In my dream, he told me he was glad I left my computer on all night. Easy access, he said in an email. I’ve been going through your files remotely while you were sleeping, seeing what’s on there.
When I awoke, I could not decide what disturbed me more: That he’d been going through my data, or that I’d dreamed about him at all.
“I don’t do happily ever after,” he said.
It occurred to me then that, really, neither do I.
Only once has there been reason for me to worry. And I am, now, three years older than he was, the year I was born, the year they wouldn’t let him in the delivery room because he had an open incision from a successful surgery.
But, I watch for signs. He was healthy, too, but his softball stats that had slipped a little. He was just a little tired.
They tell me, now, they’ve learned I’m more likely only to have inherited his quick wit, not his cancer. Still, I cross my fingers. I take the test.
The line between known and not known is sheer as muslin, and blows sideways as easily in the mildest breeze. I see shapes on the other side, some fluttering like flags, some solid as anchors. I am counting them, my fingers tapping their number into my cupped palm. I know the number set as threshold. I am paying attention, even when my vision is ever-so-slightly obscured.
At one moment, I was progressing forward, and the next, tumbling toward the ground, clutching my phone to my chest, letting my knee and right hand take the brunt of the impact. I rolled, but I suspect it was all that much more graceful in my mind.
A block later, I ducked in a doorway out of the fog and wind. I did not have that far to go, but my body, already stiff from impact and cold, made it all seem so much further.
“Why did they give us upside down shot glasses?” I asked.
“That means your next drink is on them, or someone else at the bar,” said Dottie. “That’s how they show you that’s coming.”
“I have never seen that before,” I said.
“If you spend enough time in bars, this is what you learn,” said Dottie.
Thin cracks appeared on the underside of the casserole dish, spidered from the center out toward the edge, as if the roasting of vegetables had finally become a bit too much. I flipped the dish over, ran a finger across the inside, checking for structural weaknesses I had not anticipated. It seemed to early to discard the pan, even with signs of impending disaster. I decided to hold onto it, decided to see just how long it would serve me.
100 Proof 