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The grizzly gray man let out a dry cough that made my skin itch. I could feel his throat scratching against itself. He sputtered and wheezed, it sounded like a mixture of a horse neighing and the wheezing of an elderly man devoid of his ventilator on an Arizona day so dry your skin cracks just by stepping outside. His coughing grew more persistent, that insolent idiot. No I shouldn't think that way, he is my elder. It is my obligation to respect my elders. But he kept coughing, he kept groaning and wheezing. His arms suddenly start thrashing, not violently, gently, like a newborn, milk-drunk child about to slip into the type of slumber only a being recently rejected from the cocoon of the womb could have. His arms gently drop by his side. His bloated, wrinkled face, disfigured with decades of devoted drinking, ran through shades of red, purple, deep blue, and finally resting on a heather gray, the perfect shade for a progressive nursery. My hands slackened their grip. He had such a supple childlike neck. A neck that belonged resting on a mother’s chest with eyes gently closed.