I'm still sitting here, even though I know I should have left hours ago. It doesn't seem right, what with what happened to Corn and all, but I can't bring myself to get off this stool and walk out into the empty night. I haven't even touched the drink, not since the first sip I took when I ordered it, what, four hours ago? Scotch, neat, and it tasted like nothing. It wouldn't matter how much I drank, it would still taste like nothing, and I would still feel like nothing. And Corn and the others would still be dead.
Yesterday was four lifetimes ago, at least as measured by the lives of my four best friends. Corn, Willie, Sam, and Dawn. Yesterday, we met for breakfast at the Kountry Kitchen. Corn had his usual farm-boy breakfast of everything (monster stack of pancakes, a mound of scrambled eggs, piles of sausage, bacon, and ham, a double order of biscuits and gravy, a large glass of whole milk, and some extremely sweet and wholly creamed coffee). Sam, still on her vegan kick, groused melodramatically at Corn's carnivorous ways while sipping her grapefruit juice and nibbling at her whole grain, no-egg pancakes. We've all been waiting for this phase to pass, as it always does for Sam. As it always did for Sam. I suppose if you die a vegetarian, then you're a vegetarian forever. The rest of us ate meals somewhere in between Sam and Corn's extremes.
It was a good morning, even if was a ridiculously early morning. We had arranged to meet at the Kitchen by six, and, strangely, we were all there on time (even Dawn, who rarely makes a Saturday appearance before eleven in the morning). Smiling Dave, the weather guy from Channel 10, had predicted a glorious spring day, and if the first few minutes after sunrise were any indication, he was going to be right on target. Five friends with a beautiful weekend before them, a just-like-homemade meal to feast on (literally, in Willie's case: his mom was the cook at the Kitchen), and not a care in our hearts. Well, ok, we had cares, but at that moment, they didn't seem to matter. Mine didn't, anyway. In hindsight, I suppose it would have been better if they had mattered.
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