Sleep never came for Otis on his first night in the Castle Apartments. He lay for most of the night, wishing sleep would knock him out. At 5:17 he glanced at his clock, leaned to upright position, and slithered out from under the thin sheets. In his white tank top and white boxers he moved to the small kitchen and got himself a glass of water from the sink. Otis sat down at his small coffee table that sat in the corner of the kitchen next to an opened window. He glanced out at the dark sky and the dimly lit street. Nothing stirred in the streets. Uninterested Otis began to drift off. As soon as his he began to close his eyes he heard the sound of a bottle being thrown against a wall. Otis raised himself off the table and moved to the window. He saw a figure stumbling down the sidewalk and singing. It took Otis a second to recognize the song as Simple Twist of Fate by Bob Dylan. "Good Song", Otis said to himself as he closed the window and stumbled back to bed with his early childhood on his mind.
When the sun came up, Otis found himself staring at the closed window. He was curious about the obviously drunken man. After dressing himself in some jeans and his old brown leather jacket, he headed out the door to the nearby clinic. On his way out he noted his room number "205" so that he would not forget. Otis walked into the clinic, ignored a cheerful customer trying to start a conversation, and walked out with his sleeping pills in hand. "Successful trip, without too many distractions", he thought as he heard a familiar sound. "Well I'll be damned", He said aloud as Simple Twist of Fate caught his attention for the second time in one day. He moved to the side of the building where the man sat singing the tune. "Great song", Otis said, which stopped the man from continuing his song. The man had white hair under an old ski cap and a white scruffy beard to go along with it. The old man wore old baggy clothes and held a small cup in his hand that had a coin or two in it. The man was obviously blind and made no indication that he knew Otis was there.
"Great Song, I said."
The old man gave no reply. "He must be blind and deaf", thought Otis, but as if the old man had heard him, he shook his cup, rattling around the few coins that lay inside. Otis reached into his pocket and pulled out 32 cents that he had left over from the pharmacy.
"Will you sing to me?" Otis asked jokingly.
No reply, again. Otis dumped the change in the bowl and began to back away when the old man spoke.
"What will come will come. Even if I shroud it all in silence", the old man said in a grizzly deep voice. Otis, shocked, turned and walked away, thinking the old man as a waste of time, but as he got to his apartment room and bed, he could not help but think about the old man and the words he had spoken. Exhausted, he fell into a deep dreamless sleep.
