Zombie Gourd
written by: Dan Wilcox
@Dwclx
(vodka & orange juice with melon-flavored schnapps, chilled & strained into a round snifter; served with Hershey miniatures or candy corn on the side)
“Don’t I know you?” she asked
after her third double vodka and tonic before Happy Hour.
She looked like she had applied her makeup
while in the back seat of the #55 bus from Schenectady
just after her stop for her wardrobe at the Costumer on Central Ave.
“I’ve been your bartender for the better part of this lovely afternoon,” I told her.
“No,” she brightened half a watt, “where did you go to high school?”
I gave her the name of the suburban mega-school that my brother had attended
but not me.
“I thought I recognized you,” she said.
She told me her school year, two years behind me.
And then I recognized her:
a teeny-bopper ordering a cherry coke with a shot of chocolate syrup
at the lunch counter where I worked after school.
Still no beauty, I realized then, as now, that
to take her home I’d had to be drunk
out of my gourd.
- Christmas Eve, 1945 - December 24, 2019
- Zombie Gourd - October 22, 2018
