Yes, grocery shopping had gone better than last week. Last week it took four grocery stores before Bob landed a date. Today Bob hadn't even un-pocketed his mock shopping list before he'd coerced some fish-stick-of-a-thing to go out with him. Out with him this very night. That's why excited Bob had me hauling ass to his house; so he'd be ready when Joni picked him up.
I was excited as well. This Joni waif showed a lot of promise. Not to fulfill Bob, certainly, but to bring all kinds of hell Bob's way. Proud, I looked at my sidekick riding shotgun. No, that's how one measured worth in a sidekick; by the wealth of hell coming his way.
On cue, Bob unpocketed his shiny money clip, showered his men with the love he never showed any of the women he'd defiled. "Damnit, Anton, all I got are Benjamins. Find me a machine so I can load up on Jacksons."
I found a machine, studied the back of Bob's head working it. Bob's hair looked like a stand of oats after a thunderstorm; some areas remained standing, other areas swirled flat. It hit me then: Bob had wild oat hair. Ya, the perfect hair for chasing wild-child Joni.
Say, that wild-oat analogy was nothing short of gold. I wrestled out my pad and pen. Before getting the gold down, I remembered something Svitlana--the only published writer in our Writing Circle--had said. "You're a hack, Anton. Where you throw scraps under the table, I wet the reader's appetite with a properly set table." What Svitlana was getting at was how a writer needs to go the extra mile on behalf of his better reader.
For me, going the extra mile was nothing short of insulting my better reader. See, I had to believe my better reader still had his imagination intact. That's right, my better reader could set his own gol-damned table, thank you much. Then again, I thought it might be fun, for a change, to set a table. So, putting pen to paper, I started pulling silverware out of the drawer the average table in America had never seen:
"Bob, like most guys, had testicles for eyeballs. Joni, like most girls, caked on the makeup to appeal to guys who had testicles for eyeballs. Though, in Bob's seeding eye, Joni was all flower, in truth, Joni was but a weed growing down by the train tracks. And growing in that kind of gravel a girl acquires scars. Scars peaking out from under a cuff; scars slurring off a tongue. No, if randy Bob could have gotten his conquering eye off the notch he was looking to carve in his gunstock, he too could have detected and weighed the danger signals in said scars."
OK, time to get serious; get that gold down. But damn, that Bob analogy had gotten away from me. A good way to remember what you forgot, is to transfix your eye on something renewing. I found nature renewing. I panned the strip mall parking lot. But, no, not a hint of living green within eyeshot. On cue, Bob turned, waved the wad of greenbacks the bank machine had spit out. What a world; infantile humans stomping on their Mother that they might get their hands on so-called security.
"Money Talks," Bob was always saying. Ya, and just look at what the poor devils with it all were saying.
I panned the lifeless strip mall.
Sick, I opened my truck door to get some air. That's when I saw it; some green in a crack in the asphalt.
At first I thought it was my dead aunt Lydie breaking on through from the other side. But then I realized, it wasn't a voice at all. It was the sound of Mother Nature drumming her patient fingers.
Lydia, Lydia, Lydia.
No, I had no schooling in interpretive drumming, but that drumming had all the earmarks of one big mama who was powerfully pissed.
Lydia, Lydia, Lydia.
Oh, God, have mercy on the human race; for, no doubt, come tomorrow mom will stop drumming, call dad down to kick some sorry human ass.
Which reminded me, there was that Bob analogy that had gotten away from me. I transfixed my eye on the green cardiogram. But, no, all gold, gone.
Bob, giddy as a teenager, got back to riding shotgun, and I got back to hauling ass to his house.
"Damn," Bob said, "do I have a way with women, or what?" Bob was referring to the pick-up line he'd laid on Joni in the grocery store. "There it is in a nutshell, Grasshopper. You follow my lead, and some day you, too, may pick up a girl."
Yes, Bob watched Kung Fu in college too. Only base Bob misinterpreted Master's words--thought they were lines to nail women by. And, as for calling me Grasshopper; no, I knew which end was up. After all, I'd recruited Bob as a sidekick, not the other way around. And to secure in my head which end was up, I recalled the day I'd thumbed through one of Bob's journals. I was an avid journal-keeper myself; filled my journals with wise words-to-live-by. Though I didn't expect Bob's journal to contain anything so rarefied, I did think his entries would involve more than the clever chicanery to get in a girl's pants.
They didn't.
"Thanks for the lift," Bob said, climbing out of my pickup. "I'll give you the goods on Joni tomorrow."
"You be careful," I said. No, I wasn't trying to be helpful. Bob was pigheaded. To get a pig to root around in hell, one must point to hell and advise the pig not to root around there.
"Careful?" Bob said. "Careful of what?"
"Of that Joni chick. She's got more than tattoos up her sleeve."
"I hope so," Bob said, his eyes flaring. "Should be a fun ride."
Yes, this was going to be a fun ride, all right. And driving home I envisioned Bob frenching Joni, and how his gag reflexes were sure to kick in once he got a taste of that metal stud bolted to her tongue.
Which got me to thinking of a tongue or two of my own.
Every one has little bugs inside.
But my eyes, they're burning in the sun.
****
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