In the Wind

These weren't times for being out. Sad, sick and lonely, when the phone didn't ring anymore. There was a party of university students two doors down, they've been up all night, somebody's birthday, and the sun is now bouncing on the balcony as they continue to laugh. Once it had been thus for everything he had been involved in, the party that trailed across the globe. I last saw you in Penang, he said to a drag queen in a Berlin bar, and she pawed all over him like a long lost friend. These things were always happening to him. He was always out.

There's God in the wind, he heard a voice say, he wasn't quite dotty yet. Star Treck videos and warm blankets. The chill of autumn had already come. He didn't know how things fell so quickly, how the veneer rubbed off and his own craven stupidities blighted the dazzling world. So many things burrowed down into the quiet.

There was no alternative but a brave face.