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Thomas E. Kennedy 
From beneath the neon egg
What is time, he wonders. A work-week is never so long. Neither is a weekend. A bottle of vodka is not so deep, a drink is shallow. But as he steps out of the shower, towels himself dry with Getz´s "Sweet Rain" on the CD, splashes on aftershave, steps into clean shorts, undershirt, shirt, ties a double windsor in his old silk favorite, steps into his britches, pulls on a sweater and his old sheepskin, the world is so new again and full of hope. It always starts again with hope.
Friday, blessed Friday. Time to open the gates of the world hidden behind the veil of matter. With the purist of elixirs. An allergologist revealed this secret to him once when he was suffering from a bout of rhinitis. If you must drink, drink vodka. The purest of drinks. Her face rapt as she told him, her elephantine face like Lord Geneash, remover of obstacles. There have been cases of patients with acute, near fatal asthma attacks cured by vodka, one woman who had to drink six wine glasses of chilled vodka every hour to keep her lungs functioning under a drastic attack. Think about it.
Bluett thinks about it: Absolut. Icebreaker. Leningrad Cowboy. Kremlyskaya. Smirnoff Red. Smirnoff Blue, hundred proof. Smirnoff Black Mellow Russian. Irish Boru, nice. Danish Danzka. Polish Siwucha, lovely but more like brandy than vodka. Moskovskaya. Soul of the Bubble King.
Ynkologi, he thinks and grunts like a pig, letting himself out the door, wondering what Sam is up to tonight. There is only one god and one vodka: Stolichnaya. Yes.
Bluett descends the wooden staircase from his apartment and enters the freezing afternoon. A thief´s start on l´heure bleu: red sun still hangs on the smokey horizon of the frozen lake. He waits a few respectful moments, watching his breath, watching the red glare from the edge of St. John´s, the old leper colony, stain the ice of Black Dam Lake.
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