Indecision

Thank you, Barbara, for a fine, shivery entry and a terrific prompt.

Night is falling. You are not at home. You have been away for three days, visiting friends in the Boston area. College friends have invited you for Thanksgiving. You have driven most of a day, stopping only for meals and to gas up your red Dodge. Now you are at your friend's house, drinking expensive beer and eating your meal. The turkey is moist and the cornbread stuffing delicious, but at the same time deeply disappointing. Your friends are not especially happy to see you. You wonder why this is. They engage you in small talk and innocuous gossip. You wonder why you drove 700 miles for this. You remember the stupid fight you and your girlfriend had two days ago. You remember the terrible meal you had at an Applebee's restaurant in Pittsburgh. You wonder what is happening at your house. Whether it is burning or not, or if burglars have chosen this evening to ransack your dwelling. The host snaps you out of this wool-gathering, asking if you would like another beer. You slosh the beer in the bottle a bit and decline the offer. The host eyes you with smirky suspicion. The host's wife insinuates that you used to be quite a beer drinker back at school. You drain the bottle and place it carefully on the linen tablecloth. Others at the tablecloth watch you do this. They have all had two or three bottles themselves. You say that you might have one later on. Orange leaves and yellow leaves, meanwhile, flutter down from the trees on either side of your sandy driveway.

Bob