Up the stairs he jostled, like a young jostling jostler on the jostle. He felt every blade of Astroturf between his un-socked feet as he blazed across the faux fairway of his faux St. Andrews number 17 situated in the friendly confines of his attic.

Not only was he fast, but he was rich enough that there was no one to race him. Not on this indoor golf hole. He'd found through his years of play at 'normal' golf courses that most patrons favored playing golf to racing from tee box to flag stick anyways, so it was near impossible to find a race.

Sometimes he paid young crack whores to race him for a razored rock or two but their technique was as lacking as their dental maintenance and to say they were fleet of foot was, indeed, a lie of the greatest measure.

A compatriot mega-rich acquaintance enlightened him to the quickness and relative ease in procuring preteen Arab boys for races and, for a time, he raced the brown youths until they cried for mercy and his feet bled from Astroturf burns . . . his hands from hoisting the flag stick skywards proclaiming his utter brilliance and insanity in a single shout of victory.

But those racing days were long past and in their place settled cold cans of corn niblets and bottle after bottle of cough syrup garnished with the same drink- worn tiny umbrella that once gave the gin rickeys and singapore slings of his youth a touch of whimsy.

Sadness permeated from every corner of the house. Profound sadness punctuated with exclamation points fashioned of kidney beans in the shape of famous kidney beans kept in a kidney bean shaped jar resting on a shrine to beans of a kidney variety made of an old desk with old issues of "Jet" magazine for legs.

Across the room: a toilet paper roll with a long spent glow stick taped inside serving as a shamefaced sham of a lamp.

Then, as if out of nowhere, I was hungry for a salad. goodbye.