SAINTS PRESERVE US

Saturday Afternoon at the Baby Boomer Golden Years Lodge

The time is the not too distant future. Tea and light refreshments are being served in the common room of a seniors’ residence. Folks are playing cards and board games or staring slack-jawed into space. Emotional support animals make their appointed rounds. Three hunched elderly men, Hughie, Dewey and Louis, are huddled together in the corner, partially obscured from hovering staff members by a large potted plant. They are in deep conversation. Their walkers are tangled up.

Hughie: My youngest son dropped by yesterday for his annual visit.

Dewey: That ne’er-do-well?

Louis: WHAT NEVER SWELLS?

Dewey: Keep it down you deaf bastard. Read my lips.

Louis: BEAD YOUR SLIPS?

Hughie: I told you he’s dyslexic, Dewey. Anyway, my good-for-nothing failure of a son may’ve been redeemed. He brought me 20 cigarettes, a gram of weed and a six-pack of beer. I say we go up to my suite and party like it’s 1979.

Louis: FARTY.

Dewey: Do you need changing again? Shut up. Never mind.

Hughie: He also made me a new fangled mix tape of the Stones and Led Zep. You just press a button. He showed me how.

Louis: WHO?

Hughie: Them too.

Dewey: Zep rules, man.

Hughie: No way, dude. Stones all the way. They were better than the Beatles. I think they’re still touring.

Louis: STILL WHORING?

Dewey: Christ, Louis.

Hughie: Cover your mouth when you speak, that’ll mess with what’s left of his mind.

Dewey: That Zep album, the one with the windows on the cover, that one was monumental, man. Better than anything the Stones ever did. And that guy, the dead one, was the greatest drummer ever.

Hughie: Not a chance. The Stones began that four-album run with, uh, I forget, in whatever year it was and culminated with, uh, that double set, the grey one with the postcards inside.

Dewey: The Zep album was grey too. There was that song on side three or maybe side four? About time travellers and some Indian province? That one.

Hughie: So what do you say? I say we go get wasted and listen to the old songs.

Dewey: What about Louis? He’s deaf as a post.

Hughie: He can read though, can’t he? We show him what’s playing, what we’re listening to and he’ll hear them in his head. Probably at maximum volume.

Louis: HEADS UP! ORDERLY!

Dewey: Damn! Louis, shh!

Hughie: Everybody look dozy!

Orderly: Gentlemen. How has your social hour been? It’s almost time for your naps. Don’t forget this evening’s entertainment is the film Flashdance.

Dewey: Oh, Christ, wow-wee.

Louis: BOWIE? I’M ALL IN. LET ALL THE CHILDREN BOOGIE!

Orderly: Is Mister Louis okay? What’s he on about?

Hughie: Oh, he’s fine. Inside joke. Help me up, please? The three of us are going back to my place.

Orderly: For you and your friends, Mister Hughie, it is nap time.

Hughie: I suppose it is. Give me a hand, will you?

    

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