Sleeper

Nodding off, slowly. Broad white face, mouth permanently pulled down with the increasing gravity of age. His strong cantankerous jaw dips down until it meets his chest, then jerks back to attention. I watch him play this game for ten minutes. I imagine the soft snores that fill his compact car.
“I enjoy making up stories about people in my head.”
He laughs at me. Wide brown eyes closing into happy slits.
The old man sleeps in his car because he lives alone. He cannot sleep when the world sleeps because his loneliness is thickest in the night, its lisping voice whispering incessantly. He finds peace only at midday, on the side of a busy street, surrounded by walking souls going about their business. Here in the muffled crowd he can sleep. Here there are enough noises to busy the loneliness, to confuse and distract it from nocturnal naggings.
“You’re so dramatic.”
Half-apologetic smile. “Mmm.”