up at the Hershey Hospital.”

“Hello…hello,” I said, but I had been cut off.

As I relieved myself in the bathroom I tried to call my Grandfather back at the number he’d called me from but no one answered. I then tried to contact family members to see why my Grandfather was in the hospital but no one answered. Family members are often weary of answering telephone calls from me at night for fear I am calling to ask them to bail me out of jail.
“Bastards,” I said under my breath as I zipped up my pants.

As I turned I looked into the mirror and with my brain bobbing in a night’s worth of booze I didn’t immediately recognize myself and as I drew closer I appeared grotesque and my features became distorted. It was like I’d dropped acid and been pushed in front of a funhouse mirror.

“Steady, old boy,” I said.

I leaned over the sink, turned on the cold water and began to splash it on my face while humming “Mansion on the Hill” by Neil Young. I then proceeded to towel my face and this is when I first noticed the tall guy with an Adam’s apple so big it looked like he was in the process of swallowing a janitor’s key chain.

“I have a slight case of vertigo. When I was a child I was struck in the temple by a clay pigeon” I said.

“Are you almost done?” he said.

“Define almost,” I said. “Is it that tiny sliver of perception lodged precariously between yes and no but leaning towards yes that cannot be accurately measured but is merely assumed by those conducting said task?”

“Listen, I have friends waiting for me are you done yet?” he said, his Adam’s apple frantically moving up and down his neck like a claustrophobic weasel trapped in a sleeping bag. I was momentarily hypnotized by the sight of it and only snapped out of it when he sighed loudly.

I stepped aside and gestured him towards the sink. I felt like taking his Jones of New York tie off and strangling him with it but had to get back to Peanut and tell her I had to go pick up my Grandfather.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said, when returned to the bar.

“Where are we going next?” Rosy asked.

“How about the Hershey hospital? My Grandfather tells me they have great tapioca pudding.”

“Are you serious?”

“Never, but in this case I mean what I say. I have to go to the hospital and pick him up. I got a frantic call from him.”

“What’s he in the hospital for?” Peanut asked, and downed the rest of her chocolate martini.

“I have no idea and although I am his personal chauffer on a part-time basis I usually require some sort of notice to undertake driving responsibilities.”

“Well, okay, I guess we can go get him but I’ll drive. You’ve already had half dozen beers or so.”

“Right,” I said. “Well, onward and upward, my darling,” I said.


* * *
We lit out into the new night with Rosy piloting beneath the star studded and moon embroidered backdrop of the denim sky. She bore down on the suicide wheel of my Cherokee and took turns with a reckless abandon that Evil Knievel would have tipped his motorcycle helmet to.

“It looks dead here,” Rosy said as we entered the hospital.

“What did you expect? This isn’t a disco,” I said.

“I know but it’s depressing,” Rosy said.

I put my arm around her waist as we waited for the elevator and gradually let it slide down to her butt and gave it a squeeze.

“Stop that,” she said, looking around. “Are you sure you got the right room number?”

“Yeah, the receptionist said it was the third floor. Don’t worry I’m not taking you to the mental ward.”

‘Good, because you’d probably be the one they locked up,” she said.

“You’ve got a point there,” I said.

The third floor was as dead as the rest of the hospital and we skirted the nursing staff stationed by making a b-line for the hallway that housed room numbers 310-320. My Grandfather’s room was 320 and located at the end of the hallway.

“I want to warn you,” I said before we entered, “my Grandfather is very fond of polyester. His entire wardrobe is highly flammable. In fact it’s so hazardous I heard he had to take out extra fire insurance to cover it. Just don’t be surprised if he’s lying in bed wearing a red leisure suit.”

“Okay,” Rosy, said.

We opened the door to the room and stepped into the vacuum created by my Grandfather’s snoring. As my Grandfather’s exhaled his cheeks, wrinkled and loose with age, rippled like a swimming pool cover in a hurricane. When he inhaled his lips disappeared within his toothless mouth and his nose vibrated like a loose muffler. The snore itself had a definite rhythm, a choppy sucking staccato solo that gave way to a descending scale of lippy high notes.

“I could strip to that snore,” Rosy said, “its your grandpa’s own somnus sonata.”

“That’s catchy,” I said. “somnus sonata.”

I looked at my Grandfather lying in the bed. He’d once been such a powerful man of immense bulk but now he was only a husk of his former self. I knew that it was unlikely that my constitution will allow for old age to gently cradle me, to rock me gently and to lull me into that last big nap as the grim reaper gently stroked my balding head. No, I wouldn’t go out like that. I will go out with my six lasers blazing, like some mad space cowboy in an inter-dimensional shoot out.

“Grandpa?” I said and his eye lids shot open like the spring loaded trapdoors revealing the core of his azure dreams. “Hey there how are you doing?”

“Everything sounds like I’m under water,” my Grandfather said, his gravely voice weaker than usual.

I noticed he didn’t have his hearing aides in. I pointed to the nightstand beside him and he retrieved them and as he tried to place them in his ears they squealed in protest. When his hearing aides were in place he zeroed in on Rosy.

“Jesus Christ, this one’s beautiful,” my Grandfather said, pushing himself up in the bed. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said grabbing for her hand and kissing it. “Are you going to get smart and marry this one?”

“Don’t scare her off. I just met her,” I said.

To Rosie’s credit she didn't wipe her hand off which might have discouraged him. I believed this to be a very brave move because I knew my Grandfather was a geriatric Casanova and still flirted relentlessly when confronted with attractive or even not so attractive females and that deep in the recesses of his mind a little voice was whispering in his ear, "you just might have a chance." I also knew his pharmaceutical arsenal contained Viagra because I drove him to and from the pharmacy which made me even wearier of his intentions.

“Hello,” a whiney voice said.

I turned and a nurse with very wide hips was coming at me pushing a cart full of food. Her face was ashen and angry and appeared to be covered in a thin film of paraffin wax. Her pug nose was saddled by two thick cheeks and she wore black granny glasses but the most noticeable of her features was a mole the size of a goat turd on her left cheek.

“Buenos Dias,” I said, trying not to stare at her mole.

“We need to change your sheets and then you can eat,” the nurse said, unenthusiastically.

Her tone sounded as if she were talking to a baby, trying to coax it to eat a spoon fool of red beets. I felt like smacking her. I would dub her Nurse Mole.

She pushed her cart against the wall and then from the far wall wheeled over what I can only describe as a little crane. She pushed it over beside my Grandfather’s bed and then with some maneuvering positioned a thick blue strap under his stomach. She then cranked the machine and my grandfather rose up over the bed and hung there like a trophy fish. As he dangled above the bed I noticed that the smock he was wearing wasn’t big enough to cover his ass and quickly I looked away afraid that I might see something that would traumatize me for years to come.

“So what do you do Rosy?” my Grandfather asked.

“I’m a professional dancer,” Rosy said.

“She has cancer?” my Grandfather asked.

“No, no she’s a dancer.”

My Grandfather squinted and I could tell he still hadn’t heard me. He continued to spin in circles above the bed as the nurse hastily changed the sheets. I noticed he kept glancing at the nurse’s rather large rear end and this was another thing that I truly didn’t want to see.

“What are you in here for?” I asked.

“In for?…oh, they don’t know. They’re taking tests but they said it wasn’t a heart attack or stroke.”

“We think your Grandfather took too many sleeping pills,” Nurse Mole said.

“Did you do that on purpose?” I asked looking up at my Grandfather but he had spun all the way around and I was staring at his ass. “Oh, dear God.”

Rosy giggled.

“Could you stop spinning like that?” I asked.

My Mother had told me that as a youngster her family moved frequently because my Grandfather often became depressed and needed a change of scenery. I wondered if perhaps since he’d lost his powerful physique to old age and wasn’t nearly as active that he might have decided to pack it in.

“All done,” the nurse said, lowering my Grandfather back into bed.

“My grandson is going to take me home,” my Grandfather said, attempting to sit up.

“No, not now,” the nurse said in that Goddamn condescending voice that made me want to strangle her. “We have to wait and see when the doctor says you can leave.”

Nurse Mole hurried out of the room after depositing my Grandfather’s dinner beside him. I took three Troegs Hopbacks out of my leather jacket cracked them open and handed them out.

“I thought you said you were ready to go,” I said.

“I’m fine. These damn doctors want to keep me in here in case I die on the sidewalk on the way out. They’re afraid they’ll get sued. To be honest with you I’d rather die on the sidewalk than lie in here in this damn bed,” he said.

He put one wobbly leg on the ground and then the other and then pushed himself up. He didn’t look steady on his feet.

“Well, take you home if you want to go home,” Rosy said.

“Peanut, be sensible, I can’t help him break out of the hospital,” I said.

“He’s not breaking out. He just wants to go home.”

“I don’t know how long I have but I do know that I don’t want to spend any more of it in here. Help me if you want. If not get out of my way because I’m leaving,” my Grandfather said, tilting his beer.

I thought of my own mortality, of the race with the Grim Reaper, a race that can’t be won. Even if I run and run and run and am laps ahead of that cock sucker I know he will eventually catch up to me and hopefully it won’t be in a hospital but in a giant bed buried in a pile of naked playmates; a snorkel my only air source as the light dims.

“Right, this place gives me the creeps,” I said. “Get your polyester leisure suit on we’re taking you home.”

Before I had time to shield my eyes my Grandfather tore his smock off.

“Oh, God, why didn’t you warn me you were going to do that?” I said.

“It’s nothing you haven’t seen before,” he said, pulling on his tighty whities.

“No, I’ve never seen anything quite like that before,” I said.

Rosy came up from behind me and kissed me on the back of the neck. My Grandfather pulled on his white turtle neck, light blue leisure suit, and white loafers and we were ready to roll.

“All right we’ll go down the stairs,” I said, leading the way out the door. I looked both ways and seeing that the coast was clear beckoned my Grandfather with my outstretched hand.

He shuffled slowly, as if he were lugging gold bullion in his pant pockets. It was depressing as Hell to see that old bastard, once so physically impressive reduced to the bare skin and bone workings of a feeble old man. When I was child I remembered looking at his massive arms--his T-shirt sleeves rolled up--and wondered if I weighed as much as one of the damn things.

“I’d like to go out and get a bight to eat,” my Grandfather said, as we made our way down the hallway.

“If you promise to chew your food, watching Mom give you the Heimlich maneuver wasn’t a pretty sight,” I said.

“I had a cold,” he said.

“When you don’t chew your food I don’t think it matters if you have a cold or not,” I said.

He tapped at his hearing aid, pretending not to hear me.

I held my hand up to stop my Grandfather and Rosy and peered around the corner to the nurses’ station.

“Okay, Rosy, go open the door to the stairs and Grandpa when I go up to the nurses desk and distract the nurses you go over to the stairs. Okay?”

“Will do,” my Grandfather said.

“Okay,” I said and sauntered up to the nurses’ desk as Rosy ran to the stairway.

“Good evening, ladies,” I said.

The three nurses—Nurse Mole, a full-figured blond, and a thin redhead—were sitting at the station and looked up at me, each of their mouths turned down into disapproving frowns. I’m sure they could smell the booze on me because all three of had their noses in the air and were sniffing like bloodhounds at the bottom of a tree with a runaway inmate hiding in it.

“I was wondering if it was possible to arrange a late night visitation with my great grand uncle William Shraphappy,” I said.

“Who?” Nurse Mole asked.

Momentarily I was again hypnotized by the mole on her cheek. It beckoned me. I was under its power as if it were some strange tribal idol with soul possessing abilities. I fought to look away and finally I was able to jerk my head away.

“Grab hold of yourself,” I said.

“What?” Nurse Mole asked.

“Uh, Bill Shraphappy?” I said. I glanced back over my shoulder and saw my Grandfather drinking his beer as he shuffled across the floor.

“Bill Shraphappy?” Nurse Mole said, and looked down at a clipboard. “I’m sorry you must have the wrong floor.”

“Right,” I said.

Nurse Mole looked at me and then saw my Grandfather.

“Excuse me,” she said standing.

There was but one thing to do to save my Grandfather and so I cast all dignity aside and clutched my heart.

“Oh, my God, I think I’m having a heart attack,” I said.

“Are you all right?” Nurse Mole asked.

“No...I mean I have a condition. It feels like ferrets wearing tiny cleats are scampering about on the inside of my heart. Oh…the…pain…is…unbearable…”

“You smell like alcohol,” Nurse Mole said, coming out from behind her station. She kneeled by my side and eyed me suspiciously and through her thickly lensed granny glasses her eyes appeared immense and I had to bite my lip so I wouldn’t scream out in horror.

“The beer is prescription…specially formulated to thin the blood and fortified with vitamins and minerals,” I said, making sure not to look straight into her mole.

“I’ve never heard of a doctor prescribing alcohol for a heart problem,” Nurse Mole said and looked to her co-workers for support. They both shook their heads from side to side.

“Well my doctor is on the cutting edge of medicine. Are you sure there isn’t at least a light beer here?” I said and then coughed and rolled over like an obedient dog.

“There’s no beer here,” the blond nurse said.

“No, matter,” I said, jumping to my feet. “It seems my heart has returned to its normal rhythm.”

“We have help coming,” the redheaded nurse said.

“Tell them thank-you but I already gave at the VFW,” I said.

“What?” Nurse Mole said but I was already throwing the door open and running down the stairs.

My Grandfather and Rosy were walking slowly through the lobby when I caught up to them. I grabbed a wheelchair from beside the main desk.

“Sit in here,” I said to my Grandfather.

As my Grandfather slowly sat I heard someone yell, “there they are.”

“Hurry up,” Rosy said, “they’re coming.”

“Let’s go,” my Grandfather cried, tossing his beer bottle into a nearby planter.

We burst out through the front doors into the night and I could hear the clamoring of hospital staff behind us.

“Rosy, go get the Cherokee and meet us by the main entrance to the hospital.”

“Okay,” she said, turning towards me. I tossed her the keys, leading her slightly and she ran underneath them and snagged them. I continued to watch her exquisite ass as she ran away and nearly ran my Grandfather into a cement bench but recovered just in time.

“Jesus Christ, what the Hell are you doing?” my Grandfather asked.

“We’re getting you out of here,” I said.

I pushed the wheelchair into the expansive yard in the front of the hospital, running through piles of snow, over rocks and up and down gullies.

“You can’t take him,” Nurse Mole yelled from behind us. “It’s against hospital policy.”

I glanced over my shoulder and saw a mad posse of hospital staff was pursuing us, blood in their eyes, and like the town elder leading a witch hunt Nurse Mole was leading them; her blue nurse’s cape flapping behind her.

“Screw you Nurse Mole,” I cried and pushed even harder.

We were really moving and in the distance I could see my idling Cherokee.

“Groundhog hole,” my Grandfather cried but it was too late.

There was a terrible jolt and he flew out of the wheel chair and soared through the air with his arms outstretched in front of him and his white hair plastered against his head. In his light blue polyester suit it occurred to me that he looked like a geriatric super hero. Super Geezer?

He landed in a pile of snow and I ran up to him with the wheelchair. It occurred to me that this might be Punxsutawney Phil’s revenge, that his baby carrot erection on the morn of his shadow watching was a signal to all groundhogs to attack mankind. I would have to report this to Homeland Security.

“Take me back,” my Grandfather screamed.

“Nonsense, we’ve made it this far. I’m not going to let Nurse Mole win. Look there’s the Cherokee,” I said pulling him up into the wheelchair.

The sounds of the unruly hospital staff were growing closer. I chanced another quick look over my shoulder and Nurse Mole was now within twenty yards of us and gaining. Despite her large hips and ass--which was as wide as a washing machine--she seemed to be rather quick and with me in my Burmese Jungle boots and pushing my 83 year old grandfather in a wheelchair she had a slight advantage.

I pushed him up over the pile of snow and the footsteps grew closer. I knew then that we were not going to make it, that we would be overrun by the crazed hospital staff. My lungs were burning and I felt like the beer was going to come back up and this is when I saw the most beautiful of sights, a pair of headlights heading straight for me. I would know those headlights anywhere. They were the headlights of my Cherokee.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhh,” my Grandfather cried and I was worried he really would have a heart attack.

The Cherokee swerved just before it reached us and Rosy drove right at the hospital staff that was chasing us and slid the truck sideways in front of them cutting them off. She contained them by doing donuts around them which gave my Grandfather and I time to make it to the main road.

We stopped at the intersection and when I turned the Cherokee was pulling up beside us.

“Hurry up get in,” Rosy said, through her open window.

I helped my Grandfather up out of his chair and into the front street. The hospital staff had gained momentum again and as I shut the passenger’s side door they came up on the other side of the Cherokee. Nurse Mole tried to get in on the other side but the door was locked. I thumbed my nose at her as Rosy peeled out.

“Ha ha,” my Grandfather cried, his dentures slipping and falling out of his mouth, rolling down the front of his shirt and onto the floor.

“Let’s get a drink and celebrate,” my Grandfather said.

“Yeah,” Rosy, said as the Cherokee slid around a corner.

I took out my ceramic alligator bowl and lit it.

“What in the Hell is that?” my Grandfather asked.

I’d forgotten that I shouldn’t partake in front of him and was at a loss as to what to use as an excuse so I winged it.

“It’s for my glaucoma,” I said.

“Bullshit, you don’t have glaucoma,” he said.

“Right,” I said, “want to try some?”

His big blue eyes zeroed in on me and I thought another “bullshit” was going to come from his mouth but instead his face softened.

“I don’t suppose at my age that it would hurt,” he said, reaching out and taking the bowl.

“Peanut, please stop at the Seven Eleven I need gas,” I said.

Rosy pulled into the Seven Eleven at the gas pumps and she and I exited the Cherokee.

“Ah ha.”

It was Nurse Mole! Evidently she’d hopped on the running board of my Cherokee, held onto the door handle and had ridden down to the Seven Eleven with us.

“Your Grandfather is coming back to the hospital with me,” she said gasping for breath.

“Okay, swivel hips let’s not get our hair net in a bunch,” I said.

Nurse Mole didn’t notice but Rosy had sneaked up behind her and was doing something with her cape.

“Hospital policy is hospital policy. It cannot be broken no matter what,” Nurse Mole said still heaving.

Rosy hopped back into the Cherokee and started to pull away with my Grandfather inside. I started after them and Nurse Mole started after me but then there was a ripping sound and when I glanced over my shoulder she was standing there in black lace lingerie. Rosy had tied her cape to the gas pumps.

“Let’s celebrate,” my Grandfather cried as we pulled out onto the highway.

I leaned back over the seat, took out two beers and handed one to my Grandfather and sat back in my seat. As I sipped my beer I looked in the rearview mirror at my Grandfather looking for myself in his features. I momentarily caught glimpses of myself--the curve of an eye brow, the shape of the mouth—but could not hold them. Somewhere pieces of my likeness was shifting within him.

“Let’s go back downtown and get some drinks,” Rosy said.

“Sounds good. We can all go out to an all night diner then,” I said. “How does that sound Grandpa?”

There was no answer. I looked into the back seat and he was sound asleep, his beer clutched in his hand. He was snoring.

“Grandpa’s somnus sonata,” I said and Rosy laughed.

* * *


If you can fit all your dreams in your back pocket you’d better take out that unbreakable flex comb and make room for more possibility because there’s a whole world to tackle out there and no one is going to give a damn when your dead if you dreamed enough or not.