It was so damn quiet in Waldo's apartment he'd gone out and bought one of them transistor radios and put it on loud so's he could think. The electric store had everything on sale. They was almost giving it all away before they shut up shop.
He'd played all his records so many times the needle was blunter'n a thumb and he couldn't get a replacement cause they stopped making that model in 1942.
There weren't even no neighbours' screams to whine about.
"There's only me, the Dacostas, skinny Blue and his wife, and that scary guy with the lips, Reet. All the others are moved out already. I don't reckon there'll be more than a dozen folks in the whole of Mattfield by next Christmas."
He'd almost drowned himself in the shower that morning there was so much darned water coming out the spout. He'd gotten dressed and walked around town, and seen folks loading up their trucks with mountains of bad furniture tied on with stolen Roundly's packing thread.
He'd come back with the newspaper, made himself a pot of coffee, and reached for the cookie jar. Weren't nothing in it. He knew that but his hand sometimes had a mind of its own. In the months since Roundly's got toasted, Waldo had gone cold turkey on sweet stuff.
For the first time after fifteen Arethaless years, he'd started eating food that didn’t come in aluminum. He had more fruit in the kitchen than Tarzan. He'd been doing a lot of walking too.
One night, and this is a secret, when he was out and no one was watching, …he ran. You probably wouldn't of recognized it as running. He kind'a toppled himself forward and his legs had to move faster to get under him again. There was a couple of scary seconds where he wasn't sure he could stop. If he hadn't gotten hold of the street lamp when he did, he could of ended up in Texas.
He took his coffee over and stood in front of Aretha's full-length, half-width mirror. He couldn’t see no difference in his shape, but he sure felt better. He wasn't so out of breath no more. He slept pretty good too. Maybe there was something to this health food. It was times like this he regretted not being in Mexico. He had his health, he had money, but he didn't have no place to go. Nothing tickled his fancy like Lerdo de Tejada.
It was weird, retiring. When you're working full-time, you cram all your housework and homework, and hobbies and shit into late evenings and weekends. But when you don’t go to work no more, all them things sort'a expand and fill up more time. Ten before-retirement minutes and a hundred after-retirement minutes is the same thing. It's like crossing into the Twilight Zone. He'd been afraid he'd get bored but he couldn’t find the time to be.