Black pan

 

He sat in a worn-out leather chair, his slippers he had too many years to count. Those plaid ones with yellowed fur. On the table next to him were his things he liked to call it. Hand-rolled cigarettes in a plastic soap holder, a lighter and a can of fluid, and one of those things that looked like a Pez dispenser but it held flints. A telephone crusted with grease and dust. Nobody called much anymore. There was one single picture in a gold wooden frame of all three kids who went their own ways years ago. That table was full of his things as he liked to call it.

By rights, the apartment should have been condemned by the health department a long time ago but he didn’t care about things like that. A slow leak that seeped into the carpets over time producing mold just about everywhere. The kitchen had two surfaces that weren’t cluttered, the stovetop where he did all his cooking in a black cast iron pan that he never washed he just wiped the grease out until the next meal. And the spot for the coffee pot which he emptied twice a day or more.

The bedroom was small and very neat. Clothes on hangers the bed made every day. The old school military still stuck with him. The bathroom was as clean as it could be except for the smell of urine as he more often than not missed the toilet. “You would too” he would say waving away anybody who brought it up. By ten in the morning, he was ready for a nip that he poured into his third cup of coffee settling into his old chair and waiting for the day to pass.

He enjoyed visitors even though he denied It. But the only ones he got were from his kids who stopped in to check on him and make sure he hadn’t burned he apartment to the ground. His life had once been full, but he drank it all away and blamed it on everything and anyone. I remember the good days and years and it's those memories that I like to remember but, I will never get the pictures out of my mind of greased pans and the smell of urine. He passed a decade or so ago and the old apartment building was torn down. I stopped in front of where it once stood on a recent visit. I walked into the empty lot and came across an old black pan still greasy and waiting to be used again. Yes, I took it with me I had to its all I have left of him.