Expiration Date Read Online Free PDF Page B

shoeless, hungover and confused. I needed a shower and a nap. A nap to last at least a week.
    And I needed to make sure Meghan was okay, and that she didn’t think I was a complete dick.
    Once I was reasonably sure I wasn’t going to puke, I swung my legs over the side of the gurney then slid off. My first few steps were wobbly, but okay. I walked out of the hospital. Nobody tried to stop me. And why would they? I was just a junkie in nylon shorts and a threadbare T-shirt. Hell, I was doing them a favor.
    I made the four-block walk back to the apartment, carefully avoiding beads of glass on the sidewalk. One old woman, wrapped in a dirty gray shawl and a badly stained and ripped dress, stared at me from the doorway of a long-closed delicatessen. There was shock and anger in her eyes.
    “It’s you! You finally showing your face around here?”
    Welcome home, Mickey Wade.
    “You son of a bitch!”
    I kept walking.
     
     
    Meghan had locked the door. But she’d also thought to put the key under the doormat, bless her soul. I could only imagine what I’d put her through last night. No wonder she hadn’t stuck around.
    Inside the apartment the sofa bed was still pulled out, covers mussed, pillows twisted up and askew. Boxes had been pushed out of the way. I must have blacked out in bed. She panicked, called 911.
    I pressed my face against the pillow that had been hers. It smelled like her—vanilla and the sweetest slice of fruit you can imagine. So at least that part hadn’t been a dream. Meghan had really been here last night.
    And somehow I’d managed to O.D. on beer and Tylenol.
    There was nothing in Grandpop Henry’s microscopic fridge except two Yuenglings from the night before. I didn’t feel like walking back downstairs to buy something sensible for breakfast, like a Diet Coke or bottle of Yoo-Hoo. So I twisted open a beer. Maybe a beer would outsmart my headache. And if the headache wasn’t fooled, the cold would at least soothe my throat. Besides, isn’t this what unemployed writers are supposed to do? Drink a cold beer at eight in the morning?
    I opened my laptop to search the job boards. There wasn’t much to search—not for unemployed journalists, anyway. In years past, an out-of-work journalist could fall back on teaching or public relations. But now actual teachers and public relations flacks were duking it out, death match–style, for the same jobs. Journos didn’t stand a chance.
    My eyelids felt like slabs of concrete, so I gave up, drank a few more sips of beer and then crashed on the couch—bed. Somewhere in the haze of unconsciousness I heard my cell ring once. I reached up with my left hand, fingers still numb, fumbling for the phone, half-hoping it was Meghan. Nope; my mom. I hit the ignore button and closed my eyes. She probably wanted to know if I’d found a job yet. Or visited my grandpop yet. Or stopped being a screw-up yet.
     
     
    Sometime later, the rumble of the El woke me up.
    I was more than a little alarmed to discover that the two fingers on my left hand were still numb. Why hadn’t the feeling come back yet? Maybe I whacked them on something on my way to the hospital, causing some nerve damage. Which would be fantastic. What did an unemployed writer need with fingers, anyway?
    I rolled off the couch, starving. But Grandpop’s cupboards were stocked with nothing but old-man junk food—a couple of cans of tuna, cream of tomato soup, a box of stale crackers and a foil bag containing some potato chip particulates. Maybe I could stick my face into the bag, inhale some nutritional value.
    I settled on the tuna, but it took me awhile to find a can opener. I finished one can and then ate every single stale flakeboard cracker, washing them down with tap water, which tasted like salt and metal.
    Okay, enough stalling. I grabbed my cell from the top of the houndstooth couch. It was time to call Meghan and start my awkward apology. And maybe find out what the hell had