Friday Nights

by Nic Olson

Brendan Morrison scored with two minutes and thirty two seconds remaining in the third.
I heard the door open. I was about three feet away from the television, so the angle I was at only permitted me to see the foot of the person who entered, and it was not a familiar shoe.

A man stumbled in with a phone, headphones and a bottle of orange juice. I sat him down on the ledge. He thought I was Alex, or at other times someone else. I paused the game, so I could finish it later. We talked about the Habs, the South end. A few times he said he wanted to stab me in the shoulder, or punch me twenty times in the face. He was disjointed had abused a few substances. He was sure he knew who I was, as he listed off people that he beat up earlier, people that he thought I should know. We talked for twenty minutes or so, when he decided that he needed to take a piss, so I showed him outside. He pissed on the house, I gathered his things, and grabbed a coat. We were going to walk to his house, which was apparently nearby. He didn’t make it much further than the front lawn. Then he decided that it was a better idea to make it to his girlfriend’s house, also nearby, but a driving distance.

I drove him to where he thought he wanted to go, and he wouldn’t show where the apartment was, and assured that he was going to be fine, and told me to call him in thirty minutes. I’ve called him a few times and he has declined the call each time.

When I was talking to him I was shaking a lot. I stopped when I realized that I had no reason to be nervous, until he kept bringing up the fact that he wanted to fight. He told me I could punch him in the face and knock him out. I considered it for a while, thinking that it might be my best option, but I waited it out. I thought that he might be a significant moment in my life. I thought that he might have showed up to say something that might be of worth. But nothing happened. It was just another situation to further confuse me and dishearten me as to the condition of mankind.

I think he’s ok.
The Habs won.