Fiction

It was afternoon. The old leather chair was backed up against the wall, scarred from years of comfortable abuse and too many experiences with the movers. The old man tidied up the lunch dishes and pulled a book from the shelves before going over to sit in the afternoon sun that lanced through the window. Motes sparkled. There was nothing on the radio and he hadn’t yet capitulated to his children’s insistence that he buy a television set. A book was as good a way as any of starting his afternoon siesta. He looked forward to the comfortable warm drowsiness that was almost predictable after the first few pages. It was a favorite of his: “A la Recherche du Temps Perdu.” He only understood about one sentence out of three, but the ones that he did understand often turned out to be zingers, although what Marcel was on about with all this “involuntary memory” stuff was a bit vague. He settled himself into the chair, which greeted him as befitting an old friend.

A little while later, he was staring at the page or, more accurately, through the page when the chimes from the computer in the small alcove brought him to wakefulness. E-mail had arrived. Since he had filters on, which cut out most of the spam, he could be fairly sure that the message was from somebody he knew. Putting his book down, he pushed himself out of the chair and walked stiffly over to the machine. The e-mail was from his son, who worked in information technology in the southwestern part of the States. His was a demanding job, but not so consuming that he had no time for daily bulletins to his father. The old man looked forward to them and had become used to the …