Hot dogs for lunch

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 Hot dogs for lunch 

with all the trimmings: chili, onions, green pepper, mustard, ketchup, pimiento cheese (!)

The usual Thursday routine: I picked up Uncle Albert; he went to Dr. Feight with me, sitting in the waiting room with his thoughts and the doctor’s odd collection of magazines, while I tried to untangle my own thoughts, lying on Dr. Feight’s couch.

     It was not a good session. I had nothing to say that I wanted to and many things to say that I didn’t want to, so I started to talk about how I left the woman I was seeing before I met Roz and before she (the woman) could leave me. Then I stopped midway through the story because I wanted to say something about my sisters - it seemed somehow pertinent. Then it didn’t seem pertinent, so I stopped again. And Dr. Feight looked tired when he opened the door to let me in. He seemed tired; at least, he didn’t call me to account but let me ramble this way, stumble over that and even fall, and get up to set off in a different direction. Only at the end of the session did he say anything: the usual “Well, that’s all the time we have for today,” but also “You’re sad today, aren’t you?”

     I said, “I don’t know. I guess so, but I don’t know why.”

     “Mmmm,” he said. “Usual time on Monday?”

     I nodded.

I took Uncle Albert home with me because when I’d had friends in for lunch two days before, I’d done hot dogs with all the trimmings, and I wanted to get rid of a few more hot dogs, a few more trimmings, and, I hoped, finish off the potato salad. And he, Uncle Albert, was willing.

     I don’t do anything fancy with hot dogs, just heat them up in a frying pan with a splash of beer and a tablespoon or two of the chili. I poured what was left of the beer into two whiskey glasses, and we sat down to eat.

Uncle Albert said, “I read your blog, you know.”

     “I know,” I said, “you and 4 others.”

     “More than that,” he said. He paused: “At least 8.”

     “Thanks,” I said.

Moira

“You haven’t written anything in several days,” he said.

     “No, I guess not.”

     “Not since you wrote that fantasy about Moira,” he said.

     “No,” I said. I could feel the tears - they came up right away. They’re not behind your eyes, are they? but just on either side of the bridge of your nose, pushing upward. I looked across at Uncle Albert. He took a bite of the hot dog. I said, “I don’t think that’s the reason I haven’t written anything.”

     “No?”

It’s a part of my nature that I want people to be happy; whether they are or not, whether they want to be or not, whether they’re alive or dead,I want to think of them as happy. “Imagine what happiness would be like,” I think to myself. It’s odd then how often I find that what I’m imagining is set somewhere else, like Madrid - in a different country in a different time.

     I didn’t say any of this to Uncle Albert. I said instead, “No, I don’t think that’s it.”

     “Okay,” he said. “You make a good hot dog, I’ll say that.” He took a sip of beer.

06.16.17