They Don't Play Stickball in Milwaukee

Pillow

Harry Klein had all the time in the world to sleep, he just never could. If it wasn’t the pain that kept him up, it was the anticipation. He sat back in bed against a stack of pillows, the room black but for the glow of the television. His eyes were aimed in the direction of the glow, but he wasn’t watching. Harry’s right thumb pressed the channel button every two seconds. Something flashed onto the screen, something flashed off the screen. He could feel the first hints of pain in his left hip. After a lifetime of pain, Harry had gotten good at recognizing the initial onset. It was sort of like knowing you’re going to sneeze, except what Harry was feeling bore no resemblance to that tickley feeling in your nose.

He started to sweat, feeling to see if his pain patch was in place. It was. At times, he could swear the druggist had gotten it wrong and given him nicotine patches. Switching the remote to his left hand, he reached across his body fumbling for his pills. Remarkably, he opened the bottle with one hand and popped a capsule in his mouth. Swallowing was reflexive. Harry had gotten past the need for water decades ago. During this whole time, his left thumb continued clicking through the channels.

Harry braced himself. He knew the hints would become twinges before the pills and patches did their work. But tonight the bracing did not help. The twinges got angry, louder, transforming themselves into waves. Harry couldn’t take the waves. When he was younger, maybe. When his wife was alive and the kids lived at home, he could take it. Not anymore. He tried remembering when he had last changed his patch. He couldn’t remember. His left thumb kept clicking.

His heart was pounding and he had sweated through the bedding now. He yanked off the old patch and replaced it, tearing the package open with his teeth. His left thumb kept clicking. The waves slowed down, but his panic had not. His breathing became rapid, erratic. He began gasping for air. He was drowning. His left thumb kept clicking. Finally, his breathing slowed and steadied. He needed a pill, he thought. It had been hours since the last pill. It seemed like hours. The hours ran together for Harry these days. He managed to get a second pill between his lips, but it did not go down his panic-dried throat so easily. His left thumb kept clicking.

The waves were gone, the twinges forgotten, even the hints were faded. Harry felt he could almost sleep. He passed the remote back into his right hand, but his right thumb was disinterested. Harry’s lids flickered. He fought the urge to close them. Harry was afraid of sleep, but the fear was weak in him tonight. He clicked off the television and let his eyes close. Harry rolled over and let a pillow be his wife. In this twilight time, he laughed to himself that his wife had never been so thin as a pillow. It was good to pretend, though. And as he drifted off, Harry thought he could hear her call to him that she would protect him from the waves forever. With that promise, Harry’s twilight was ended.

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy-they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby