Word Count: 338
He was old so nobody really listened. After a long sentence broken by blips of word-searching they snickered. Rich old white man. What does he know?
Is he senile? they asked one another. Rolled their eyes. Giggled and made rude remarks about wrinkles, his hair, his thin old-person voice, the fact that he talked to a chair. He was not a vain man and wasn’t aware that his hair sprouted like weeds from his head. He’d done his best to tame, to flatten but white hair is wiry with a will of its own. It gave him a disheveled, unkempt, even madman appearance. Though it wasn’t that different, he’d said with a laugh, of so many young men and women he’d seen on TV.
And the chair, well, he’d thought it clever. After all, Hamlet had held up and talked to a skull. It’s a metaphor, he’d explained to the mayor, you know, or a prop.
He frustrated himself, angry with his own slowness of mind. Each phrase retrieved from a memory sorted by years. He reminded himself of his grandfather, or even his own father in his later years. But he thought he’d been patient. He at least hoped he had been at the time.
He was there to speak for his best friend’s son’s campaign. Some district seat on the school board. He wondered why they thought he could help.
A has-been. Senile. Drunk or more likely dementia. A fool. Oh what eloquent derision they heaped on his head. The photo in the local paper, snapped at a time that even he had to admit made him look silly. Ah, age, he sighed. Better though, than the vicious strength of youth.
I wish you success, he told his friend’s son’s opponent and his friend’s son’s opponent’s supporters. And a very, very long life. They smiled condescendingly and whispered as soon as he left, thinking he could not hear. And he grinned at the thought of their future in an even more wicked way
