On falling away
When there's no good answers
And new questions
Another personal disaster
There's nowhere to go but down
“I can’t even stand the news,” I say to my spouse Janyce, “really, the only is answer is that we should be drinking.”
“Right?” she says, and looks over at me sitting beside her in the passenger seat. It’s Friday after work and the gray skies of the day have finally started to clear — just like the weather report said they would. We’re driving down the winding suburban streets of our neighborhood in the jeep, both of us looking out the windows as we pass by orange-leafed trees glowing in the late afternoon sun.
“Did you look at the menu?” I say.
“I’m going to have that same cocktail as last time. The one with the bourbon,” she says.
“I think that sounds good. I will have one too,” I say.
Earlier in the day, I made us a reservation at a restaurant in a neighboring town— one that serves about five spaced tables under red market umbrellas on a brick patio outside. The restaurant itself is open to patrons again and yet the large open space with a horseshoe bar inside remains largely unoccupied still.
“What are we doing for dinner tonight?” said Janyce, walking into the room. I was sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop in front of me and listening to the news reports on the radio.
“Let’s go to a restaurant tonight while we still have the chance to eat outside.” I said.
“I like that idea,” she said.
“What’s the name?” says the older woman standing behind the podium. She has a small face and is wearing a very large, brightly-printed mask with only her narrow eyes visible.
I spell out my last name and she leads us to our seats at the far end of the patio. The sun has already dipped down below the horizon in the short amount of time it took for us to drive over and now the air is cold.
“Go get your coat in the car,” I say to Janyce, who is sitting beside me looking at the menu on her phone. She is shivering. The patio doesn’t have heat lamps like the restaurant down the road, but it has those ubiquitous colored lightbulbs strung over head and piped music coming from a small speaker attached to the outside of the restaurant’s brick wall.
It’s meant to feel festive out here, except now in the shadow of the new October sky it really doesn’t. A pop song from the 90s band The Gin Blossoms is playing softly through the speaker. This song was a hit on the radio in 1993. I remember listening to its melancholy melody while driving in the red Isuzu Trooper we had at the time, my baby son strapped into his car seat in the back, the autumn colors from the trees whizzing past the windows.
I take a small sip from my amber cocktail with the one square ice cube floating in the middle and knock the orange peel garnish off the side with my finger letting it fall inside. Janyce is approaching the table again in her brown Carhart jacket with the hood up.
“You feel better?” I say.
“Yes, this will do it,” she says.
We don’t talk about the news of the day, or mention the fact that the numbers of infected members in the government are increasing, or that the President has now been hospitalized only a month prior to our fraught American election. Instead, we sip our drinks together and stare up at the white of the sky. The evening light starting to fall away.