The Return

I

Zigman Zibanski rented a single room occupancy above the One Lucky. It was 2am when he heard the barkeep Beer Mugs Moran yell Last Call!

Zigman couldn’t afford to drink at the bar, even at its bucket of blood prices. So as he did most nights he drank cheap booze out of a small bottle as he sat at the edge of his bed. He let the half full bottle slip from his tipsy hand onto a stained floor of old piss and dried whiskey.

He drew on his cigarette as he watched late night TV. He blew a circle of smoke like a diamond ring. A young, British starlet laughed at the talk show host’s Hollywood jokes. His old Polish voice said: “You marry me, no!”

But the commercial came on, and she was gone into his lost forever world of sadness and make believe. The aging Pole cried. He wept through the flickering light of the television. Through the smoke of acrid cigarettes. Through the last of sounds of the bar beneath him as he heard Beer Mugs lock the front door and sweep around the disorder of old chairs.

Zigman dropped his cigarette onto a puddle of booze where it fizzled and extinguished in the old carpet. He wiped his tears and lay back in his bed. He hoped to hear her voice. But it did not return. A blanket of darkness swept over him as he slipped into the blackness of a drunken, dreamless sleep. The commercial was over.

The Hollywood host had made a last joke about lonely old men in single rooms who dream of English girls. But Zigman did not hear.

II

I am not the man who sleeps dreamless and alone, losing to the blackness of his dying mind. I am not the light of the sun that brings back life. I am not the refection of light under a midnight moon that brings wonder. I am not the afterglow that draws a dead soul to his heaven.  I am only that crack of light who illuminates the dark edges of death.  And together with the last breath of a dying man, I too will shine no more.

III

Zigman Zibanski's eyes fought against the first light that streaked through the window of his single room occupancy. Last night he was too drunk to close the curtains. This morning his narrowed pupils saw white spots and his head hurt more than usual. He was relieved. He was alive, and he knew that someday his drinking, his smoking, his deluded thoughts of a young lover would kill his old heart.

He could hear Beer Mugs Moran open the One Lucky. Soon the drinkers would arrive and the smoke from their cigarettes would waft into his room. He imagined no one could blow smoke circles like diamond rings as he could, but he couldn’t be sure.

The old Pole lifted himself from his bed and turned off the television that stayed on through the night. It was 10:00a.m. and the morning talk shows were over. The small refrigerator was as empty as his belly. And they were both as empty as the whiskey bottle that he had accidentally poured onto his stained floor.

The soup kitchen would open for lunch at noon. So Zigman stood hungry at his window and strained his eyes as he peered into the long light. He wondered if in his death the light dies too. He lay back in his bed and waited for another sleep’s darkness. And for noon, when his belly would be full.