Beginning, Middle, End

“The beginning is always the hardest part,” he told me. I cocked an eyebrow at him to let him know I wasn’t buying it. I shook my head.

“It’s the END.” That was were the real problem always persisted.

He countered my head shake. “But you have to reach the end before you can worry about it,” he pointed out. “And the only way to get to the end is via the beginning.”

Now he was just talking nonsense. “You’re obviously confusing the beginning with the middle. You know, that section that comes after the beginning … before the END.”

He scratched some of the fleas out of his shag of hair. “What is it with this obsession of yours?”

“Obsession?”

“With the END.”

I squinted at him crosswise, nearly going blind in the process but I think I did convey what I intended. “Have you ever been there?” I asked.

“Been where?”

“The END.”

“Oh, there.” He waved his hand at me, tipping my nose with his fingers. “Don’t tell me you’ve never been to, to …”

“The –”

“- Yeah.”

“No.”