--DIFFERENCE IS SLIPPERY

 

 Dirty Martinis

                                                 September 14^th, Sunday, 2014

 

I’m not broke, but I’m getting there.  Besides, it’s lonely on the road and strangers are never as friendly as you’d guess.

So I pull over at a truck stop near Nashville with a Help Wanted sign in the window.  It’s a bartending gig, something I know a little something about having spent my last year of college fixing drinks for drunk frat boys at a strip club called Jiggles.  The manager here is an obese man who goes by the moniker Hercules.  He’s so huge that it’s torture for him to breathe and any time he moves or even leans a little it’s like hearing a vacuum cleaner going full blast.

Herc gives me a test run.  He has me make an Old Fashion, a Manhattan, Dirty Martinis and even a Dirty Girl Scout, which, by the grin on his face, would be his trump recipe, yet I nail the concoction with just the right amount of Bailey’s and a dash of crème de menthe.  The happy smirk on his face tells me he’s impressed.

“Start now if you want,” Herc says.   

I work my shift and another late into the evening.  Herc is low on bartenders, I learn, because almost all of them end up stealing from the till, which is pretty stupid since there are two low-hanging cameras in each corner.

No one ever orders a Dirty Martini, let alone a Dirty Girl Scout.  Mostly it’s gin and tonics, whiskey straight up no ice, or rum and cokes.  And beer of course.  Lots of beer.

I try to keep things clean in and around my work space but there’s so much alcohol soaked through the floorboards after all these years that certain spots give up a tight squeal when you step there, like crushing a poor kitten, plus the air smells like a well-used urinal. 

The patrons are mostly miserable, and they’re all drifters, yet an hour before midnight a lady comes in and I feel my knees buckle. 

She looks exactly like my wife, but with red hair. 

“Hey there,” she says.

I try to speak but I’ve got rocks in my throat.

She takes the center stool at the bar, staring at me, daring me to look away.  For a minute we just look at each other.  I feel sweat dripping down my ribs.  My socks are damp with sweat as well.

“Do I know you?” she finally says.

I swallow and manage to say, “I’m not from around here.”

“Me either.”

She smiles and it’s my wife’s smile, the kind she’d give me when she was in the mood for some hanky-panky. 

“What’ll it be?” I say, feeling dizzy and out of sorts.

“Give me your best drink, you pick.”

So I make her a Dirty Martini and when she says, “Why don’t you join me?” I do as she suggests, making another for myself.  It’s late and there’s no one else in the place, plus I’m thirsty and nervous, needing something to take the edge off.

When we clink glasses in a toast, she says, “To chance encounters.”

I drain my glass in three quick swallows.  She flashes that smile again.  I make another drink and try not to down it all at once.

She says, “You look like someone who’s had their heart broken in a million pieces.”

“How do you know that?”

“Ah, so you have?”

I nod.  It feels like there’s a balloon swelling in my chest.  Since I left home, I’ve done a pretty adequate job of not thinking about my wife, but now, here with this woman who looks and acts so much like her, nostalgia ensnares me and I feel as weak and defeated as I did when I found out she was cheating on me.

“Hey now, it’s all right,” the woman says, reaching across the counter and clutching my hand which is damp with what I now realize are my own tears.  “It’s like they say: Time heals all wounds.”

“You think?”

“There are plenty of fish in the sea,” she says, using her free hand to unbutton her blouse.

“Hey.”

“Momma said there’d be days like this.”

“What are you doing?”

She draws my hand across the counter and pushes it inside her bra, purring, “There’s no place like home.”

Her skin is creamy and warm, her nipple as rigid as an eraser.

I reach under her armpits and hoist her off the stool and onto the bar counter, climbing on it too, positioning myself between her wide open thighs.

As I enter her, she grabs a fistful of my hair and yanks my head to hers, biting my ear, saying, “A stitch in time saves nine.”

We go at it furiously.  She makes the same urgent, wounded animal noises my wife would always make.  She’s demanding.  She bites my other ear.

It lasts a half hour or an entire day, I can’t be sure, because I’m in a netherworld.  Everything feels right and somehow restored.  When I say, “I’ve missed you so much,” there’s a guy across the bar in hunting fatigues sucking on a toothpick who snarls, calls me a “Queer” and backs out of the bar.

I look around for the woman who resembles my wife, but she’s not there.  I’m leaning over the bar, fully clothed.  The air smells of jasmine, the fragrance my wife loved, or maybe it doesn’t smell like anything other than barley and hops. 

 

 

…Woke up this morning sad and stunned.  Saw these on my FBK feed:

I told my girls that Trump won the Presidency this morning. We spoke about it all morning. Simone asked me why are you so calm. I told her that I prayed about it and God is still on the throne. I told her that this country was built for free from our ancestors with their lives,blood,sweat, and tears. That we are a resilient people and we have faced tougher times in history. I am praying for us all and Trump. Prayer changes and descends all things. -- Anjeanette Miles

To our daughters:
We are sorry. We are sorry you still have to do everything bigger, better, more perfectly, with the right make up and the right clothes and the right smile; never make one mistake, one slip, one error that will be dragged out and held against you even though you will be surrounded by many, many, who have done way less, been given much more, those who have never known the pain of alienation and disenfranchisement but simply yell louder and in an uglier voice.
We are sorry. -- Katherine DiBella Seluja


 

 

 

--YOU MAKE THE LITTLE THINGS TURN INTO BIG IDEAS

                                                               

   Jerrod

                                            Thursday, August 14^th, 2014
 

Outside of Akron, driving a beater car on Interstate 71, I pick up a hitchhiking dwarf. 

Ordinarily I would never pick up a hitchhiker, but August in Ohio is a scorcher and I feel bad for the guy, not to mention (and this is me being judgmental, if not also bigoted) I don’t see as how he could pose much of a threat.

He seems effervescent, amped up, both surprised and giddy that I’ve stopped.  When he jumps in, sweats flicks from his forehead and splatters the dashboard so that it looks as if it’s been crying.

“Thanks, pal,” he says, holding out his hand for me to shake, which I do, trying not to cringe at how warm and moist it is.  “Name’s Jerrod.”

There’s still a bit of caution lingering in me, and I don’t feel like telling him my name, so I lie and tell him I’m Clint, because I’ve been thinking of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry films for some reason.

“Where’re you headed?” he asks.

“Don’t know.” 

Jerrod laughs, a huge I-just-fucked-your-wife-in-the-ass-last-night laugh.

“Come on, man.”

“Okay, how about I’m on my way to Akron.  You?”

“Akron,” he says, disappointment scrunching his forehead.  “Sure, Akron, that’s my target as well.”

So we’re both drifters.

Much to my chagrin, Jarrod’s a talker, blathering on about everything from Obama’s daughters to the evolution of country music, how it’s really just pop music without Auto Tune or lines about Hoe’s and bling, and right at once I’m sorry I picked him up.

Then he starts with the questions:  What do I do?  (“Really?  You lucky fucker, you actually have enough stashed away to just up and quit?”  Am I married?  (“You did the right thing, Clint, cutting the cord.  A hag cheats once, she’ll do it till she dries up.”)  Why am I going to Akron?  (“Going to see your Sis, huh?  You two must be close.  I had a sister once, but she ran away at age tennn.  Can you believe that?  She hasn’t resurfaced since.)  What kind of music do I like?  (“Bullshit, man.  Nobody likes everything.  Wait, so you like country music, I mean real country, Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn?”)  Who did I vote for in the last election?  Have I ever seen a ghost?  Do I wish I’d had children? Do I like spareribs?  How many bodily scars have I got?  Do….????

It takes thirteen years or more until we finally see the road sign that says, Welcome to Akron.  And underneath: Home of LeBron James.

“Shit,” Jerrod says, suddenly anxious as a junkie, “Can you believe they’re still loving on LeBron after he pulled that stunt and dumped the Cavs?”

I tell him I don’t follow basketball.

“Fuck you don’t.”

I tell him I don’t follow any sports.

He leans forward and turns to look at me, his face lit with astonishment.  “Are you serious?”

“I am.”

“And you’re not gay?”

What if I was gay, I want to say.  What if I was gay, I want to say, and I pulled out a gun and put a bullet through your waxy forehead.  What if I was gay, I want to say, so what ?  At least I can reach the dinner plates in the cabinets. 

But then it hits me that I’ve sunk to his level.  Wait, that’s bad, too.  More bigotry on my part.

“Look,” I say, “would it be all right if I let you off here?”

Jerrod’s expression  resembles a wife who’s been told that her ass has grown fatter than her twin sister’s.  “At a truck stop?”

“We’re in Akron.”

“Can’t you just take me where you’re headed?”

“Where my sister lives is a residential area.”

“So?  Do I not look residential enough for you?”  Jarrod holds his arms out, palms facing me, as if he’s in a stick-up, and I notice in a flash, both how short his arms are, but also that he has huge hands, with fingers long enough to stretch across the entire radius of my throat.

“Hey,” I say.  “Easy, tiger.”

Jarrod is panting now, breathing hard, his square jaw lowered, his eyes black bats swirling.

“No sweat,” I say.  “I can drop you there.”

Jarrod blinks, blinks and blinks, and I wonder if I should ask if there’s something wrong with him, but I don’t want him to get more agitated.

“How far away are we?” he asks.

How should I know?  I have no idea where I’m going, or where the residential sections are, yet I lie and say, “About twenty minutes.”

“What’s your sister’s name?”

“Tawny.”  Tawny.  Why Tawny?  Because it’s the first thing that popped into my head and I once had a grade school friend who’s sister was named Tawny.

“She a good cook?” Jarrod asks.

Uh oh.  Now he’s expecting to be fed.

“Hey, Jarrod, this is all a surprise, you know, my stopping by.  She might not even be home.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

What did he ask?  Oh, yeah.  “Honestly, my sister’s cooking sucks.  You’d be better off eating dog food.”

“Man, I’m starving.”

“We can stop at McDonald’s.”

“Thing is, I’m broke, flat-busted.”

“My treat.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool.”

Jarrod smiles at me for the first time since I picked him, but I notice he’s wringing his hands.  I wonder if maybe the guy really is a junkie, though he doesn’t look pale.

It’s harder than you would think to find a McDonald’s in such a big metropolis, but I do eventually.  Jarrod doesn’t want to do drive-thru, though.  Inside, there’s no line, which I’m grateful for.  When Jarrod steps up to give his order, he takes a pistol out of his pocket and aims it at the stunned, teenage Hispanic and says, “Unload your till.  Now!”

I try to remember where my own gun is, then realize it’s back in the car. 

“Hey, Jarrod,” I say.

He tells me to shut my pie hole.  To the clerk he shouts, “Hurry up!  This is loaded,” wiggling the snout of the pistol at the poor kid’s nose.

When I turn to make a run for it, Jarrod swings his arm in my direction, aiming the gun at my crotch. 

“Whoa!” I say.

“Clint, this was your idea,” Jarrod says, enunciating too perfectly, clearly trying to set me up in the event this episode is somehow being taped.

“I had nothing to do with this.”

“Now you’re going to try and lie,” Jarrod say, whipping the gun back toward to befuddled teller, then back at an obese couple who’ve just entered, telling them, “Get the fuck out!  And find some fucking treadmills!”

The teenage clerk hands Jarrod a bag of bills in a McDonald’s bag meant to hold a few Big Mac’s at most.  Fives and Tens dangle over the lip of the sack.

“What about the change?” Jarrod says.  “I want the change, too.”

Once the till is completely emptied, we flea the place, Jarrod pushing my right ass cheek.  “Hoof it!  Cops’ll be here soon.”

When we get back in the vehicle, I’m so nervous I can barely slot the key in the engine.

“What’s your problem?” Jarrod asks.

“My problem?  You just held up a McDonald’s”

Jarrod waves the gun at me, and I notice how it smells like dirty underwear.

“You want I shoot you?”

I swallow.  I think; it’s been an interesting ride, my life these last few months.  “Go ahead.”

“Are you fucking nuts?”

“Shoot me if you have to, but I’m not driving.”’

“I’ll do it.”

“Fine.”

“Fine?  Are you an idiot?  You want to be dead?”

As if acting reflexively, I slam my palm into Jarrod’s forehead and his skull smacks against the passenger side window.  I stiff-arm him in the face again, and again.  The gun plops on the floor mat.  Jarrod starts whimpering.

“Why’d you do that?” he asks.

“Because you’re the fucking idiot.”

“But you don’t understand.”

“Get out.”

“It’s my girl.  She needs an operation.”

“Get out.”

“She was born the wrong gender.  She knew all along she was a she, I mean, he was a she.”

“What?”

“Leslie wants to become my girl for real, but it’s an expense procedure.”

When I pick up Jarrod’s gun from the mat and aim it at him, he squirms.

“Get out now,” I say.

“You ain’t going to shoot me.  I know that.”

I fire a bullet into his leg.  Jarrod squeals, shouting, “What the fuck, man?”

“I’ll shoot again if you don’t get out.”

“All right.  Fuckin’ A, all right.”

“And take your money.”

“I will.  Okay.  Just don’t shoot me again.  Fuck, man, you actually shot me.”

After Jarrod crawls out of the car, I peel away, tires screeching, rank smell of burnt rubber rising in the cab.  I see a glimpse of Jarrod in the rearview, him squatting down near the kid’s play area, obviously in pain.  I floor the accelerator and get the car doing fifty and start thinking where I should dump the vehicle, wondering what Dirty Harry would do in a predicament like this. 

 

--WHERE I LIVE THE DARK EATS UP ALL THE LIGHT

 

…Typically I write here on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and I’m currently parsing out a twelve story novella on this blog, but I thought I’d take a break from both since Daylight Savings Time is tomorrow and I found this interesting article I wanted to share that seems, well, timely:

The idea that farmers campaigned for Daylight Saving Time is a myth

This weekend, when American clocks turn back an hour at Nov. 6 at 2:00 a.m. Eastern Time, the move will bring an end to the period of Daylight Saving Time that marked precisely a century since the first such policy went into effect.
That Daylight Saving Time began in Germany on May 1, 1916, in the hopes that it would save energy during World War I, according to Michael Downing, author of Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time. But, though Germans were first to mess with their clocks, they likely got the idea from Britain—and from someone whose ideas about Daylight Saving had little to do with conserving fuel.
William Willett had in 1907 published The Waste of Daylight. Willett was inspired by an early-morning epiphany that “the sun shines upon the land for several hours each day while we are asleep” and yet there “remains only a brief spell of declining daylight in which to spend the short period of leisure at our disposal.” Though he did mention that it would save money to reduce the use of artificial lighting, his main purpose was the increase enjoyment of sunlight. He lobbied Parliament for such legislation until his death in 1915—not living to see the law passed in England shortly after it was in Germany. (Frankfurt’s daily newspaper Zeitung published this dig: “It is characteristic of England that she could not rouse herself to a decision.”)
Across the pond, the first U.S. law on Daylight Saving Time went into effect on March 19, 1918 for the same fuel saving reasons, about a year after the country entered the war. But again, though the official reason was fuel saving, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was the major backer for the policy, Downing argues, because Americans getting off work while it was still light out meant they would be more likely to go out shopping in the evening.
Sports and recreation industries saw the light, too. “Golf ball sales skyrocketed during Daylight Saving Time,” according to Downing. “Baseball is a huge early supporter, too, because there’s no artificial illumination of parks, so to get school kids and workers to ball games with the extended daylight, they have a later start time.” Some even considered Daylight Saving Time a good health policy, given the extra time people had to be outdoors.
But the policy also had its opponents—”the movie industry hated Daylight Saving Time because people were much less likely to go into dark theaters when it was bright outside,” Downing says—and none more powerful than the farm lobby. That farmers advocated for Daylight Saving is a common myth. In fact, Daylight Saving Time meant they had less time in the morning to get their milk and harvested crops to market. Some warned it was “taking us off God’s time.”
“It’s so unpopular when we experiment with Daylight Saving Time during World War I that before the Versailles Treaty is signed [at the end of the war], Congress is forced to sign a repeal to quell the revolt from the farm lobby, it’s that potent a lobby,” says Downing.
There wouldn’t be another national Daylight Saving Time policy until 1942, for the duration of World War II, but New York City, however, continued to observe a metropolitan Daylight Saving Time all along. Because of the city’s position as a financial capital, other places followed. The result, Downing says, was “cities observing Daylight Saving Time surrounded by rural areas that are not, and no one can tell what time it is anywhere.” In fact, TIME’s letters department received a poem from an Ohio man about just that topic: “To miss a train or business deal, / Because our clocks are without keel / Can cause a nation loss of gold / E’en worse than all the misers hold.”
By 1966, the confusion was bad enough to prompt the Uniform Time Act. Signed by President Richard Nixon, the first peacetime Daylight Saving Time law said that the United States policy would be to observe six months of Daylight Saving Time and six months of Standard Time. It required states to either adopt Daylight Saving Time entirely or opt out, avoiding the patchwork of cities and counties that had been so problematic, according to Downing. For example, Arizona opted out because an extra hour of daylight in the summer doesn’t make sense when it’s over 100 degrees already, as a March 1969 Arizona Republic editorial explained.
In 1973, shortly after the oil embargo went into effect, Nixon called for year-round Daylight Saving Time. A brief trial ended—partly because of fears that children would get hit by cars in the dark—but Daylight Saving Time has nevertheless grown. In 1986, the U.S. started observing seven months of it—an extra month that the golf industry and manufacturers of barbecue equipment claimed was worth between $200 million and $400 million. And since 2005, the U.S. has been observing eight months of Daylight Saving Time.
By now, the original stated purpose of the idea—saving energy—has been called into question.
While a 2008 U.S. Department of Energy report found a 0.5% decrease in total electricity use per day since the 2005 extension, other studies have found that Daylight Saving may actually fuel energy usage. For example, a 2011 study by economists Matthew J. Kotchen and Laura E. Grant found that, after some Indiana counties began observing Daylight Saving, overall residential electricity consumption increased as much as 4%.
But Willett’s original point holds true: an extra hour of daylight is, generally, enjoyable—and as Daylight Saving ends and darkness begins earlier, the U.S. will once again look forward to spring to see all that sunlight in person.

 

 

 

--GRAVITY IS WORKING AGAINST ME

 

                                                                 Rave

                                                   Monday, July 14^th, 2014

 

            In Austin, I find myself at a party where everything glows—walls, ceilings, clothes, flesh, tongues, eye balls.  I’m not sure if what I’m seeing is real or if the Roofies I took are kicking in.  The floors rattle and bounce and keep jumping up, as if they’re trying to sit in my lap, even though I’m upright, dancing in the middle of a crowded kitchen, with Rylie, a girl young enough to be the daughter I never had, who’s wearing Daisy Dukes and a plaid shirt knotted high above her belly button.  The stereo plays country hip-hop, a genre I hadn’t known existed.  DJ Rusty Crawdad spins music on the kitchen counter where earlier a heap of dirty dishes had been.  Now he works the needle, or dials, or some such things with one hand while the other makes lasso motions in the air as a croaky-voiced singers growls, “And I’m a Kid Rock it up and down your block, buy a bottle of scotch and watch lots of crotch.”

            Rylie does a sloppy stumble into my chest.  For a moment I’m afraid she’s either passed out, or dead, but then she says, “Isn’t this fruckin great,” slurring hard before biting my earlobe.

            I met Rylie at Starbucks where she was working, where she remade my double-mocha-ginger-spice-no-foam-chia-tea-latte three times without ever getting it right.  Rylie was worried I’d complain to her boss, and as a favor, she invited me to this country-themed “Rave.”

            I hadn’t thought I’d come, but once I did, I hadn’t thought Rylie would give me the time of the day, though upon seeing me, Rylie pressed her huge breasts against me and squealed.  “I’m so glad you showed.  You’re, like, the hottest, old guy I know.”  To wit, I thought: I hadn’t realized we knew each other.  I hadn’t thought forty-two was all that old.

            Rylie has a lot of friends who are just as gorgeous and as daft as she is.  When not dancing, they huddle together, bobbing like skiffs, nodding quite a bit and tittering before any sentence is finished, even if someone’s just remarking on the weather.  One of them – Tessa – rubs the back of my thigh and squeezes my buttocks anytime I get near.  She has diamond piercings over each eyebrow that glitter like bright, white halos.  Earlier, as I was refilling my radioactive-looking cocktail, Tessa leaned in and whispered, “I bet you really know how to clean a girl’s carpet.”

            The house we’re in is a monster, containing millions of rooms and crawl spaces with their doors flung open, revealing couples engaged in all kinds of salacious acts, the participants oblivious to anyone or anything.  Rylie explains it’s the Sigma Chi fraternity, that their charter was revoked after a hazing incident involving a pledge and a goat in heat, and that the house has remained vacant since, except when people want to rent it for engagements such as this.

            All night long Rylie hovers around me, clinging when she can, fawning and groping.  Towards midnight, we end up in a room where someone’s pinned a gigantic Confederate flag across one wall, with a twelve foot-long aquarium stationed on the other wall opposite it.

            Rylie grabs my shirt placket and pulls me onto the bed.  Her pupils are brown quarters, her mouth a trapdoor sprung open.

            When she says, “It’s now or never, Pappa,” my stomach clutches, and I don’t know if it’s because of what she’s inferring, or what she’s called me.

            The aquarium makes a steady gurgling noise that gets me dizzy.  Bright, fluorescent fish flip through the gleaming clear water, leaving a trail of air bubbles in their wake.

            “Kiss me like you mean it,” Rylie says, tugging on my beard stubble.  “Then fuck me like you don’t.”

            I’m tempted, of course, but I push her away instead.

            Rylie grabs fistfuls of my hair and yanks and yanks, shrieking like a cat with its tail caught in the garbage disposal.  I think she’s having an epileptic attack, or some such thing, so I pull her inside my chest, which is slick with Rave-induced sweat, and hold her there, as if trying to calm a frightened pet.

            I say, “It’s okay.”

            I say, “Everything’s all right.”

            She asks me again to do things to her.  She says she’ll call me Daddy.  She says that’s what all the boys like.

            I cup Rylie’s hands.  Over her head, in the tank, a rainbow-striped fish hovers by the glass, as if listening and watching.

            “What happened?” I ask.  “You can tell me.  Go ahead.  What happened to you when you were little?”

               

 

--OH, SUNSHINE, YOU DON’T GET BOTH

               

                                                                 Algorithms

                                                        Sunday, June 14^th, 2014

 

            The gun dealer is a grizzled old man who brings along his Downs Syndrome son.  We meet in a warehouse district somewhere on the outskirts of Albuquerque.  The building is large and crowded and noisy with workers changing license plates and using sanders to scrape off registration numbers from various cars that have most likely been stolen.

            “Isn’t there some place private we can go?” I shout above the din.

            The old guy shouts back, “Too risky.”

            His son wears a striped t-shirt with Neapolitan ice cream colors.  His palms are pressed against his ears and he’s grimacing as if constipated.

            “Come on,” I shout, “look at the poor kid.”

            The old man thinks it over, then leads us to a restroom in back.  Every Playboy centerfold Pamela Anderson’s ever been in is tacked to the walls, in addition to a spread from Playgirl featuring Burt Reynolds.

            The old guy sets a trunk on a sink counter where, by the looks of the mess, someone’s just recently had a bloody nose or worse.  Not only are there red smears everywhere, but the faucets knobs are lined with grime and a broken toothbrush is stuck in the drain.

            The old guy opens the trunk with a flourish, as if he’s some kind of magician.  Inside are a Rubik’s Cube and two old pistols that look right out of the Civil War.  He hands the cube to the kid and the kid tosses it in the air and misses catching it, picks it up from the floor and tosses it again, over and over. 

            “Not much of a selection,” I say.

            “What did you expect, machine guns?  I ain’t Walmart.”

            I buy the smaller pistol and a box of shells the old guy has in his coat pocket.  Why he’s wearing a jacket when it’s an eighty-five degree June day is anybody’s guess.

            “Say, do you mind keeping an eye on Keith for a few minutes?”

            Keith tosses the Rubik’s cube and this time it lands in the toilet, water splashing over the rim, and he starts to bawl.

            “Are you kidding?” I say.

            “Just be a little while.  Here, you can have the second gun free.”

            “Why do I need two?”

            “You never know.”

            The old guy hands me the gun and heads out the door.  I shout after him, but he doesn’t stop.  Keith is crying harder than ever.  I reach into the toilet with its lemon-colored water and foist out the toy, washing it in the sink with globs of soap, then wiping my hands with my shirt tail.

            A half an hour passes.  An hour.  The Rubik’s Cube has a number of squares broken off and they lay like bright-colored Skittles on the filthy floor.

            I start to panic.  “Hey, Keith,” I say, “where did Dad go?  Or Granddad?”

            Keith says something that sounds like hotdogs.

            “He went to lunch, is that where Grandpa went?”

            Then he says something that sounds like chili.

            “Fuck me,” I say, taking Keith’s hand and heading out of the restroom, out of the shop and down the street where I’d seen a food truck earlier.

            The guy manning the truck is the palest person I’ve ever seen, with a dandelion seed afro that could match anything Art Garfunkel ever sported.  “What’ll you have?”

            I ask him if he’s seen the old guy, but Art says he hasn’t.  When I ask him if he knows Keith, he looks at me like I’m nuts.

            “This isn’t my kid,” I say.  “He belongs the old guy.”

            “And that’s my problem, why?”

            “Look, I really need to get going.  Do you mind watching the boy, Keith?  His grandfather dropped him off with me at that shop across the block and he’ll be right back.”

            “Are you on meth?”

            “I’ll give you a gun,” I say, pulling the pistol out of my pocket.

            “Whoa!”

            “No, I’m giving it to you, free.”

            When I try handing the pistol across the counter the guy dips and comes back up holding a shotgun.

            “Drop it.”

            “Hey, it’s not like that.”

            “I’ll plaster your face with pellets if you don’t drop your weapon.”

            “That’s just it, I was trying to give it to you as payment for watching Keith.”

            Keith reaches up and snatches the pistol.  I see my opportunity and sprint behind the food truck and keep running until I’m in my car.

            As I drive, the remaining pistol chafes my inner thigh, and when I pull it out two chips from the Rubik’s Cube clatter against the stick shift.

            I feel shitty for abandoning Keith but I tell myself he’s better off with a food truck guy than me.  I replay the events of the day in my head trying to figure out where I went wrong but after a while the road opens up to a land so flat that it’s hypnotic the way watching a campfire is, and my thoughts dull as I roll down the window to let the air in, warm wind whipping my hair like a set of groping fingers.