A man saw the headline “Messiah Drunk,” felt in his pockets for coins to buy the paper, found only a stray button that didn’t match any on his coat, used all his powers of memory to trace it back to its origins, his brother’s coat, no, his father’s coat, no, and then he had it, the coat of a man whose wife he had been seeing the previous fall, he had bumped into it hanging on the wall, pulling off the button, which clattered to the floor, and he had shoved it deep into his own pocket rather than leave it as incriminating evidence, and with that retrieval he was satisfied, and the paper was forgotten, and he wandered off down the street, insides unsteady, gait confident enough to trick anyone who happened to be watching.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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