A man stood before him looking at him through eyes that were his many years ago. Who the hell are you, kid? He asked gruffly as he spit on the floor. A floor he moped every night before locking the door and headed home. It was a home in name only and he knew it. There was no one waiting for him as he came through the door. Only emptiness. Are you hard of hearing, kid? he said again. Walking up closer to the haggard old man he asked, Do you know a woman by the name of Esther Stevens?
"Esther Stevens..." he said, trying hard to place the name with a face...a face he knew all too well. "Esther Stevens..." he said again, this time noticing a tear forming in his eye. "Damn allergies," he thought to himself, "I should have taken my prescrip...my prescrp...my meds today!" Then he turned to the kid, and said "never heard of her." But, even as he said it, he knew it was a lie. A lie, to himself mostly, because he could tell the kid had already read him like yesterday's paper...not the front pages, though. No, the kid had read him like the comics and entertainment section, trying to detect the hidden meaning behind every line uttered by Charlie Brown and Snoopy. Then he asked himself, "why is it that in the Charlie Brown specials on the TV, the adults are never heard actually speaking?"