Chapter 1

The walls were thumping and the shrieks from my neighbor's girl friend were once again keeping me awake. It was just past midnight and sleep was an impossibility with all the humping going on in the apartment next to mine.

Every few minutes, I would cover my head with a pillow, trying to keep out the noise out, not that it worked. This had been going on almost nightly for the last two weeks. I had never met my neighbor but he should be doing porn work instead of doing the nasty with this girl.

I wasn't sure, but judging from the different shrieks and hollers, he had a steady diet of three different girls. At leas this one wasn't the dirty talker, or hollerer. During her last visit, she hollered: "Give it to MEEEEEE!"

That one caused me to call the apartment manager and complain. I saw her leaving the next morning and she looked like the type who would say something like that, all tattoo'd with bleached hair and enough makeup to keep Avon in the black for a year.

So I lay here, wishing my neighbor was the premature type. But obviously he isn't. I am thinking about getting a book to read when my cell phone rings. I look at the caller ID, but can't see the numbers because I can't see crap without my glasses, not that I would reall want to see that object.

I fumble for my glasses on the nightstand. I usually wear contacts during the day, only using my glasses at night. I see the caller is my mother and exit the bedroom. My mother definitely does not need to hear the sounds coming from the next apartment.

While walking through my small and cluttered family room, I open the flip phone and hit send, which never made any sense to me. Send should be to, well, send. Shouldn't it say receive or retrieve instead?
"Ugh," I grumbled into the phone since my vocal chords did not seem to be working.

"Michael?" my mother said.

I cleared my throat in what could best be considered a cross between a cough and a snort.

"Yeah," I finally manage to mumble.

"You really shouldn't make that noise into the phone," she said, like I didn't know that. She shouldn't be calling me at this time, either, I wanted to add, but didn't. It was my mother, after all.

"Sorry," I said. "What's up?"

There was a brief silence, I don't know if it was to create a dramatic pause or if she was working up the nerve to say something. I could imagine my mother sitting at the kitchen table in one of her old frayed nightgowns using that old antique rotary-dial lime green phone attached to the wall.

"It's your father," she finally said.

Like that was a surprise. It was almost always about my father.

"What's he done now?"

She paused again. This time, I decided it was because Mom was trying to work up the nerve to say whatever it was that that was worthy of a call at this hour.

"He's sick."

Again, no surprise. My father was always sick, convinced he would die before the sun rose the next day. He loved doctors and the idea something was deathly wrong with him. Every time my medical premiums went up, I blamed him.

"Mom, he's always sick," I said.

"This time's different."

"What do you mean?"

She had to choke back what sounded like a cry.

"It's really bad," she said.

I had trouble believing this. I figured the old coot was just playing sick again and had Mom fooled.

"Have you taken him to the hospital?" I asked.

"No, you know how he feels about the hospital!"

Yeah, I do. For somebody who loves being sick and going to the doctor, the old man flat out refused to step foot in a hospital unless it was to visit one of the old bluehairs that go to his church. I figured he felt this way because the doctors at the local hospital always wanted to cut him open and have a look.

"Have you had Manny talk to him?" I asked, referring to my younger brother.

"No, Manny's off again."

This also was no surprise. Mom wouldn't come out and say it, but my younger brother was off on another of his escapes from realty. At one time, Manny was brilliant, much smarter than I could ever dream of.

Now, his brain had been abused by practically every drug that could produce any kind of a high. He was gone most of the time now, not just some of the time. If it hadn't been for my dad, Manny would be rotting away in some jail. Or dead.

Instead, he was probably off in some seedy house with some disease-carrying chick wasting away his few remaining blood cells.

"Mom, I'd like to come, but..." I said, feebly trying to plead.

"Michael, I don't ask for much from you," she fired back, only a mild stretch of the truth. "But you need to come see your father."

"Why?" I knew the old man probably wouldn't bother to pisse on me if I was on fire and that was the only way to put out the flames. Not that I really wanted Dad to urinate on me.

"He's dying."



Chapter 2