THE LOST WEEKEND

every room of the cat palace is filled with top notch stuff that i could pawn, including, in fact, a veritable visual chronology of the development of the typewriter. plus, the big old house with the big old everything and the precipitate servants' staircase that shoots you straight up from the cats' bowls in the kitchen to the hallway that gives onto their four second floor rooms, well, the block it's on has been run back up in the past several years, but it's only several blocks' walk to the pawn shops on main. not so far to have to carry, say, an old underwood. still working, friend! but i'm saved that ignominy and the more daunting excusing of it that there's no way i'd be able to excuse when the time came later, because the kroger in the brewery district has six packs of keystone light on sale for three ninety-nine through june two. that's four twenty-six with tax, which i know because that's the number on all the receipts in the pile. after night number three there's a man in the alley digging for cans, and he saves me another uncomfortable excuse by accepting my pile of those. the cat palace is haunted by an insomnia ghost, and the alley is haunted by her attendant early morning trysts. there's a line of variable thickness that winds its way around exultance, reverie and concentration, and its unpredictable course makes it difficult for me to make progress with foucault. luckily, i'm saved by the shelf of violette leduc in one of the cases in the room with the canopy bed. she comes with me when i'm chased by the ghost to the bath, then she attends the trysts. the cats get morphine or bathwater. i get more keystone light. on thursday evening it felt almost like fall was setting in early, but by tuesday morning the stick of summer had come back heavy over the rose bushes in the front garden. when was their scent more rarified? amber and lavender. the to the right, across the highway, there's the inviting ramshackle of what's still left run down in olde towne, which would be nice for a ramble, but not at night. take a book in the afternoon, maybe. to the left, the junior league grows peonies for all the vases on the block. past that, the topiary garden and the main library. frustratingly, they don't have a copy of charles jackson's book, and hindsight is making that look like the perfect read. hindsight, pathetically would-be. a typewriter through the window. no excuse, but i've got time until i'll have to make one, and i'll save it.