Your Emmylou

I don’t have any idea

“Nah, best thing about you is you’re a fighter.  You can do anything.” 

Jim tips the brown bottle of Bud Light to his lips, letting out a sigh after swallowing.  Jim and Jorge sit on the edge of the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park, downing brown bagged beers and watching the sun begin to set.  Jorge sits on the edge of the large mushroom at Alice’s feet, Jim leans on the Mad hatter with his left elbow resting on the tip of his top hat.  The autumn air lays softly around them like a cold blanket, it wraps their bodies from head to toe and makes their cheeks red and their noses run.  Dead leaves fall from the trees like snow.

“You man,” he says, pointing the empty brown bottle right in Jorge’s eyes, like a pistol, “You’ve been so many places and it hasn’t even hit you.  Ain’t got no scars.”  Jim’s eyes are stained with red.  Jorge looks away and rubs at the surface of Alice’s giant mushroom that is polished gold from the soft hands and feet of children. 

He looks up and smiles. 

“It’s getting dark man, we gotta go.”  He pushes his large framed glasses up onto his nose, sniffing a little as a chill blows by. 

“Yeah,” says Jim, tossing his drink towards the trash but missing, the bottle crashing to the ground, a few shards falling out of the brown paper bag and scattering onto the ground, “the only people in Central Park at night are bums and hobos right?”  His eyes scan the sky that is tinged orange by the setting sun.

“Yeah, so we should probably stay.”  Jorge says, laughing a little as they walk out of the park, away from Alice and the mushrooms, the broken glass still sitting on the ground. 

The glass flickers when it catches the light of the sun.  A kid could step right on it, Jorge thinks, he could be waddling away from his mother for just a minute, and he would be barefoot, the kid would want to climb those mushrooms and stand at the top of the sculpture, to see the whole world. But then he would step on something and it would sting a little, it’d press right into his smooth foot, like a knife into a softened piece of butter, a good clean cut, and the kid would look down and start to cry and his tears would taste like salt when he licked his face, and his mother would come over and ask “Who would leave a beer bottle by the Alice in Wonderland sculpture?” and she would take the boy home and wrap his foot with love and bandages. 

Jorge could see it right in front of his eyes.  He wants to clean up the glass but he’s tired, he’s cold, it’s dark outside.