Let's Get It To-Go

I managed to sober up enough to be able to take my mother out to eat. We went to local restaurant called Barnes that has been around since the sixties. I got the scrumptious baby ribeye and my mother got the baked catfish, staying true to her diet. It was delicious and the only mar to the evening was seeing my former in-laws. As expected, they treated me coldly. I just smiled, said hello, waved, and put on a brave face.

"We would have to run into them, tonight," my mother said quietly over the table. My mother always disliked my in-laws.

"It would be just my luck," I replied, looking pained.

I took mom home and swung by the shopping center to check on Clara which is just behind my parent's house. The sun was setting in hues of beautiful orange, yellow, and pink -- almost like a vivid oil painting hung on a gallery wall for all to see. Oh, how I wish my camera was here.

Clara was sitting in front of nail salon with her legs crossed bouncing her foot as she smoked a cigarette. She looked terribly bored.

"It is going to get cold tonight," I told her as I walked up and sat down beside her on the bench.

"I know," she said. "I am going to freeze my ass off. That's why I got this."

She pulled a bottle of Captain Morgan spiced rum out of her inside jacket pocket and showed it to me.

"When do you think that sleeping bag will be here?" she then asked.

"The first of next week," I replied.

Clara has already put a twenty dollar down payment on the bag and promised me she was going to pay twenty a week. The sleeping bag was only a hundred and twenty dollars so she should have it paid off soon. The weather guessers are saying we are going to have a warm winter, though. But warmth is relative to a homeless person. What is cold to a homed person is downright balmy to someone living out of doors, or on the streets.

Was determined to give the drinking a miss tonight, just for the rest of the day anyway. I guess I am going to just go walk for a few hours -- walk until I can walk no more.