Santa’s reindeer do not wake me Christmas morning. A rooster does, strutting down the bike lane of Fleming Street announcing the approach of dawn. If it hadn’t been c**k, it would have been p***y; territorial catfights are commonplace under deck planks.
First light breaks through cumulus clouds that look like Marshmallow Fluff. I debate if the family-owned grocery where I fetch my café con leche—a small allotment of coffee and scalded milk in a big cup that makes you feel a little cheated until that first bold swig—will be open. Andy would have known, of course.
I finish the second of the two books left me by a nameless, literary-minded benefactor the night of Andy’s burial. One was nonfiction, the other a slim novel. The first, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, I was familiar
