One of the friends I made built movie sets for motion pictures and television series in Atlanta. Over cigarettes and breakfast (black coffee and Western omelettes) he’d regale us with his tales of Spaghetti Junction and the pernicious toll of his cocaine addiction while building sets for a blockbuster science fiction series set in the 1980s.
He was an insomniac so they prescribed him Seroquel and that gentleman from Georgia could be found every midnight blue evening in the cafeteria of our clinic, a bag of Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies poured into a styrofoam bowl so he could pour 2% milk over it and eat it like cereal.
A while later, a woman moved into the clinic who liked my croissant necklace. She taught everyone how to make prison milkshakes. I’d often wander in, drowsy from Hydroxyzine, an American Spirit splayed between my fingertips, and she and I would talk at length about 1980s movies. She was a huge fan of Fast Times at Ridgemont High. We became friends by the pool one afternoon when I saw her wearing a t-shirt with Sean Penn’s face on it.
One day before I left the clinic, Labyrinth was playing on the cafeteria’s television set. I paused, thinking of erstwhile friends back home. It was the scene where Sarah sees the old woman with the junk on her back. She was stuck in her childhood room only it wasn’t, and I kept thinking about all those benders and the Pinot Noir I spilled on the beige carpet after my mother died.
Nightingale 
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