The Dream Life of Astronauts by Patrick Ryan

Author:Patrick Ryan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2016-07-05T04:00:00+00:00

Here’s my morning routine (just to give you an idea of what my days are like now): I wake up at 6:15, as if I’ve still got a job. I go downstairs to the front stoop I share with five other units and hope somebody hasn’t filched my newspaper. I take the paper inside and sit at the dining room table, and while I drink a glass of orange juice with Metamucil and eat a piece of toast with marmalade, I read the news. Christ, it’s boring. Depends on your vantage point, I guess, but for me it’s gutless. Meatless. Vegan. A dozen people blown up by an unknown attacker in a country I couldn’t find on a globe if I had to. Some woman in Smalltown, USA, who drove her kids into a lake. Some guy in some other town who didn’t like his neighbor’s music and dusted off his old hunting rifle to deal with it. Politicians with hookers. Cops with too much power. That’s the news: somebody’s an asshole, and another asshole’s got something to say about it. Which isn’t really news, is it?

I go on the Internet to see what’s happening back in Chicago, and it’s like they gave typewriters to a bunch of cats. I turn on the television to check out the local affiliates, and it’s all traffic reports and “human interest” stories. So I watch a few reruns. The Big Valley, which I still enjoy. The Waltons, which is corny, but better than a lot of the garbage they show now. Kojak. Good old Kojak, still with the zingers and still walking into the room with his dick swinging.

I turn the clock radio to the classical station, get in the tub, soak my joints. Put on my robe, go into the kitchen, pour a big glass of water and lay out my pills for the day. Atenolol, donepezil, hydralazine, quinapril—over the teeth, past the gums. I put on trousers or a pair of shorts, depending on my mood. A guayabera. Crocs decorated with little Mickey Mouse snap-ons the girl at the mall talked me into. SPF 30 sunscreen with zinc oxide I smear from my collarbones to the top of my head, which went the way of Kojak’s long before I ever had a chance of going gray. Onto this slathered bust, I place one of three straw hats and a pair of Oakleys strong enough to block UVAs, UVBs, and UVCs, whatever they are. Watch, keys, money clip, loose change, and I’m ready for what my doctor likes to call my heart-healthy, low-weight-bearing ambulation. I’m the roaming prince of Villa Ponce de Leon. Do I love my life? Not so much. It’s like the Players Club, only with none of the play.

—

Villa Ponce de Leon is a very proud place. It doesn’t have bushes and trees; it has landscaping. It doesn’t have sidewalks; it has a promenade of winding, wooden slats carefully painted with yellow caution stripes at every step up and step down.

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