Neighbors

I can’t get the royal blue blinds on my front window closed before the old bald bastard living in the decaying shack across the street sees me. He gets up as quickly as he can from his ancient once red, now pink rocking chair on his unpainted porch and starts toward my house. He stumbles across the road that divides us and calls out my name. Hey Jimbo (my name is James). I let out an audible sigh and make the seven step walk from my front window to my front door. I make sure to keep the screen door shut as a reminder to both of us that this isn’t a friendly visit. He asks me for five - wait for it - ten dollars because he’s had a hard day and just needs a few beers to unwind. I can smell the cheap whisky (Beams 8 Star no doubt) on his breath and can see the glassy coating on his eyes hiding him from the outside world. You already owe me twenty five dollars I say. He tells me with absolute sincerity that he is working on that outstanding debt. A lying drunk begins to believe his own stories and it’s hard for me to believe that he works for anything but favors. I tell him to hold on and grab the last beer out of my fridge and hand it to him (a Newcastle, fuck). He thanks me with a shadow of disappointment in his raspy cigarette voice. I stand in my doorway and I watch this sad lonely man stumble back across the road to his miserable rotting life and decaying shack. It’s times like these that I wonder if my mom would still be alive if maybe her neighbor had given her the vodka she so desperately needed instead of getting hit by a car on her walk home from the liquor store on that rain dead November night. Maybe I should have gotten him more beer.