“ I’m so tired, I haven’t slept a wink,
I’m so tired, my mind is on the blink.
I wonder should I get up and fix myself a drink.
No, no, no.”*
(376 words, 2 minutes read time.)
>~~~~~14~~~~~<
“So, Gigi, tell me, what happened to Sylvia?”
Mel thought her friend was still listening, but just resting her head, then noticed Gigi’s cigarette resting smokeless, barely perched on the edge of the table’s glass ashtray. An inch or more of ash still delicately extending from its lipstick tipped filter. Someone’s breath, a breeze, or puff from an opening door would disintegrate it, drop it idly, adding more ash to the clutch of bent extinguished butts below.
“Gigi… Gigi dear, Gigi honey… Don’t fall asleep now, not here on the table. You haven’t told me what the hell happened with Sylvia yet”
Mel coaxed her friend, nudging, then softly squeezing her nearest bicep. Nothing. But a sort of soft purr began emitting from the great editor from Piedmont Press. Gigi was asleep, dead asleep, since sometime mid conversation, or maybe mid-sentence.
Mel decided it best to let her sleep there for now, so cutely, with her forehead nested in the crock of her elbow, arms crossed on the table, supporting her head. She appeared as the child she could sometimes be.
Eventually she would wake herself up to pee. When she did, she would either head back to her hotel room or slip into bed beside Mel to be warm.
>~~~0~~~<
Suzy worried that she might get another ticket. She had rushed to get ready for work and now was speeding along on her way there. She was doing 60 in the 45mph zone along most of Main Street to Mel’s on the other side of town. She hoped not to be much later than normal to work. She managed to pull in before 11, later than her usual 10:30 arrival. She was expected at 10am, her starting time.
She threw up some gravel rounding the lot, skidding to a stop next to the big propane tank where she always parked at the west side of the building. Rounding the corner and walking around towards the front door Suzy sensed something was off. Something was different, out of place. The scene felt wrong. It felt of danger…
~~~> Stand by for additional segments <~~~
(Lennon, McCartney (I’m So Tired)
-dalton
6-30-26
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