Crook’s Ivy Gin and Moldy Cheese

That morning the legless man, having slept poorly the night before, awoke with a fright. He pushed back the covers, a poorhouse of bedbugs scattering, and lowered himself from bed. He ate a small indelicate breakfast, a glass of Crook’s Ivy Gin, three pieces of blue moldy cheese, nicked from the dustbin behind the Greek Deli, and when he’d had his fill, smoke a cigarette leisurely. ‘…but fuck its going to be fine and gentlemanly day…’ he yawned, ‘…a fine day for doing nothing at all, yes indeed, a fine and gentlemanly day it is…’. A cowering sun sat low in the morning sky, a poorhouse of gray clouds threatening rain and ungentlemanly weather. The legless man, unaware that the sky was about to fall, set out on his daily routine, a brisk punt to the alleyway behind the Seder’s grocer, where he palmed for yesterdays day-old castaways, a wide and rotten assortment of deli meats and cheeses, high fat breads and deep dish puddings, spoiled milk and whatever else he could find in the hoi polloi of the dustbin. Next a less brisk punt over to the park next to the aqueduct, where he unpacked what he’d palmed, laying it out in front of him to determine what was less spoiled and could wait to be eaten, comparing the less spoiled food with the almost spoiled food and the perishable foods, that food which was beyond less spoiled and in between almost spoiled, placing the almost spoiled and less spoiled food away from the inedible food, the two piles piled in deference to one another. Next he wrapped all of the non-inedible food, food that was almost spoiled but still edible, in his kerchief, heaving the non-edible food, spoiled beyond less spoiled and almost spoiled, into the black maw of the aqueduct. Next he punted with less briskness to the parking lot in back of the Waymart, where he sat for three hours watching the rats eat the spoiled food from the industrial dustbins that sat row on row beside the manager’s car, a yellow sedan with tan interior and spoiled white whitewalls. After he’d had his fill of watching the rats eat spoiled food, some so spoiled and rotten it turned his stomach inside out, he punted, with little to no briskness, back to the park next to the aqueduct, where he threw stones, palm-size stones, at the now half-submerged rotten inedible spoiled food he’d tossed into the black maw of the aqueduct three hours prior. Once he’d stoned all the now soggy inedible spoiled rotten food under the water, he set off for home, the kerchief of almost spoiled and less spoiled food pressed tightly between the stump-ends of his phantom legs, an imbecile’s grin on his tired worn face. The sky didn’t fall that day, but had it, the legless man would have paid it little notice, as his daily routine had scant room for dilly-dalliances and fallen skies.