He wonders when it will happen. When will he decide? When will he decide to stop? “No more,” he will say to himself. There will be no one to tell. After a while, a guy starts thinking it ain’t worth the effort. He walks the beach. As far as his eyes can see, white sand with cracked shells that bruise his bare feet. Old people walk a head of him and follow behind.
“We’re a fucking parade,” he hears in his head. “A parade of dry sun burnt skin and flaccid muscles. Turkey necked men and women with tits and bellies no longer fighting gravity and hanging down over their shorts. Jesus!”
He looks down when he’s pissing and can’t see his dick. Even when he wakes up with a hard on he can’t see it hidden behind the mountain of his belly. He has to push himself up and off the bed with his arms when he stands up in the middle of the night and stumbles into the toilet to pee.
His wife is old and tired. A lunatic lost in a head full of the past. He doesn’t see her as the young bride he married fifty years ago. He sees her as she is and hates her for her insecurities and constant questions repeated every ten minutes. She will not leave him in peace. Jesus!
He hides in the folds of the couch in the living room and tries to nap.
“Armond!” she shouts. “Armond!”
He hears her searching room to room. It won’t be long now.
“There you are,” she says. “The children will be here soon.”
His son was killed riding his motorcycle 20 years ago. The daughter lives in California. She won’t be coming soon. Has refused to come home since her mother disowned her years ago. Jesus!
Meals on Wheels brings lunch. After lunch he can escape to the beach in front of his million dollar house. The hired woman will fill in for a couple of hours, and his wife will call her Eunice.
“Eunice!” she will shout. “Oh, my beautiful child. You are home at last.”
Every day, when he comes home from the beach he checks his stash. He has 50 pills. The strongest pills available. The directions say take no more than two for a full night’s sleep—no more than two in 24 hours. He holds the bottle of pills in his hand. Not today he decides.
“Soon,” the voice in his head says. “Soon.”
