Interlude

3:00 pm, 11/28

T, I yell at him shortly after he wakes, You've ruined Thanksgiving.

Tom, who has a physique and hair style best described as Sideshow Bobesque, blinks the sleep from his eyes.

Whu, he asks.

Whu indeed.

3:45 am, 11/28

They burst into the room, cellphone lights blazing.

Where is he they demand. Where is T.

They go through each of the four bunks, demanding of each whether it holds T.

Now I, having celebrated the holiday in the tradition of my people, have been in bed for maybe twenty minutes, and still am not pleased by this interruption. The bunk next to me is empty, reserved for a jubilant Welshman who uses it exclusively during the mid afternoon, sleeping off the hangovers he crafts for himself each night with the clear-eyed determination of a boxer putting in hours at the gym after work. The remaining two contain the physical vessels of two well advised teetotalers who have likely been in bed upwards of four hours at that point. Under the weight of our combined verbal abuse, the interlopers reluctantly retreat, asserting the entire way that T "has something" for A, the most diminutive yet by far the loudest of my immediate peers, who had been out with us.

3:15 pm, 11/28

After coaxing him to full wakefulness, I manage to impress upon T the situation which occurred.

Well, I was trying to give her something, he says apologetically, But she was asleep already.

What'd you have of hers? It'd better've been important. Like a dialysis machine.

I didn't have anything of hers. I had something for her.

What, I inquire, tired of splitting hairs,

T doesn't speak, but simply looks down his torso, towards where the seams of his pants meet (digital jungle camo, pilfered from the free box my house maintains in the closet).

This is my life now.