I open a bag of nuts...
Brutal, one after the other, up and down, twists, turns, pulls, taps, lifts, slams, and there is Kenny, mangling a can of Tecate with his fist on the bar, ruptured steel, like he can squeeze every last drop of rage from that metallic death charge that has ruined his life.
In the restroom during his court-ordered A.A. meetings, he swigs whisky. He hates the world sadly, and is watched over by his brother, the one he was in the band with, the one he shared his whole life with, the one who killed himself.
And my hand provides it, the helping hand to more, the hand that doesn't help him up but helps him down to the bottom, where the trap door is, and if he vanishes, I will think, should I have said, no? Or am I the last friend in the lives of down going-men?
It's the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. So be it for Bruce. His face shifts. One minute he talks sense. One beer later, his head melts, his face and eyes dissolve and reveal a beast like a spirit that hates his flesh and bones, that wants to eat himself, and he beats walls and bleeds and I escort him to the alley behind the dive, and slam shut the door to keep civilization safe from the horror.
I open a bag of chips...
And Bobby sticks his hand in the bag and crunches. He was small. Now he's big. Six years in the pen will do that to a man. In days of yore, he helped out at night's end. But no more, Mac has that job now. Bobby asks for money or a drink, or a chance to clean the windows, the toilets anything to work on, and he rolls some kegs, and Windexs the front door, and straightens the dart board and racks the pool cues and picks up a rocks glass left under a table. He's earned his ten bucks. He leaves with a whisky in his belly. And I give him a pack of nuts, Take these, I say, I don't want them.