Craig came home from the liquor store and flipped the light switch by the front door.  Nothing.  Just perfect, he thought to himself.  He knew this was coming.  He’d been laid off from the factory over three months ago, and his last twenty bucks had just gone towards buying a case and a half of Busch beer and a dozen or so packages of Twang.  The light bill hadn’t been paid in…well, he couldn’t exactly remember when.

He walked through the living room and looked at the floor—all the dust, receipts, loose change, and the other various scraps of shit that collect underneath a couch.  He could still see the outline in the carpet where it had once sat on the living room floor.  She’d taken everything.  The only furniture left was a rickety old card table and a couple of foldout chairs.   He grabbed one of the chairs, the alarm clock she’d so graciously let him keep, and then proceeded out onto the front porch to do some drinking in the sweltering summer heat.

He cracked the top of a can of Busch and poured in half a packet of Twang.  He took a long swig as he grabbed the battery-powered clock radio and set it to 790, his favorite sports talk-radio station on the am dial.

“…and Elin is apparently asking for $250 million dollars in the divorce settlement.  Holy moley Ed.  Can you believe that?”

“Well, I’ll tell you I can Jim.  Just despicable what Tiger has done.  You know, these professional athletes walk around all entitled thinking they can get away with just anything.  I’ve got a wife and kids at home, and I would never dream of pulling a stunt like this.”

“Yeah, but $250 million dollars?”

“Well, I’m sure there’s a lot more where that came from…”

Craig flipped the station.  He was tired of that damn story all over the place.  And now the bitch was trying to squeeze poor Tiger for everything he was worth.  Just like a woman.  Did she ever win the fucking U.S. Open on one fucking leg?  How many fucking majors did that stupid cunt have to her name?  Ugh.  Craig chugged down the rest of his beer and cracked another one.

As he continued to drink the afternoon away flipping through the stations on the radio, the mailman came to make a delivery.  He smiled and said hello, but Craig just yanked the mail from his hands.  The mailman was a fucking pariah as far as Craig was concerned.  Nothing good was ever delivered by the postal service.  Craig imagined one of those dogs behind the wooden fences on his block—perhaps a pit-bull or a German shepherd—busting through a rotted plank and using the carrier’s leg as a chew toy.  He smiled sadistically for a second and thought to himself, goddamn it, as he flipped through the stack of junk mail and bill collector notices.  Craig needed another job, but in the current economic climate, it just seemed a giant pain in the ass to even bother to look.  He finished another of the now warm beers and tossed it into the bushes, which looked like a drunken Christmas tree.

Shortly after the sun set, Craig, now a good half of the way through his hot beers began to wretch off the front porch into the almost fully aluminum encrusted bushes.  He saw headlights coming from down the street and quickly tried to force his stomach to a halt.   No need for the neighbors to witness anymore of his failures.  The headlights, it turned out, belonged to a Ford F-150 towing a beautiful Donzi Powerboat behind it.  It was Doug’s, his neighbor from across the road.  Craig looked up to see Doug’s wife and kids all still wearing life jackets and laughing as they climbed out of the truck and made their way up the driveway and into the house.  Craig hung from the post on his front porch trying not to fall as he met eyes with Doug and thought to himself, Help me, help me, help me sail away.