About Waiting for Dimi
by Kiernan Kelly
27 pages / 11300 words
ISBN-13: 978-1-60370-120-4
ISBN-10: 1-60370-120-6
Available file types - lit, pdf, prc, html
James Petersn had it all; or at least he thought he had everything a man was supposed to have. He had the wife and the house, and most importantly, he had his best friend Dimi, the golden boy that everyone but his ex-wife adored.
When James ends up divorced with his house repossesed, he realizes that he's had to make some tough choices. He's been the one constant in his friend Dimi's life, even when it cost him what he thought he wanted. Can James convince Dimi that he's been waiting long enough?
Sample
And so I'm sitting on the curb with a handful of worthless junk and a hangover that could bring Superman to his knees as the sheriff slaps a big, silver padlock on the door of what used to be my home, waiting on the one person in my life that I knew I could always count on.
Demetrjusz. Dimi to the world at large – only his mother, an immigrant from Poland, called him by his full name. Hell, only his mother could pronounce it.
Growing up, Dimi’s family lived above the delicatessen they owned down on the corner of Midland Avenue. I spent many nights in Dimi’s family’s kitchen eating golumpki and pierogis, listening to Dimi’s mother sing off-key in Polishwhile Dimi’s father sat in front of their old nineteen-inch television set laughing his ass off watching Night Court and Family Ties. As time went on, they became more family to me than my own.
Both of my parents had crawled into a bottle shortly after I turned five and had never come back out.
Not their fault, I guess. My oldest brother, David, had died two months short of his high school graduation. It was a drunk driving accident – he was DUI. From that day on I don’t think my parents were ever sober enough to recognize the irony.
But Dimi… Dimi had been my best friend since kindergarten. It was destiny that brought us together on our first day at school – his last name is Peretzie, mine is Peterson, and by virtue of the Universal Grade School Law of Alphabetical Seating, our desks were next to each other.
I remember it so clearly. Dimi came to class that first day dressed like a miniature of his father in a pair of long pants and suspenders, a long-sleeve button-down shirt, and a Windsor-knotted tie. Who sends their kid to public school wearing a freaking necktie?
He was a marked man from day one.
Dimi did, however, have a Transformers lunchbox, which was probably the only thing that stood between him and bodily harm at the hands of the third graders at recess, who loved to pick on the new kids.
Now, you have to understand that to grade school boys in 1985, the Transformers were gods. When the teacher asked me what my father’s name was, I answered, “Optimus Prime.”
Which resulted in my very first trip to the principal’s office, but that’s another story entirely.