I get up from the edge of the bed, and lean over to see a orange “4” blinking. “Why didn’t you listen to ’em?”

“ ’Cause it’s not my phone.”

“Well, what if it was something urgent? I’ve been in the damn hospital, Lewis.”

“Sorry,” he says. “Anyway. What about those prescriptions? You want me to take ’em down to the pharmacy to get filled?”

“Yeah, but I ain’t got but about seventy-something dollars to my name, so ask ’em how much they gon’ cost. Ain’t nothin’ to eat in here, is it? I’m starving.”

“Me, too.”

“I bet you are,” I say. “I hate that I’m even thinking it, but what I wouldn’t pay for some of your daddy’s hot links and some baked beans and potato salad and a side of collard greens. Just a teaspoonful.”

“I can stop by the Shack.”

“Where you been? Ain’t no more Shacks,” I blurt out and then start flipping through a pile of mail next to the phone. Lewis just shakes his head, and guzzles up the last of his beer. All this is too much for him to digest, I guess, but that’s what he get for always thinking everybody except him is always doing so good. That everybody else are so goddamn happy. I don’t know no really happy people. Not the kind that makes you walk around humming. Maybe a short verse every now and then, but that’s about it. So—could be this family news flash might snatch him out of this fantasy world he been living in. “Just get me a Big Mac and some large fries and two hot apple pies. No. No apple pies. And make that a small fry. I forgot. I’m on a diet.”

“Should I drive or walk?”

I feel like throwing something at him for asking such a dumb-ass question. He was smarter when he was a teenager. “Get there whatever way you think makes the most sense, Lewis.”

He thinks about it for a minute. Sighs. Takes a couple of steps toward the front door, then says, “I guess I’ll drive, then. Would it be okay to get a pack of cigarettes?”

“Add it to your tab and go straight there and come straight back, and Lewis, don’t even think about smoking in my car or this house, you got that?”

“I don’t consider it an option,” he says.

After the door slams shut, I realize I forgot something important: “Lewis, get me two quick-pick lottery tickets!” Sometimes he’s just as smart as I hoped he would be, but then other times I can’t figure out how he graduated from high school.