Playing Fair and Being Kind

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decorator_crab

Albert sits on the edge of the bed with a sock in his hand. Strange, he thought. He found the French press coffee urn parts but not all of them. Then he couldn’t find the coffee either. Oh, well. On went the sock.

He’d seen the parts of the coffee urn several weeks ago. Patti had pulled the urn and the coffee from their respective storage places and left them on the counter top for him to use. That was several weeks ago. Now she was gone to work before he’d gotten up and he had trouble remembering where she’d gotten them. Albert looks for another sock. He’s sitting on it and finds it after a while. He pulls it on the other foot and scans the room for his trousers.

Albert remembered that maybe the parts are in the dishwasher although he doubts it very much. Patti doesn’t drink coffee so why would the parts be in the dishwasher? He stands up in his socks and shorts and heads for the kitchen again. The blue light on the dishwasher is on. Must have been washing dishes recently; maybe the coffee urn parts are in there after all. He pulls the door of the dishwasher down and the warm, moist air causes him to take a quick breath. Albert squints into the tropical cavern and takes a swift accounting of the contents. He sees a stainless steel cap and screen device but it belongs to a juicer. Nope. No coffee urn. He closes the dishwasher door back up.

Albert returns to his sleeping quarters down the hall from the bathroom. Patti is gone to work. He’d checked. There was complete silence from upstairs where she slept and her car was missing from the driveway. He could walk around in his underwear if he wanted to.  He returns to the bed to pull on his too-large jeans and cinches the belt around himself. Albert finds one of his shoes and stuffs his foot into it. He limps around the bed in search of the other. I may have to go to Starbucks for coffee, he mutters silently. Starbucks. What a failure in human behavior. People thought the hipsters would be so self-satisfied there. The coffee shop had become a tangle of confused and desperate, lonely wantabe’s.  Alfred didn’t like going there but he did anyway. Out of desperation to get a cup of coffee and use the internet. He found the other shoe and now he was walking straight again. Fuck Starbucks. He was going to look for another coffee shop on his phone.

He saw his shirt under the chair right where he’d tossed it last night. He’d meant to toss it on the chair but he’d missed. Close enough, he thought. Horse shoes and hand grenades. Close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades. How many of those retorts had he stored away in his head? They just slid right out of his brain. Alfred eschewed the shirt under the chair for the one he saw sticking out of his duffel bag. He buttoned the second choice up and walked toward the full length mirror. Horse shoes and hand grenades he thought as glanced at his image.

Albert went into the bathroom and washed his face with his hands and finished off the operation with a push through his hair. He grabbed a towel and scrubbed the water from his beard before it all ended up on his fresh shirt. He liked how the water always made him look different in a good way. Albert found his comb and pulled everything on top of his head aft. There. Ready for inspection, Captain! He threw the comb toward the vanity and missed. Albert noted where it landed and left the bathroom. Fuckin’ Starbucks, he grumbled.

G. M. Goodwin 21 February 2017