We sit here for another ten minutes, scraping up all the yolk with the last of our toast. For five dollars, you can’t get a better deal. When I get to the employee parking lot, I unlock my car and sit inside. I let the engine run for a few minutes. I need to call my kids. Just to touch base. To make sure they know I still love their mama and let ’em know that if there’s any way we can ever get back together and be happy again we’ll find it. It may not be today. May not be tomorrow. May not even be ever. But if it’s meant to be, we’ll find our way back there. In the meantime, I just want them to bear with me and try to understand that this is the first time in a long, long time that I can say that I’m what you might wanna call happy.

Throbbing

I ain’t doing nothing but laying here watching In the Heat of the Night, ’cause I spent my last seven dollars on a forty, a fish fillet, a quarter-pounder with fries, a quick-pix lottery ticket, and a pack of Kools. It’s been raining off and on all day, and since my car still ain’t running and the bus service out here in Lancaster is pretty much nonexistent, it’s too hard trying to go visit somebody. In my condition, I can’t walk too far, plus, I don’t even know where Luisa live. I remember her saying it wasn’t far from me, but, shit, where’s that? Besides, I owe her some money, so I really don’t need to see her today. All the other women I know—damn, right now I can’t think of a single solitary one of their names—live within walking distance, but I don’t feel like being bothered with no female bullshit tonight, which is why I decided to stay in and watch some TV. At least till the rain lets up. And, besides, this is free.

Damn! I remember that Denise Nicholas chick from Room 222! She’s still fine. I wonder what ever happened to that show? I take a sip from my bottle and just lay here without moving. I need a shower, but since I ain’t going nowhere, I take my blue jeans and T-shirt off and throw ’em on the floor and get under the covers. After a few minutes, I realize I ain’t the least bit interested in what’s going on on the TV, but I don’t feel like getting up to change the channel either. Times like this is when I wish I had a remote control. I saw a nineteen-inch one with a VCR in it for under three hundred at Circuit City. I wonder do they have layaway? Shit, I know I’m bored when I’m entertaining thoughts about how I can get a remote control—when that’s as deep as I can get.

I’m glad that’s all I’m thinking about, considering my current situation. But it ain’t nothing I can do about none of it right now, which is why I ain’t thinking about how pissed Mama and ’nem probably are at me for leaving the way I did, or the fact that they probably gon’ put a warrant out for me in Vegas since I failed to appear, and if Woolery don’t hurry up and pay me the three hundred he owe me I won’t be able to pay my rent, get my car fixed, or send Donnetta at least a hundred dollars for my son. Shit, I forgot all about the child-support hearing coming up, and if I don’t show up for that I’m in deep shit.