Chapter 20: Night with Tal
I showered, enjoying the wet warmth of water cascading down and over my rippled chest after midnight. A night’s shower seemed so much more fulfilling instead of one in the morning or afternoon. Why? I really wasn’t sure. Maybe it was because my mother had always told me to “wash off the day’s grime” when I was a boy, but she only shared such anecdotes of life when she was sober, which was rare.
The woman had spent most of my youth drunk though, carrying a bottle of rum around the house with her as if it were my younger brother. Sometimes she smoked, but not always. Menthol Marlboros were her favorite. And when she was full-looped, inebriated and not herself, she carried two bottles of alcohol around with her, one in each hand, proving that she definitely had a
