“Have a great weekend,” the pharmacy tech says and I look down at my recycled bag with a month’s supply of Tamsulosin in a sack with bran cereal and unsweetened coconut milk and reconcile her statement with the times I’d heard it while toting bags of chips and 30 packs of Genny Cream, then walk a few steps from the pharmacy counter and linger because John Cougar Mellencamp has just come on overhead—I’m always hearing the songs of my teenhood at Kroger, which alternately heartens and worries me—and it’s “Lonely Old Night,” a number I ignored near its release, immersed as I was in Prince and Cameo and RunDMC, yet now enjoy, in part due to its heady guitar and drum blend, but more because the title and lyric alludes to Hud, Brandon DeWilde saying, “It’s a lonely old night” and Newman delivering, “Ain’t they all,” in that sage manner he carried to The Sting, The Verdict, and even Cars, as Doc Hudson, the mentor of my son’s fave, Lightning McQueen, but a signal I need to empty my bladder has just reached my brain, and of late I’m not the best judge of how long I can wait (I was recently grateful for the spare trousers in my office, never mind they were brown when my necktie was Windex blue) and probably should use this men’s room by the pharmacy, yet the custodian has just wheeled her cart in that direction, and I’m not fast enough to arrive first, and while I keep a jug in my car, I can never use that item without leaving a visible stain and haven’t replaced the spare trousers in my office and don’t want to discover I’m unable to walk past all the checkout lanes, customer service desk, and the lottery machines and make it in time to the restroom near Starbucks, my sphincter loosened by the very Tamsulosin that keeps me from dribbling at night, and I know I can’t exit the store and try to drive to work without pissing myself and needing to drive home, take a shower, and dress in a new outfit—my Friday errands now increased with a visit after work to the dry cleaner—so I try to prevail upon the custodian’s good will with an arrival close to hers to enter the men’s room first—my blue suit and slate gray tie might impress—just as John Cougar sings of two lonely people, and I wonder if she believes that description might suit us both.