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“Wait.” Mort said, hardly believing this was the first time he had ever had to ask this particular question. “What is your name?”
The man paused at the weather worn door of his home and looked back at Mort with a pale, sad gaze.
“Tristan.”
Perfect.
Tristan
A stranger stood on Mama’s old porch and told him he couldn’t die today. If he didn’t know better, he would have called it divine intervention.
Mama's lemonade sat in the fridge, as it always had. Tristan hadn’t drunk it because he knew there would never be any more, and he was trying to save it. But the power had been cut off six weeks ago, and now it had a scum of green across the top. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to throw it out.
Tristan stood in the kitchen with the fridge door open until he heard the front door creak open. The stranger was inside his house now, dark eyes boring into the back of his head.
“I’m Mort,” the stranger said. “That’s my name.”
Though Mort was not a large guy, he was imposing. He felt like a big, heavy presence behind Tristan. An intrusion in his space. Tristan didn’t let people come into his house, not since Mama passed. The house was filthy and embarrassing.
“Hi,” Tristan said, as if they hadn’t already met outside on the porch. “I don’t think I should drink this.”
Mort looked over his shoulder at Mama’s lemonade. Tristan felt him as a long, looming creature, even though he didn’t seem to be that inordinately tall. No more than six foot one at the very most, and Tristan himself was over six feet. So.
“Perhaps not,” Mort agreed.
Tristan turned to him, his slow brain finally starting to work on the normal questions of human interaction. “Are you here from the power company? A bailiff? Do you have some kind of summons for me? I have to tell you, bud. I’m not planning on making any appearances anywhere anytime soon.”
He plucked a warm beer from the six pack on the counter. There was one left in its wake. The rings of several other six packs were stacked on the counter. He made sure to cut them up so they didn’t kill penguins. Weren’t many penguins in the desert, but these things traveled. Shipped out of state, and out of the country half the time, around the globe to a third world nation where it had an even chance of being poured straight into a river.
“I suppose I could be bailiff of sorts,” Mort said. “But I am not on duty. Actually, I quit.”
Tristan felt an immediate kinship. “Yeah? Good for you, buddy. I got fired from my last job.”
“Oh?”
“Yep.”
The awkwardness drew out between them.
“So,” Tristan said, taking a sip of his beer. “Why are you here?”
“I don’t know,” Mort said, bluntly and boldly, as if that lack of knowledge did not bother him one bit. Almost as if he was proud of it. So he was a drifter, then. A hobo who simply happened to have wandered up to Tristan’s house at the same time as… it felt embarrassing to think about what he’d been caught doing. It already felt like a weird faux pas more than a crisis.
“Do you want a beer?” Tristan made the offer to break the awkwardness.
“Yes. Thank you.”
Tristan handed his guest the other beer, and together they drank in silence. The beer wasn’t helping to clear his head, but it was calming him down. He was already somewhat glad he’d been interrupted out on the porch. The urge to no longer exist was starting to retreat. The pain was waning into the alcohol. Maybe things were going to be okay. Ha.
Mort didn’t say anything. Mort drank the beer in one long, continuous swallowing motion, like it was water.
As the urgency of ending himself subsided, Tristan inspected his guest. When he looked at Mort in certain lights, his face seemed gaunt. Maybe gaunt wasn’t the right word. More like skeletal. Tristan felt as though he was seeing flashes through the skin, something like bone. Obviously, that couldn’t be true. His mind was playing tricks on him again. It had been playing tricks for a while. Showing him things that weren’t there.
Drinking usually helped to not see things. It dulled his senses and made him feel warm, fuzzy, and comfortable. Maybe he needed another beer.
He reached for the last beer, forgetting he’d given it to the stranger.
Shit. He was out. He felt an immediate surge of anxiety. He couldn’t be out. Life without beer, well, it wasn’t worth living.
“Need more beer,” Tristan said. “Gotta go to the store. Guess I’ll see you around.”
Mort did not pick up on that cue.
“I will come with you.”
“You got any money?” It was an audacious question, but Tristan had literally nothing to lose. If this hobo was going to hang around, he may as well chip in.
