Last Dose

Nothing enervates like changing midstream, he said to the garage walls, but we adapt.

William Katz, in the slipstream of placenta trip time, started anew.

Katz was 103 miles into his new life—the New England life he envisioned—when he stepped out into the heat and the hate of this particular August morning. He’d be out of Florida by midafternoon—but first, his last cafecito cubano and flan in his foreseeable future. One last stop in his accursed birth city and goodbye Miami! forever.

But the well-trod adage goes: careful what you wish, ‘cause the three fanged rattle snake has no compunctions . . . (well, it’s a well known adage in some arid places of the mind) . . . anyway, Katz was hankering for one last dose of Cuban sweetness before getting on with this next part of his life—so auspicious it was.

He could see himself making eyes at Medusa on Mount Katahdin, sparring with the Cyclops on the shores of Casco Bay, battling Scylla and Charybdis between the Quoddy Narrows.

He shook his fist in the air— you Canucks will hear from me!

Then a crystalline moment of clarity . . . Conch Key really isn’t such a bad place for placenta trip time . . . maybe I’m overreacting . . . maybe my Penelope waits there . . . patience, old man . . .

Then he slammed the cafecito and flan, pulled his pants up to his sternum, and turned south again.

What I’m Reading:

Sooner or later pain becomes too great for fear and when the people’s fear has gone the regime will have to go.

— Paul Lynch / Prophet Song