Chapter 27

27

Sometime during the evening the snow subsides.

Three of us are huddled together under an overpass. The man on my right begins coughing uncontrollably but doesn't wake. I nudge him with my arm.

"What?"
"It's stopped snowing."

Our bodies have begun to smell so bad, nestled together, that I have become somewhat light headed, like breathing in too much vinegar. I am having a horrible time trying to sleep, my mind is aching, and the lack of light under this highway is helping me hallucinate.

I see myself, hazy as it is, on the phone.

The conversation is not going well.

Half a bottle of whisky is next to my typewriter; the cap is nowhere to be found.

In a rage I pick the bottle up and hurl it across the room. Millions of tiny drops of whisky fall from the tumbling bottle until it finds its destination on the office wall.

The receiver finds its way back onto the cradle and I light a cigarette.

The match finds its way to a large pool of whisky or the whisky finds its way to a still ignited match.

Either way, the room is set aflame and I continue to sit, staring at the typewriter as the fire licks at the ceiling.