Skeletons’ Night Out

Guy walks into a bar. Sounds like it could be the start of a joke, maybe with a talking horse or dog involved, but it’s no joke, it’s a dream, my dream. I have dreams dredging up the detritus of a life that has kept rolling on longer than I would have ever imagined when I was young and dreams were full of hope, not regret. Now the rolling stone divests itself of its gathered moss. Anyway, the dream. So, I walk into this all-night bar and grill right out of Edward Hopper, glance around at the few customers, think right away there’s something kind of off about them, well dressed, well behaved, but something just off. And then I realized they weren’t so thin as to be down to skin and bones, they were just bones. They were all skeletons, doing skeleton things. A male skeleton had his hand under the table on his female companion’s knee, just phalanges on patella, but you make do. And there was a jukebox with a teen skeleton leaning against it feeling and keeping time with the beat, and a couple was dancing boogie-woogie, bones clacking like knights jousting. At the counter three old men sat and talked of the days before jukeboxes when they had danced to bands until sunrise, and when one turned to pass the catsup, as red as the blood they no longer possessed, from the clothes he wore and the way he talked, I could tell it was my father. I went up and put my arm around his hard, cold shoulders and said, Dad, how’re you doing? And he slowly turned and answered, I’m dead, when you’re dead everything’s pretty much the same, but I sure do like the coffee here. And he asks if I could stay and have a cup, so I looked around again, and I say, No thanks, I need to go, and he winks and says, I understand, and I walked back out, but I know someday I’ll return.