Another Inner Strangeness
William couldn’t feel the tip of his nose anymore so he switched to coffee, no whiskey. Bergoyan looked and sounded steady. He had stopped telling Maria’s story some time ago and the two had sat drinking together with the muted, yet recognizable, sounds of morning television news coming through the ceiling and a large square of sunlight moving from left to right across the kitchen tile.
The old man noticed that William didn’t sweeten his coffee with the Jameson’s and asked, “How are you now Loof?”
William felt jet lagged and thoroughly displaced. The story, the dope, the booze, and the deep, even river of the old man’s words had screwed with his sense of time and place. “Maybe I need a drink of water.”
Bergoyan brought him a glass of tap water with ice.
“Thank you.”
“Did you eat this morning?”
“Yeah.” He gulped down half the glass of water and felt a bit clearer, if not truely refreshed. “It’s still morning?”
“For another hour.”
“I think I need a taco.”
“A taco?”
“Pretty soon. But I can wait. Don’t wanta rush it. Tacos change things.” Wow, was he still high or what. From the way the old man watched him, William knew that he had revealed his inner strangeness too abruptly, too nakedly – as usual. Instead of trying to cover anything up now, he only said, “Maria,” which only made him feel all that much more odd.
After a pause though, the old man took up his story again. “She was easy to fall in love with and quite impossible to love….”
