Driving south towards Wholesome Foods in Westdale, I took to thinking of fool Bob that I might stop thinking of the fool driving this truck. "Then Coral and I wouldn't grow an inch."
What a thing to have said to Coral's boyfriend!
Thank God for Bob. What a fool he'd made of himself the other day at Division Wholesomes. Say, that's what I should do; write a short story about womanizer Bob getting knocked down to size by the lesbian stockgirl. Of course, writing said story meant stealing the stockgirl's very words. No, that's what I needed first; a permission.
Instead of veering right towards Westdale, I veered left. My game plan: Kill two birds with one stone by getting my meat at Division Wholesomes.
Division Wholesomes was clean across the river--almost to Eastdale, so it gave me time to think. Let's see, how exactly does a writer go about getting a permission? I wasn't sure--I'd never gotten one. A delicate operation, that, seeing how it involved the invasion of another's space.
Invasions brought to mind my major in college: History. All Histories started with an invasion, of course, but the best histories were the ones where the invasion went all wrong. Why did invasions go all wrong? Because the invaders failed to learn the lessons history taught.
My history with the stockgirl started when I started dating my last girlfriend, Rachel. She lived near Division Wholesomes, and every time we'd go to the store I'd keep my eye peeled for the beautiful stockgirl. My history with the stockgirl ended a year later when Rachel and I were shopping for some post-sex ice cream.
Oh, what a giving guy I was in those days; hard-selling Vanilla just to make my Rachel all the happier for the Chunky Monkey I'd buy her in the end. I was also the kind of giving guy who--in the course of pitching Vanilla--saw fit to pitch love-eyes to the doe-eyed stockgirl who happened into the freezer aisle.
Boy, what a long walk home it was from Division Wholesomes that day. "Don't blame me," I had said, "it was the stockgirl who gave me love-eyes first."Long story short, I didn't get my spoon in any Chunky Monkey that day. And that wasn't the end to it, neither. The next day Rachel went out and got what she had said she'd never get; a dog. So, that was the end to it; never again would I be the cause of Rachel needing ice cream.
Driving east over The River of the West, I thought of my bad dog karma; how I really needed to address that load one of these days. Then again, that Chunky Monkey I'd missed out on with Rachel got me to thinking of ice cream.
Having driven over The River of the West, I got my face up in my windshield, looked left, looked right, had a grand old time assessing which women walking the sidewalks I'd like to have some post-sex ice cream with.
Driving east on Division, I got so caught up in the hunt, I drove right on by Division Wholesomes.
Swinging back round the block, I buckled down, got back to work on how a writer might squeeze a permission out of a lesbian.
"Say," I might say to the lesbian, "though I'm just your run-of-the-mill straight white male, I am a seeker of truth--and a writer to boot--and as such, I was wondering if I could use you in a short story I'm writing."
"My," she might say, "what a respectful straight white male; asking permission and all. Why, I have half a mind to reassess my blanket hatred of males."
"Male?" I might say to seal the deal. "Why, I never think of myself as such. I guess it's because I'm too busy serving humanity to trouble myself over who's a boy, who's a girl, who's somewhere in between, ha ha."
The lesbian might laugh here.
Or, she might not. Studies show lesbians had largely male brains. Though my brain had evolved well beyond male, I knew how competitive male brains were.
"What about that bastard Bob," the lesbian might say, "did you get a permission from him, or did he get off scot-free?"
"Scot-free," I'd have to confess. "But let me explain. See, Bob, like me, is a writer. Which is to say; a thief. And, see, it is an unwritten code of writers that a thief don't need no permission when stealing from fellow thief."
Laughing myself out of my pickup, I felt so thoroughly prepared for the lesbian, I cocked it up like some kind of Bob. "That's the angle, Anton; keep the lesbian laughing so you, the scheming writer, can take her for all she's got."
****
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