After the party ends, in the darkest hours of the morning, Kanye West has his limo driver take us to a donut shop open all night.
Kanye is slow to get out of his seat, with thought into each movement. He is probably still a little drunk, but he is also pushing against the tyranny of gravity and decay, the accumulating effects of the women, one after another, straddled on his lap, each wrapping their thighs tight around him like a vise. He is not a young man anymore.
I order a chocolate old fashioned. He stares at the menu for a long time before ordering a dozen donut holes.
We sit at a booth, under the surgical glow of artificial light, and eat, Kanye tossing each donut hole into his mouth like a pill. When he is done, he stares out the window.
At the first illumination of morning, he turns to me and opens his mouth, bracing himself to speak. But he doesn’t. He shakes his head, forces that smile to the corner of his mouth, looks out the window again, and raises his hand to signal to the driver that he is ready to be taken away.
Matthew J. Andrews is a private investigator and writer whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Orange Blossom Review, Funicular Magazine, and EcoTheo Review, among others. His debut chapbook, I Close My Eyes and I Almost Remember, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. He can be contacted at matthewjandrews.com