The Last Scene

Extravagant sweep of clear sky darkening in the big picture window beside the bed, lights here and there already flashing all across the city down below us— Ellen and the girls out somewhere, you and I alone, you with your eyes closed, I with a drink in hand: you suddenly in character, your voice a wraith’s voice, faint, stumbling, slurry with morphine, and yet still artful as ever, even if the art was obvious, the dying brother playing the dying brother— Do you think you have a problem with that?