screwing the old bulb outscrewing the old bulb out
she had everything but the vodka.
i had the vodka, which was very good.
i almost wrote god instead of good. good
god, that vodka was good. it was distilled
from the feathers and fat livers of gray
geese, or so the bottle’s label seemed to
indicate. we had two martinis each.
i mixed them up in her mixer, filled with
her ice, with a smattering of her
vermouth. and they were good. not god, yet. or
any longer. oh, and her olives, too.
the olives were hers, and the toothpicks. we
talked. we talked some more. she pulled out her dope,
and we smoked the better part of a bowl
(her pipe, her lighter). i have to work in
the morning, so i drove home filled with goose
bumps and olives and smoke. on the way, i
drove past a cop who was parked on the shoulder,
his hazards flashing. i was going sixty,
which is all right, it’s a sixty-five zone
even if it is an s-curve and ought
only to be a sixty, at the most,
but i wandered a little to the port
side of my lane, which troubled me. the cop
seemed troubled by something else and gave me
no trouble. i got home safely, guarded
as ever by one or more angels. my
porch light was off. i thought maybe i had
left it off or maybe i had turned it
on and it had burned out. once inside, i
reached for the switch. it was off. i turned it
on. the light blue out—i mean, blew out—in
the instantaneous flash characteristic
of catastrophic failure of the
filament. i have the new bulb here
beside me and will now go screw it
in, after screwing the old bulb out.
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)