MID-WEEK FICTION

 

 

 

 

 

 

A young man in the Casino

 

He sits alone… a glass on the table… tequila… next to an open pack of cigarettes… nearly empty… his lungs still young… his eyes wide but narrowed by sadness…

 

He places a stamp on the last of his postcards… reads them again to make sure his words are right… they are… he places them down and removes a cigarette… strikes a wooden match and brings it close to his lips almost burning his worn nose…places his hand over the front of one of the postcards… the one he wants most to get where its going… a picture of the desert at sunset… Apollo bleeding across the sky… he turns it over … ‘Love is an Oasis in the desert… and so are you,’…words he had written…

 

Around him people are laughing… drinking…singing in the distance… There are many tourists here but he is not one of them…

 

He stands up and exhales a cloud of smoke… begins walking down a carpeted aisle… passing a trash can he lets the postcards fall… all of them… he keeps walking… never looking back… heads for the poker table… his eyes widening… his nose tingling… he sniffs… his nose tingling…he sniffs.