Dry

“Look, life sucks and then you die,” Josh said at the kitchen table. He twisted the cap off the bottle of pinot noir.

“What good pinot doesn’t have a cork?” Andrew asked. “That’s just cheesy, having a screw top with a pinot.”

“You’re avoiding the topic. Look, your mother died three weeks ago. It’s okay to be depressed. It’s not like it’s stopping you from going to work, or going to the gym. Didn’t you hook up with that muscle top on the same afternoon you picked up her ashes?”

“Watch it, Josh. This is my mother we’re talking about. And it wasn’t the same afternoon. It was the next day. But I have to admit, it gave me a dry feeling in the back of my throat, having sex with my mother sitting on top of the mantle. That and the kitty cat sitting on top of the box.”

“Why should it bother you? It’s not as if you didn’t fuck around under her roof plenty while she was alive. If memory serves, we screwed any number of times while she was having cocktails with your father, watching Fox News and yelling at the Democrats between Scrabble turns.”

“Sometimes I wish you weren’t my lover back then. You gotta bring up the past?”

Josh sniffed out a laugh. “Someone’s got to keep you honest, darling. Who knows you better than I do?”

Andrew neighed like a horse. “I do myself.”

“Poppycock. Who is it who never predicts how long it’s going to take to get ready for the evening? By the time you turn 40, Andrew, you should know whether it’s 15 minutes or 90.”

“That’s it, I’m hanging up.”

“What’re you talking about? We’re not on the phone, Andrew. You’re sitting in front of me. You can’t hang up.”