There’d been the aged what-the-crick
bartender who held a fleeting residence in the romantic corner of my mind, and
of course my girlfriend at the time, whom I’d eventually marry (and eventually
divorce). I’ve never been able to take my mind off of those fishermen, though.
Their fervid drinking, wind-chapped faces, and hands that resembled those of Oswald
Cobblepot. That I thought for a moment that I could converse with them proved somewhat
correct; I knew Spanish, but had never heard Portuguese. Hell, it had probably
never even occurred to me that other versions (beyond Castilian) existed.
This young brunette, Rachel, and her
son, me and my kids along with Emily and Jaden, Tiffany and a friend of hers, and
Customer Service Manager Mickie Hammer, all of us…holed up in my old room, along
with my mom, and a few others…the lot of us crammed into a somewhat-dilapidated
version of my mom’s old house. There were wind gaps and leaks, snow on the
ground outside, a possum that’d repeatedly gotten in, and then there was the
Ben Katz crew at 5:00 in the morning with their dog that bites a lot…the angry
fashion in which I’d asked them to leave shortly after their arrival.
