Romeo's Blues

Romeo sat on the sofa waiting for Juliet to come home from her bridge club. His rump formfit the sags in the cushion, his eyelids dropped from insomnia, his frayed bathrobe had seen better days, though not in quite a while. He aimlessly fondled the TV remote, dismissive of the Cheeto dust under his fingernails. He clicked past a golf marathon, a documentary on WWII battleships, and paused on a crime drama with a jazzy soundtrack. Recognizing he'd seen this particular episode before, he made another cycle of the channels before giving up and shutting off the tube. Maybe he'd give a call to the grandkid, find out how archery practice had gone. He located the cordless receiver under a bag of onion bagel crumbs. He glared at the taunting keypad. He'd forgotten the number. After a good ten minutes spent rummaging through a drawer looking for Juliet's address book it occurred to him the number was programmed into the speed dial. He let the phone ring until voicemail answered, at which point he forgot why he was calling. He hung up without leaving a message.

His powers of recollection, he had to admit, were getting to be an issue. Underwater light in the murky tank of his brain. "You should write down your memoirs while you can," Juliet had suggested. "People might be interested in that whole 'faking our own deaths and fleeing the country' thing." Maybe, but he couldn't muster up the enthusiasm. Verona was worlds away. His adopted land of America had treated him decently. He'd settled down, rose to a respectable rank in the labor union, invested in some real estate. Juliet had squeezed out a couple pups, joined the beautification league, licked a fairly severe illness. A few years of travel after the nest emptied, nothing overly ambitious. And then the gradual succumbing to inertia.

Sleep was his greatest diversion of late, putting in a good 10-12 hour shift most nights. The Institute had diagnosed apnea, which sounded to him like an exotic vegetable. They'd rigged up a snakey network of electrodes to his skull which measured the amount of REM sleep he was getting. Very little, as it turned out. Oozing with concern, the doctors offered to sell him some contraption that clamped over his nose and mouth and would ostensibly improve his nocturnal breathing. He quickly lost interest on learning his insurance didn't cover the cost. To be honest he didn't object to sleeping all the time, though Juliet had booted him out of bed due to his herculean snoring. During this exile he fashioned a sort of fortress for himself on the sofa and quickly adapted to sleeping in an upright position. Nothing to complain about.

Were those headlights flashing in the driveway? Bridge club must be over. Romeo noticed the TV was off and switched it back on, having forgotten why he'd shut it off in the first place. His creased face was illuminated in the moony glow of a wafflemaker commercial as he waited for the familiar scratch of a key in the deadbolt.

"Waffles sound good," he thought.