Twins

Saturday morning. I wake, pull on some clothes, and then trudge out to sit on my sofa. My three cats gather in front of me and we take turns staring at each other in silence. My friend Kevin and I drank wine and beer late into yesterday evening. I didn’t get drunk, but imbibed enough to achieve a sizeable headache. We are widower twins, me and Kevin, just trying to find our way to an uncertain middle-aged future. Clearly, the beer and wine is of little help.

“What if we have thirty years of all-alone left ahead of us?” I asked Kevin toward the end of yesterday evening. No firm answer on that. Click your glasses of merlot together. Drink. I thought about Grover Jones, the ancient widower who lived in our neighborhood when we were kids. Grover, by then, drove a twenty-year-old clunker and had allowed the ragweed and lambsquarters to crawl up the sides of his ramshackle house. He drove like maniac. Spoke to nobody.

I expected to find Kevin on my sofa this morning. He agreed not to drive home, having drunk far beyond the headache level. I heard him shouting out that he loved me a while after I crashed into my bed. I heard Dido and Adele on my stereo when, later, I woke just long enough to flop around to a more comfortable position. Now, only Kevin’s shoes and empty beer cooler remain at my front door. His van has vanished from the prairie parking spot in front of my house.

Kevin is a brilliant, wounded man. I should worry, but I think we are going to be okay. Really, I think so.

Eventually, I open some windows and allow the chill air to sweep in around me. The cats decide to stare out the windows as the intensifying glow of day spreads honey-colored over the bunchgrass outside. Honking and chattering, Canada geese flap just overtop my house on their way to the lake. I wonder where Kevin has gone off to. I wonder when he left.

--Mitchell Hegman