All The Way to Jupiter

“All the way to Jupiter” is a common adage used around here.

Jupiter is a city in Florida.

The original owner of our guinea pigs likes to stop by on occasion. Molly and Bozo look up at him with some sense of remembrance of their days hotel-hopping around the Southeast Coast of Florida with him, their beady eyes damp and questioning while they chew on their pile of Timothy hay.

Sometimes, when she’s drowsing off, my roommate will click her tongue, seemingly irritated at having to stay in. I’ve had three cups of coffee and they’ve yet to take, I feel like sleeping too but feel like I must stay awake.

I haven’t been to Jupiter. I forget if it’s nearer to Boca Raton or Lantana, where our house manager recently moved into her new apartment.

The halfway house apartments has a deluge of new dwellers. A man from Costa Rica that likes to stand on the pebbles in his bare feet. The original owner of the guinea pigs. A man with a liberal arts education like me, who flirted with a degree in the culinary arts before deciding upon one in literature.

It’s community dinner tonight and I’m making a spinach and leek penne pasta like my mother and I used to enjoy. It has fontina cheese and Parmesan and a brown butter gratin.

I had a cinnamon roll for breakfast and three cups of coffee, but the day is drowsy and cool. I had a hard time rousing myself from slumber, wanting instead to sleep longer than they’d allow here. My roommate, my ersatz kid sister, begged me for one of my vapes, despite saying she’s giving them up. She has a history of self-sabotage.

Sometimes when we’re at Walmart together, browsing for clothes in the clearance section, I’ll do a Bob Dylan impersonation. There’s a brown corduroy skirt with buttons down the front there I’ve been eyeing, but last night I bought boxer shorts to sleep in as pajama bottoms and a long, Chantilly lace robe like Stevie Nicks to laze about in.

K wants desperately to go somewhere, but I told her I’m tired today. I feel like she doesn’t need me to go on an adventure if she wants.

There’s not much to do here on Sundays, not any real trouble you can get into, especially if your money’s run out.

I find it hard to put down my book. I’m halfway through it. K doesn’t like to read, except self-help books and her NA workbook. All I ever do is get lost in novels.