Hose monkey

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Joe Serpe just assumed there was no more, that things had moved well beyond loss and grief, beyond worsening. He was only about an hour from learning there’s always more and there’s always worse.

He felt like the leftovers from autopsy class. Mulligan, the last thing he had left to show for fifteen years of marriage, was pawing the empty Absolut bottle, pawing at it then pouncing on it. But it wasn’t the cat or the scraping of the bottle as it rolled over the gritty linoleum floor that had slapped Joe out of his stupor. That honor went to the phone.

“Fuck!” He propped himself up on one elbow. Trying to sit would have ripped him in two. Still, it would have been easy enough to reach over and slide the volume switch to zero on the answering machine. He didn’t move. Instead he counted the rings, his lips moving silently, the numbers resonating in the fog. Two… Three… Four… The voice that filled the room was not his own.

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