By Jeffrey Paolano
Along the lifeline, Marines puke. “Got a butt?” eighteen-year-old Renzo pleads.
“Here,” offers a private, drawing his sleeve across his lips.
~
“Got a butt?” Renzo asks, at thirty-seven, on the seventy-second day of the strike, pockets emptying, income limited to picket pay.
~
On the Rest Home’s walkway, Renzo, at sixty-two, twists in his wheelchair. “Got a butt?”
“Should’a give-up smoke’n, ever buy any?” asks Tom.
“Yeah, never no money.”
“Ya mean yar whole life, never turned nothing?”
“Bubkes, always broke seems like somehow.”
“Ya don’t work?”
“Forty years.” Renzo’s downgaze contorts in grimace.
Tom hands over the chronic.
“Sweet Jesus.”
I liked it !!
Unique!