“Good for that cough,” she urged in her semi-hoarse voice. “Thanks,” he said. “I got a beer.”
Janis shook back her loose waves of hair, looked around the room. “Place hasn’t changed.”
“It never does.”
“You’re stuck in the past, man.”
“Maybe. It sure beats living in the future.”
“Oh wow.” Janis was searching for something in her beaded handbag. “You’re buried alive, man.”
“Beats just being buried.”
“Shit, man. You’re lost among your artifacts, man. I mean, like you’ve stored up memories like quicksand and jumped right in.”
“Maybe I’m an artifact myself. Just like you.”
Janis laughed her gravelly cackle. “Shit, man. You’re all left alone with the pieces of your life, and all the time life is passing you by. Buried alive in the blues, man.”
“Since she left me, all I have left to look forward to is my past.”
“Hey, man. You got to let it go. You got to let her go. You know how that old song goes.”
Janis began to sing in her voice that reminded him of cream sherry stirred into cracked ice:
Look up and down that long lonesome road,
Where all of our friends have gone, my love,
And you and I must go.
They say all good friends must part someday,
So why not you and I, my love,
Why not you and I?
“Guess I’m just not ready to let it all go,” he said finally. But now he was alone in the darkness, his chest hurt, and his beer was empty.
She shouldn’t have left him.
He tossed the beer can into the trash, turned off the kitchen light. One thing to do before sprawling out across the couch to try to sleep.
He opened the upright freezer. It had only been a matter of removing the shelves.
“Goodnight, my love,” he whispered to her.