Chapter 53

53

Waking up on a Sunday morning.

Or is it Saturday?

Maybe Monday.

My brow is wet. The nightmare of memory that came calling last night…poking, prodding…is still lingering just above me like a shadowy haze on a warm summer night. They’re still low enough, those memories, to reach out and grab, connecting once again to those horrors of a life less lived, a life wasted on degeneration and contempt. I could wallow in those decimated dreams, but I’d hate to linger in bed this morning. It smells like John is cooking breakfast.

Eggs, bacon, toast, hash browns, blueberry pancakes with maple syrup, fresh squeezed orange juice, a giant cup of coffee and a small glass of milk to cool the back of my throat from the dozens of cigarettes I smoked on the back porch last night. I follow the smells out of bed and into a pair of blue jeans that I haphazardly stepped out of before collapsing into the sheets. Those same jeans lead me out the door and down the hall into the kitchen.

It made sense to see John standing there, one hand on a large frying pan and the other holding a metal spatula like some sort of swashbuckling breakfast pirate. It was also reasonable that he would be wearing an apron, a pair of moccasin-esque slippers and pajama pants. What didn’t make any sense to me was who I saw sitting at the breakfast table, placing a forkful of scrambled eggs into her mouth.

I thought it was a bit of an incubus that had followed me here from the bedroom, galloping past my head, ceiling high, and seating itself at the table before I could make my way down the hall. She couldn’t be real, sitting there, eyes lightly shadowed and hair covering her ears. I can feel my heart racing, the nerves bubbling up in my stomach like a cauldron, and John, with his spatula in hand, is aggressively stirring the concoction.

I am frozen in disbelief. She continues to eat, unaware of my presence, which is perhaps for the best. I can make my way back out into the hallway and back into the bedroom, pretending this never happened. Pretending that I didn’t just walk into my best friend’s kitchen and that she isn’t eating scrambled eggs and reading the Sunday comics.

But I linger too long. I can’t make my legs move. And she looks up and sees me for the first time in over twenty years.

She drops her fork. Eggs scatter like fruit flies.

“Richard…I can’t believe it’s true.”

Her voice knocks the wind out of me and I double over in physical pain. I drop to my knees as the tears begin to stream from Jamie’s beautifully engaging brown eyes.