bill looked out at the broke-down rustbucket of a car, half-buried in the side of a hill overlooking the lake. on the other side of the lake, the sun was peeking over the slight rize of the horizon. he pulled his guitar close to his chest as he clambered into the trunk of that old rustbucket of a car, into the relative comfort of the old couch cushions that had been left there god knows how long ago. an early morning chill cut him to the bone as he settled in, and he (for what seemed the 100th time) cursed his inablitiy to remember that it gets cold at night, even in southern alabama in july, and that a pair of long pants would have been a good item to pack along with his shorts.

tuning his guitar as the sun reflected harshly off the lake, bill thought back to when he had first found this place, in the hazy time between high school and his first doomed marriage. a secret, quiet place that he had returned to regularly over the years, somewhere he had never shared with either of his wives, or his son. he'd brought his old dog rocky once, but even that famously laconic canine had seemed to intrude on bill's solitude.

without thinking, he found himself strumming lazily along, moving from melody to melody as his mind ebbed and flowed in and out of conscious thought. his fingers stiff from inactivity and his mind dulled by the pungent joint he'd smoked less than an hour before, nothing more than fragments were being produced, but it seemed like just the tonic he needed.

inexplicably, his mind suddenly snapped to attention (as well as it could, given his chemical state) and he found himself playing "when you wish upon a star", with visions of jiminy crickett and the blue faerie and that dumb goldfish dancing behind his closed eyes.

"...anything your heart desires will come to you..."

and, for a few minutes, he believed that was true.