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a time and finally figured out he was home. He cupped his
hands over his eyes and made his way to the bathroom where he
delicately sprinkled water on his fractured face and washed the
ashtray from his mouth with toothpaste and some Listerine which
he almost swallowed because the rye whiskey shakes had taken over
his spastic reflexes.
He was still dressed in the clothes he wore the night before,
except for his shoes which someone had thoughtfully removed. He
shuffled slowly to the kitchen in a trance, aware only of the
painful effort it took to move. He made some instant coffee and
sat down at the table, trying to focus his bloodshot eyes on a
note braced between the salt and pepper shakers which was signed,
"Mom." It wasn't until he was drinking his second cup
of coffee that he could read it. His mother wrote that she had
gotten a job in the personnel department of some company because,
with his sister grown up, there was really nothing to keep her
occupied around the house. And there was plenty of food in the
fridge and his sister would be home from school around four
thirty and she and his father would get back at about six that
evening, "Love, Mom."
Kenny had three more cups of coffee and walked around the
apartment. It was a comfortable place with green wallpaper in the
carpeted foyer, which doubled as a dining room, and reupholstered
furniture in the yellow and brown living room, with thick green
drapes over the windows. His parents' bedroom was all white with
a crucifix tacked to the wall, overlooking a woven, white, woolen
bedspread. The French doors that had separated it from the living
room had been removed, his mother told him, because they were
warped and wouldn't close properly, and anyway, without them the
living room had a more open feeling. His sister's room was also
painted white and the three-quarter bed, like the rest of the
furniture in her room, was new and made of light-colored wood.
The furniture in his "own room" was also new and
manufactured with the same wood by the same company in the same
style. There was a desk, a dresser, a single bed and a row of
waist-high bookcases along one of the blue walls. There was a red
nagahide armchair below a reading lamp which gave the room the
finishing touch of a study. The room had been designed for a
young boy to do his high school homework in, or write his
university term papers. Besides his sister's furniture,
"his" was the only new furniture in the apartment, and
it was obvious his parents bought it with the hope that their son
would have returned a long time ago to continue his education--a
fantasy the [end page 214]
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