No matter the situation, it’s hard to blame anyone who’s had enough.

I’ve seen the solution in my dreams. The beginning of it anyway.

Nobody knows how things end.

He hasn’t been around for awhile. You may think that’s a good thing.

I do not.

The longer he goes missing, the more anxiety I own.

I look for him harder.

It’s been three weeks now and not hide nor hair.

Nothing.

Quiet.

He performs this vanishing conspicuously. He knows what he does and so do I. If I’m not thinking about him, I’m trying to forget him. Either way, he is a monster in my mind’s eye. He sits at a grey metal desk under a bare bulb in the very back room of my dreams. He sits in there and breathes and sucks back drool and there’s fucking boars stinking and squealing.

Right now the door is closed. Not a sound. Like they left. I hate that.

I still can’t walk worth a shit. My knees and ankles are beyond sore. I fall down sometimes because if I don’t, the low note plucked by my leg travels up my spine and leaves me dizzy and sweaty and unable to stand anyway.

His is the opulent lobby to my nightmares. A cancerous entreaty to my darkest place. An invitation I’m unable to resist. I understand that half my my misery is my own responsibility. It always takes two. Do I miss him?

In absentia, he gnaws at me.

I’ve got to get the fuck out of here.

It’s the wrong thing to do but I decide to run.

I book a five day cruise to Ensenada.

Last minute, but with help of William Shatner, I get a pretty good deal.

I buy a nice cane for myself. The handle is a knife.

You’re not supposed to bring booze onboard but I’m successful with a big ass bottle of Maker’s Mark. As soon as we sail, I head down to duty free and pay a buck twenty for a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue. I feel like whiskey.

I look into renting one of those chairs for the handicapped. I tell them I have sprained achilles tendons. I lean on my cane. I think about flopping. I want one of these fuckers.

Ultimately they give me one, candy apple red, but express their displeasure at my not having reserved one. I tell them it just happened. Pricks.

I hole up in my suite with my knife cane and some righteous hooch. I get myself a good heat on. I play with my knife and cane. I feel armed. Prepared. He won’t follow me this far. He’s forgotten. Haven’t seen him for weeks. I drink more whiskey. I’ve got both bottles open now to compare them but there’s no fucking contest. Um, Johnnie Walker Blue?

I light a cigarette and remember I have a balcony. I can smoke pot and cigarettes on the balcony with a drink and the ocean speeding by.

So I do that. It’s wet out.

I decide to look around.

Night on the boat is windy and rainy. I explore her from stem to stern. Five floors. I leave my chair and use my cane wherever I need to. She is a floating city. Food whenever and wherever you want it. Drunk people everywhere. I’m not interested in talking to anyone. I really just want to observe. The ship is awesome. It’s huge.

I get a snifter of good cognac and step out on the bow. It’s beyond some theater and down some stairs. Completely dark save for a veiled moon. I say a toast my rabbit Watership. My tears mingle with the rain and are taken by the wind. I throw the glass into the sea.

I’m glad no one can see me climbing these stairs. I am fucked up.

Back to my suite I order room service.

A grilled cheese sandwich. I hope the sandwich has an impaled olive and a pickle on a toothpick cause that’s what I picture. I kinda wake up when she asks if there’s anything else and I say, chicken nuggets, a side of bacon and some chocolate milk.

I watch an interesting program on the ships engines.

I remember answering the door and smelling the food. I’m not sure if it was the boat or me but gravity was a motherfucker. I know I was still dressed.

Black olives stabbed through the sandwich with a green plastic sword. Cool.

I wake up kinda slow. The ship isn’t moving. I look out the window at what must me Ensenada. I go outside to smoke to make myself puke so I can get that over with. It’s a nice view.

On my walk back in, a humid and cloying cloud of whiskey does the trick. All I’ve got is bile and it emerges with violence as does the snot from my nose. I’m used to it. I’ll rehydrate and get some protein and a little fiber. Some grease.

No sign of him the first night.

I’m on my first Gin Mary by twelve thirty. Haven’t eaten shit. It’s overcast and a little drizzly but warm in the tourist section of Ensenada. Strange place. Stray from the obvious path and it gets weird in a hurry. Flies on meat and shoeless kids selling chiclets.

I left the chair behind. My legs are killing me until I find a place to sit but I look around and see that it would have been an embarrassing clusterfuck in that chair.

I can’t help but pay attention to how heels click on the muddy sidewalks.

When in doubt, wear boots. I did.

There’s a man who’s feet make no sound although his shoes appear ordinary enough. He strides with an umberella as a walking stick and I’m sure he’s not an American.

He wears a trenchcoat and his hands are very old. He wears a simple ruby in a gold band on his right middle finger. His suit underneath the coat is the color of vanilla ice cream.

Both pant legs clean, even the cuffs.

I see him walking across the street. Again and again. Back and forth. He has Colonel Sanders facial hair yet his face is very young. Hardly any lines at all.

I’m nursing the mother of all dumbovers.

Eventually he makes eye contact and acknowledges me though I can’t say he smiled or anything.

Within just a few minutes, he’s at my table extending his hand and asking to join me. Despite the weather it is crowded. I invite him to sit. He says his name is Carlo Tarcisio. I wonder if that’s Northern Italy. I can’t tell by looking at him.

I tell him my first name.

After the very third drink, I forget all the rules. What time thew boat leaves etc.

The ring on his finger constantly sounds the same note against his glass.

Carlo doesn’t mind buying and we seem to be hitting it off. I barely think about the boat and how hard it’ll be to get back on two half useless legs while shithammered. When my mind does wander there, I feel like dropping a deuce, so I table the notion for further examination once I’m back on the boat.

I dream of a knife. It’s not the first time. The hilt is steel. The blade is hollow glass. Inside is a liquid. It looks like absinthe.

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