sndhight.com: Under the Blanketing Night

Under the Blanketing Night

By Steve Hight

       A fine cloud of dust, illuminated by twin headlights into myriad tiny stars, rose then fell again as the pickup that stirred it settled into the driveway. The driver switched off the truck’s lamps, leaving Dave, as he lounged in a webbed lawn chair on the concrete patio outside his trailer, momentarily blinded in the sudden darkness. For a few seconds, the mixed rhythms of the radio and the chattering old engine continued in discord while some old rock tune played itself out, then they, too, were switched off. The brake lights, which had until now continued to cast their warning glare over the remaining suspended dust, went out as well as the driver lifted his foot from the pedal and opened the truck’s door with a lift and a shove. The door creaked angrily, then the driver planted his left boot in the dust.
       “You’ve really taken this country doctor shit to heart, haven’t you Mike?” asked Dave after a deliberate pull on his beer. “Jeez, with those boots and the beat-up pickup, all you need is the damned hat to look just like a cowboy.”
       Mike grinned in the dim light radiating from the single bulb outside the trailer door and, without a word, reached back into the truck, grabbed his new black Stetson, and squared it on his head.
       “Oh, no. You have got to be shitting me, Mike. Take that stupid thing off this instant, or I won’t let you cross the moat.”
       “Shut up and open me one of those third-rate beers you’re hiding, you cheap bastard. You want me to look at your back or not?” Mike tossed the hat back into the cab and reached for a brown, leather doctor’s bag. “Do you know how much I charge regular folks for house calls?” He walked toward the patio, ducking under the ruins of a trellis on which someone had once tried to grow roses and around which the dust-desiccated remains of those roses still waited for someone with the heart to bury them.
       “Nothing, and you know it, so don’t even try to con me. If you wanted to be a rich doctor, you would have stayed in Phoenix, not come back home to Royal BFE. But you’re in Podunk now, my friend, and you’ve got to treat all us white trash at Podunk prices.”
       “You’re white trash with a law degree, fool. I should charge you what all my real patients owe me. Thanks,” said Mike, accepting the beer Dave handed him. He placed his satchel on the small patio table, scooting aside an empty brown bottle in the process.
       “How do you drink this cheap swill?” he asked, sitting in the other chair.
       “You’re drinking it, aren’t you?”
       “’Cause it’s free and the only payment I know I’ll ever get from your tight ass.”
       The two old friends sat and drank in silence for a while, and, with the exception of Mr. Johnson’s television set three trailers over, crickets generated the only sound. Finally, after drinking about half his beer, Mike said, “Well, let’s see that back of yours.”
       “It’s not so bad now I guess,” said Dave as he raised his T-shirt and turned his back to Mike, “but it sure hurt like hell when I woke up this morning.”
       “Yeah, I bet it did,” said Mike, running his hands over Dave’s back. “T3 and T4 are both out of joint. And you’ve got a good spasm going as well. Lie down on your belly.”
       “Oh, no you don’t, Rump Ranger Rick. You’re not getting this cherry that easily.”
       Mike laughed. “Shut up and lie down. Hang your head off the edge of the patio so you can keep your neck straight.”
       “I’ll have to stick my nose in the dirt,” protested Dave as he positioned himself.
       “Then don’t breathe too much. I don’t want to have to treat you for Hantavirus later.” Mike stood over Dave, straddling his back, and placed his overlapped hands on Dave’s spine. “Okay. When I tell you to, take a deep breath, then exhale forcefully.”
       “You just said not to breathe.”
       “Shut up. Okay, inhale…and…exhale.” With a quick thrust and a cruel-sounding crunch, Mike reset Dave’s displaced vertebrae. “Now lie there for a minute and relax, Dave. We don’t want you dislocating those bad boys again.”
       “No. You just want me to lie here, snorting dirt.”
       “Hey. Whatever rings your bell, bucko.”
       Dave pushed himself upright, brushed the dust off his hands, and asked, “You done torturing me, witch doctor?”
       “Some gratitude. You feel better?”
       “Yeah,” replied Dave, testing his shoulders with a roll and a shrug, “Yeah, I do. Well a bit. That knot’s still there. When d’ya become a chiropractor?”
       “I’m not. I’m not even a D.O. I’ve never done anything like that in my life. I hope I didn’t break you.”
       “So, basically you just… Oh, fuck it. I feel better. Thanks. Wanna cop a squat for a while?”
       “Yeah. I’d like that. It’s a nice, cool night. Shame the beer tastes like shit.”
       “You’d know the taste, Doc.”
       “I’d say touché, but you’re such a homo, you’d think it was some sort of invitation in French.”
       “There you go talkin’ ’bout my ass again.”
       “See what I mean?” Mike sat. Then stood again and walked toward the three metal steps leading to the trailer door. “Hey, can I turn out the light? It’s drawing bugs, and I’d like to see the stars anyway.”
       “Yeah, sure. Switch is just inside the door, to the left. Other left. As you face in, not out. Christ, I’m glad you’re not a surgeon. Couldn’t find my heart with a map.”
       “That’s because you haven’t got one. There. That’s better. As long as I don’t trip on my way back to the chair.”
       “Nah. Wait a second and your eyes will adjust fine. Mr. Johnson never turns off his TV or his porch light, so it never gets truly dark or truly quiet here.”
       “It’s a helluva lot darker and quieter than Phoenix.”
       “Is that why you came home, to get away from the city?”
       “Yeah, I guess. But not just that. I felt pretty much lost in Phoenix, like I had no soul or roots or something. It’s hard to explain. I felt kinda like a robot, and I wanted people around me.”
       “They don’t have people in Phoenix?”
       “Plenty to spare, but it was always about living in a rush, moving through schedules and lists and goal-setting and processing.” Mike sat in his chair and grabbed his beer, cradling it between his two big hands but not drinking it. “I worked in an office with three other doctors for two years, and we were always jam-packed with patients, and I was seeing some of them twice a month, but I still had to look at their charts every time to remember who they were and why they were in the room with me.” Mike paused and mused for several seconds, rolling the beer bottle between his palms. “I remember this one woman who just wanted to talk. Her kids were in L.A. or something, her husband dead, and she just wanted to talk. I referred her to a counselor because I didn’t have time to talk. I just had time to write scrips and peer knowingly into the occasional throat. That life works fine for some doctors, but most of us hate it, I think. At least I’d like to believe they do. But they can’t get out, see? They have bills to pay, debts from school, debts from setting up practice, debts from buying a house, raising kids, all that. I had a chance to get out, I had a way to escape, and I took it.”
       “You mean selling your parents’ ranch?”
       “Yeah, selling my parents’ ranch,” Mike said quietly.
       “Sorry, I didn’t mean…”
       “No, that’s okay. It’s just, well, I miss them both very much. They died so close together that I hadn’t really stopped mourning Mom when Dad died.”
       “I wish I could relate, but... No, I don’t mean that I wish I could relate, I mean…”
       “I know what you mean. Thanks. You’re lucky both your parents are still alive.”
       “Yeah, but fuck.”
       “Yeah. Fuck.”
       Silence resumed between the two men, and in it the stars danced out the night. Perhaps five minutes passed, perhaps ten, before Mike turned to undo the clasps on his doctor’s bag.
       “Where’d you get the cool bag, Doc? Looks like the one Jack the Ripper carried in that movie.”
       “Oh, a flea market I stopped at while driving here from Phoenix. I don’t usually stop at such things, but they had a food stand and I was hungry. I was sitting there at a picnic table eating this really good hot dog with sauerkraut, when I noticed the bag at a vendor’s table opposite. I had to have it. It reminded me of what I had planned to become, what I was going to become.” He fished a vial of pills out of the bag and removed one pill. “Here, stop drinking and take this. It will help with the pain and ease the swelling a bit.”
       “What is it?”
       “What do you care? Don’t you trailer trash spend all day cooking up meth anyway?”
       “Oh, yeah. I forgot. Just the one pill?”
       “For now. If the swelling hasn’t gone by the time you wake tomorrow, call me, and I’ll write you a prescription for something stronger.”
       “I’ve had two beers. Is it okay for me to take this?”
       “No. But I have no idea where you got it, so when the sheriff finds your rotting corpse sometime next month, I’ll blame your white trash background. Seriously, you'll be pissing out that supermarket beer in ten minutes anyway. That’s your body’s way of rejecting the insult. But just to be safe, quit drinking and wait until you go to bed to take the pill. And don’t operate any heavy machinery in your sleep.”
        “Roger. So, can you seriously pass out pills like that? Aren’t they counted or something?”
       “What planet are you from? Besides, that’s why we few doctors who still make house calls carry these nifty leather satchels. We have to have all our tools and medicines with us to use and give out as we go.”
       “You got tools in there, too?” asked Dave.
       “Sure. But just the mallet and the bone saw. I left the fireplace tongs at home.”
       “Prick.”
       “Lawyer.”
       “Ouch. Not where the neighbors might hear.”
       Mike laughed at that.
       “What else you got in that bag?” asked Dave. “Drugwise I mean.”
       “Nothing fancy. Just your standard stuff for coughs and colds, aches and pains.”
       “And cancer?”
       “Huh? What do you mean?”
       “I mean cancer. You’re treating Mrs. Gerald for cancer, right?”
       “I don’t know if you should call it treatment,” answered Mike somberly. “I mean, she’s going to die. If she had been diagnosed a year ago, maybe chemotherapy or radiation would have helped, if she could have afforded it, which she can’t, but it’s too late for that now. Even if we had the facilities to treat her, which we don’t, it’s just too late for that. It’s just too late for her. I can only try to make her comfortable and make sure she doesn’t die alone.”
      “That’s very good of you, Doc,” Dave said seriously. “It must be unbearable to stand by and watch someone just… just die, nothing to do but hold her hand and fluff her pillows while you try to keep a brave face. I know I couldn’t do it. I don’t have the moral courage.”
       Mike grunted but said nothing, and several minutes of silence once again settled over the two men, until Dave suddenly broke it.
       “So you’ve got pot, right?”
       “What? Fuck you. You know I can’t answer that.”
        “You just did. Boy, am I slick. I didn’t go to law school for nothing, let me tell you.” He paused. “So…”
        “So what?”
        “So if you’re holdin’, don’t Bogart the joint, man.”
        “You’ve got to be kidding me, right?”
        “No, dude, I mean, c’mon, let’s flare one up for old times’ sake.”
        “Dave, you’re obviously already high. You’re a lawyer and I’m a doctor, idiot.”
        “Yeah, and you just gave me a narcotic without a prescription, and I ran a stop sign last Tuesday.”
        “Look, what I gave you isn’t any more controlled than…well, it’s controlled, but it’s not marijuana.”
        “So you do have marijuana?”
        “I didn’t say that. Okay, yes I do, but it’s just to ease the pain and suffering a couple of my terminal patients live with every waking moment. And only for those who have asked me for it explicitly. I don’t pass it out like candy to reprobates who live in squalid little trailer parks with their busted trellises and mewing cats.”
        “I don’t have a cat. I’d forget to feed it.”
        “Whatever. Look, why do you want it?”
        Dave answered somewhat sarcastically, “Maybe you don’t remember this far back in time, buddy, but we spent a good chunk of high school stoned on the local produce, and as I recall, we enjoyed it enough to continue its occasional use in college.”
        “Yeah, we smoked once in a while, and we got high, and we then grew up and became doctors and lawyers.”
        “Yeah, and the Indian chief will be riding over the ridge with his braves in tow any minute. That’s why we live in the Wild West. Mike, I’m not asking you to become a pusher. I just wanted a puff, a reminder of days gone by. Oh, never mind. It was just an idea.”
        “A dumb one.”
        Silence erupted from the starry night once more, a blanket of hush draped over the shoulders of men who had known each other for years and for whom stillness had as much meaning as most speech. Dave broke it first.
        “Is it good stuff?”
        “What?”
        “You tried it, right?”
        Mike sighed. “Yes, I tried it, but only to make certain it wouldn’t kill my patients. It’s not like you can control the dosage of an inhaled drug. Too many variables. I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t too strong. I hear some of that Mexican shit they’ve got today is a lot stronger than what we smoked as kids.”
        “So it’s good?”
        Mike smiled at his friend’s persistence. “Yeah, it’s good. Real good.” He reached into the leather bag and opened a side pocket. Inside was a small package wrapped in foil. “Just the one. Just tonight. We’re too old to be in a Cheech and Chong movie.”
        “So were Cheech and Chong. Man, those were some lame-ass movies. Sure seemed funny when I was fourteen, but I caught one last month on cable and was embarrassed for my younger self. I’ll get a lighter.”
        Mike unwrapped the foil package. Eleven little hand-rolled joints lay within. He removed one guiltily, and then froze as a light snapped on inside Dave’s trailer. He shook off the brief moment of fear and re-wrapped the package, securing it in his not-so-hidden hiding space.
        The light in the trailer snapped off, and Dave emerged from within carrying a lighter and two fresh beers.
        “Hey,” said Mike, “I said you should stop drinking.”
        “I did, and now I’m starting again. It’s just pisswater beer, remember? I’ll hit the head and stay up an extra hour before taking the pill. Besides, I may not need it after the joint.” He placed the beer bottles on the table, tossed the empties into a can to the right of the door, sat down, and reached for the single joint Mike had placed on the table. “Thanks, Doc, I mean it. I haven’t burned a fattie in about eight years.”
        “Do you have any idea how stupid you sound when you talk like that?”
        “Of course I do. Jeez, haven’t you ever used youthful slang in an ironic manner to convey your awareness of just how silly it all is?”
        “Oh, yeah, sure. I speak like a valley girl all the time.”
        “Well gag me with a coke spoon, brother love, we’re about to…we’re about to…Fuck. I already said fattie and joint. What’s left?”
        “Spliff? Reefer? Ganja?”
        “Righteous, dude. Spliff. We’re about to split a spliff.”
        “I know what you mean Dave, but I think you said it all wrong.”
        Dave placed the joint in his mouth and struck the lighter, using his cupped palm to shield the flame from the gentle evening breeze. He inhaled deeply, once, twice, causing the burning end of the joint to flare and spark briefly, embers dancing like rising and falling stars. He inhaled a third time, then coughed. “God,” he said, “has it been that long? I don’t even remember how to smoke!”
        “I wouldn’t have thought it would be a problem for you. You do, after all, spend your days blowing smoke up some judge’s ass. Here, give me the joint.”         Mike held the joint gingerly between thumb and forefinger, scrunched up his face like he seemed to recall having done in high school, and took a puff, holding the smoke in his lungs for about ten seconds before exhaling. “That’s how you do it,” he barely managed to croak before coughing. Both men laughed out loud.
        “It’s not really as good as I remembered,” opined Dave after a few more passes of the joint.
        “Yeah, you’re right. It basically tastes like a sweet cigarette or something, doesn’t it?”
        “Yeah. You getting buzzed?”
        “Yeah. A little. Yeah I am. Oh, shit. I’m buzzed. Fuck. I gotta crash here tonight. I can’t drive home like this.”
        “Doc, I wouldn’t let you drive home tonight. You’re sleeping on my couch, so give me your keys.”
        Mike handed over his keys with great ceremony, then giggled.
        “Doc, stop it. Seriously. It freaks me out to hear a grown man giggle.”
        “Sorry, Dave.” He straightened up his face, then broke into another giggle, which he held behind his hand.
        “Thank you,” said Dave. “And now…” He threw Mike’s keys into the ruined roses. “Find them in the morning, Doc, for tonight we die.”
        “That’s tomorrow we die, you sap. And nobody’s dying anyway because I’m not driving.”
        “Nor shall you operate any heavy machinery in your sleep.”
        “Agreed. Here, take this. I can’t handle any more. I’m too old for kids’ drugs.” Mike passed Dave the smoldering joint, which Dave accepted but held in his hand without taking a puff. “Don’t you want a hit?” asked Mike.
        “Not yet. I want to watch the smoke curl for a minute.”
        “It’s dark, moron.”
        “I know.”
        They both watched the smoke curl. In the dark. Together. Joined by a mystery neither could explain. The smoke mixed with the faint bluish glow from Mr. Johnson’s flickering television. To meet the stars. And disappear into the Milky Way.
        “Why do you live here, Dave?” asked Mike thoughtfully.
        “I was born here, Mike. Just like you.”
        “No. I mean here, in this trailer, in this trailer park. With Mr. Johnson and his television and Donna Williams and her cats, with Carlos and Josefina Begaye, with Terry and Sam, and with that man in the last trailer no one has ever seen. Why here, Dave?”
        “I didn’t mean to live here, Doc. Not at first. Not for this long. It was just a place, you see, a stop, and then it became home.”
        “But you’re a lawyer. You could afford a lot more.”
        “Sure I could. But I have what I need for now.”
        “You live alone in a rented trailer without so much as a pet to keep you company. What sort of life is that for an adult, especially for an adult closer to middle age than any of us care to admit?”
        “Hey, the rent’s no problem, and I really like my neighbors. Even that man no one’s ever seen. I’ve seen him actually. His name’s Smith, or so he said. John Smith.” Dave paused, looked about in mock furtiveness, the asked Mike in hushed tones, “ Should I believe him?”
        “No.”
        “Then I won’t.”
        Another pause, then Mike tried again. “Dave, I don’t mean to criticize you or your neighbors; you’re my friend and they’re my patients. I’m talking about financial security. Yours. You have to start thinking about the future. What’s the point of being a highly-paid lawyer if you dump your money into frivolities and a rented trailer?”
        “Frivolities, Doc? Did you look inside my trailer when you shut off that light? I have a TV and a stereo and some books.” Dave paused to relight the remainder of the joint and took a slow drag. “Just the roach left. You want a hit?”
        “Nah. Go ’head. I’m done.”
“You’re baked is what you mean. Lost your tolerance.” He took a puff. “I save money living here. I pay far less than I would if I made a house payment every month, and I invest the savings into some pretty good funds. You should see Jimmy, my broker, sometime. He’ll square you away.”
        “Okay, so why hasn’t Jimmy, if he’s so good, told you that your money is wasted if it isn’t acquiring something of value in return? If you owned a house, it would be yours, yours to sell or refinance, and the equity you own in it has real value. Rent just benefits your landlady.”
        “She could use the benefits.” He took another drag, the glow from the joint briefly lighting his face in the dark. “Look, I don’t want a house right now. You don’t have one.”
        “That’s different. I just moved back here a few months ago. You’ve been back for years now.”
        “Since I passed the bar. It’s home and always has been.”
        “Well if it’s home, why don’t you have a home?”
        “A house, you mean. I have a home.”
        “A house, yes. Okay, let me back up. I care less about whether you do or don’t own a house than about the reason you don’t. I’m curious. Why?”
        Dave took a slow, deep breath, then exhaled just as slowly. He ground out the stub of the joint and flicked it into the bushes. “Mike,” he asked, “are you secure?”
        “What do you mean?”
        “Secure. Do you feel safe, unthreatened? Do you believe your life has some — purpose isn’t the right word because I’m not talking about destiny — something that allows you to wake up every day and know the world is right, that the perils we face daily are inconsequential? Fuck, that’s not quite what I mean either. I’m too shitfaced to talk right.”
        “No, Dave, you’re doing fine. I understand you perfectly. No, I do not feel secure. Lemme see if I can put this into words….” Mike leaned back in his chair. “There’s an uneasiness that hides in my belly and makes me want to vomit sometimes. That’s what I tried to run away from when I left Phoenix. The hollow that can’t be filled, not by movies or books or music or booze or that fucking cigarette we just smoked. Coming home, coming here to do good with my skills at a personal level, that’s helped. It’s filled part of the hole, but the hole’s still there.”
        “So you came here to help yourself as much as to help others?”
        “Absolutely. I wish I could be more selfless, but coming home was as much personal therapy as self-sacrifice.”
        “That’s good, Mike, it really is. Why shouldn’t you help yourself while you help others? There’s no reason why you shouldn’t, and I expect there’s every reason why you should. Pure selflessness is unnatural. We evolved to cooperate for the greater of good of all because that cooperation is an effective group strategy that enhances the success of the individuals in that group. Ulterior motives aren’t necessarily bad, Mike, as long as they’re accompanied by generous transparent motives as well. As yours have been. You’re a good man, Doc, and a real boon to the community.”
        “That’s, that’s overwhelming, Dave. I can’t imagine anyone saying anything nicer to me. Thank you so very much.”
        “Must be the pot talking, because normally I’m not this nice.” Dave paused. “Let me tell you about the hollow I feel.” He paused again, longer this time, and took a breath as if steeling himself. “We’ve known each other for, what, twenty years?”
        “Twenty-two.”
        “Twenty-two. Fuck, that’s a long time. Even when we went to separate graduate schools, even when you moved to Phoenix, we kept in touch? We phoned, we wrote, whatever? We told each other everything?”
        “Uh-huh.”
        “In college, I had a boyfriend.”
        Mike sat in silence.
        “Say something, Mike. You have to say something to me now.”
        “You mean Keith?”
“What? You knew?”
        “No. Not really. The thought crossed my mind maybe once or twice when you seemed a bit too touchy-feely with him a couple of times, but I never seriously considered it. Until now. He just seemed the likely candidate when you said that.”
        “I had hoped we weren’t that obvious — ”
        “Oh, no, you weren’t obvious at all, it was just that it was so long ago, and times were different. In those days you could still make fun of gays; now we don’t even notice when they hold hands. Nothing you did would be considered even remotely gay by today’s standards, it’s just that we were so very paranoid about it then that any deviation from the straight and narrow, no matter how slight, would raise eyebrows.”
        “You said gay twice. I’m not gay.”
        “Well, I assumed — ”
        “You assumed wrong. I said I had a boyfriend. Yes, we had sex. I also had several girlfriends and had a lot of sex with them. A lot of sex. With a lot of girls really, five or six anyway. Good hetero sex filled with lovely bouncing boobies. If anything, I’m bisexual. At least I think I am. You see, that’s the hollow I have to fill. I’m lonely. I want to be loved. I haven’t had sex in over a year, and I haven’t had a real girlfriend in about two years. And I haven’t had sex with a man since Keith, so I don’t think I’m gay, and I’m not even sure I’m bisexual, but I need to find out before I hurt some woman down the road with a revelation that would destroy her. That’s why I’m not ready to own a house.”
        “Jesus, Dave, talk about a head-spinning non sequitur. What the heck — ”
        “For a doctor you can be a real idiot sometimes. If I buy a house, it’s because I’m settling down with someone. It has to be our house. That someone has to love me and know me. For that to happen, I have to love me and know me. How can I know me if I don’t even know if I still like sucking dick or not.”
        “There’s an image I didn’t need. Thanks.”
        “What? Are you homophobic Mike?” Dave asked with mock surprise.
        “Nah. I just can’t imagine what sort of sorry loser would be desperate enough to stick his Little Richard into your rotten maw.”
        “Thanks. As always, you’re a pal.”
       “No problem,” replied Mike with an imperiously dismissive wave. “Look, Dave, this is easy. You haven’t had sex with a man since Keith?”
        “No.”
        “Not once?”
        “No, I haven’t felt any desire to.”
       “Then quit being a bonehead about the whole thing.” He began ticking off items on his fingers. “Yes, you had sex with a man. Yes, you enjoyed it. Yes, you’re probably bisexual, at least to some degree you twisted fuck. Yes, were you to fall in love with another man, an unlikely occurrence given the local selection, you would probably have sex with that man. But so fucking what? You are not in love with anyone at all, man or woman, so you have no hearts to break and no one to hurt but yourself through your continued self-exile. Get a life.”
        “I have one, believe it or not. And, believe it or not, I am in love.”
        “If you say with me, I don’t think I could handle it.”
        “Get over yourself, Doc. I’m in love with Donna Williams.”
        “Catwoman?”
        “Aw, that’s not very charitable of you, Mike. She’s a lonely widow and a veterinarian and yes she loves her cats. She and I have been having tea every day when I come home from work. For about a month now. She loves to hear my stories about whatever ongoing trial I’m working on, and she tells me many interesting stories about her work as well. D’y’know that woman can shove her hands inside a cow’s uterus, grab hold of a breached calf, and turn it around so it’s born properly. Let’s see you do that to Emma Jones when she delivers next month.”
        “Uh, no.”
        “There you go, then.”
        “There I go.” Mike paused and looked closely at his friend, peering at him intently in the dim light. “So, you’re in love. And you’re scared you’ll fuck it up. And that’s what’s brought on all this drama and teeth-gnashing. I’m sorry pal, but it’s just life, all the fear and uncertainty and soap opera. Can’t change the channel. We all just do the best we can. Tell Donna you love her, date her, marry her, and build a house together, one to house your dreams, your love — and your cats.”
“Okay, they’d still be her cats. I know I’d forget to feed them.”
        “Yeah, you would. You still scared?”
        “Yeah.”
        “Good. You should be. Any woman who can turn a breached calf in utero could tear your scrawny ass in half if you ever screwed her over. Look, dumbass, forget the bisexual thing. It’s just an excuse to avoid taking any risks, an excuse to not grow up and to continue living in the past. Set Tinkerbell aside and move on, Peter Pan. Adulthood beckons.”
        “Huh. You’re quite the philosopher, Doc.”
        “Nah. Saw it on Oprah.”
        Dave laughed. “Thanks.”
        “Shut up. Now you’ve gone and fucked it up for me.”
        “What do you mean?”
        “Well, I can’t very well tell you to fill in your holes without filling in mine as well. That emptiness I feel? I suspect I know someone who can fill it. I mean, I hope she can.”
        “Who?”
        “My nurse, Lourdes.”
        “Oh, ho, you sly dog.”
        “It’s not like that. Not yet, anyway. She doesn’t know, at least I haven’t said anything to her. But we work together so closely every day. I mean, it’s clear we have a lot in common — ”
        “And she’s a truly tasty dish. You don’t have to explain it to me, Doc. I’ve seen her. Go for it. I’m sure she already knows and is just waiting for you to find your balls and ask her out.”
        “Fuck your ambulance-chasing ass. I don’t see you going out with Donna.”
        “That’s because we prefer, ahem, indoor activities.”
        “Lying sack of shit.”
        “Witch doctor.”
        “Lawyer.”
        “Damn. We forgot to drink the beers I brought out. They’ve gone warm. I’ll go inside and get a couple of cold ones.”
        “Hey, when you’re in the kitchen, be sure to wash your face.”
        “My face?”
        “Yeah. Keith left a little crust in the corners of your mouth.”
        “Asshole!”
        “I sure hope not.”
        At this, two friends, closer now than ever before, laughed, and their laughter joined the dust, the smoke, the embers and the ashes, their hopes, their dreams, their uncertainties and their fears to rise into the blanketing night to circle with the stars.