Paperback 143

       Driving to our Writing Circle, I stopped thinking of wine that I might check on Bob riding shotgun. No, wine was my best bet now that my hired gun was out of ammo. Oh, I had tried baiting Bob with the usual; roll-in-the-hay this, nail-the-chick that, but Bob wasn't biting bait as usual.
       "Makes a guy think," was all Bob had to say.
       Hell, I had even tried baiting Bob with bait that was unusual. Told him that his girl--his bad girl, Joni--had inspired me to take a turn towards the bad myself. That good girls was where I'd gone wrong. "No, Bob, I bet if I got me a bad girl of my own, I'd have better luck turning the short into the long where my fiction is concerned." 
       "Makes a guy think," was all Bob had to say.
       And who could blame Bob for thinking? His college buddy had killed himself. Hell, that made me think. Which was OK. Way better than thinking of the roadkill I had lying on my dash. That ex-wife short story I'd driven over and over re-writing.
       Ya, and now because I'd gone soft on cry baby Bob, I had to read the damned thing.
       Damn, I needed a drink.  
       "Bob, who's bringing the wine tonight?"
       "Makes a guy think," was all Bob had to say.
       "Well, she had better have brought enough this time."
       A good way to curb anxiety, is to create a distraction. I reached over, opened my glove box door, begged Bob to start banging it. 
       "I'm dead serious, Bob. I've grown so accustomed to the banging, I can't drive safe without it."
       Bob didn't bang it, but he did take note of something inside. "Damn," he said, removing the paperback, "I've been looking all over for this."
       That's right, there was that other side to my sidekick--his literary side. No, what better distraction than debating the ins and outs of our favorite literary genre; shack-lit.
       Puffing up like a professor, I went first, extrapolating on my favorite protagonist-in-shack, Glahn, of Knut Hamsun's Pan. 
       Bob shot back, championing his favorite, Mellors, the protagonist in the paperback he was now shoving in my face.

       "That Glahn of yours," Bob scoffed, "what a woman he was; persecuting himself over the lover he couldn't have."
       "That Mellors of yours," I scoffed back, "what a man he was; pleasuring only himself by forcing John Thomas on Lady Jane."
       Of course, characters in literature could never hold a candle to real life characters. Characters too bizarre for any reader to buy into if one tried pushing it as fiction. Characters like that weed Joni, dropping by with a silver spoon bolted to her tongue. 
       I asked Bob about it.
       "Na," Bob said, "that was her idea."
       I didn't say anything. 
       "See, Anton, that first day in the grocery store she didn't like the way you looked down your nose at her. So, later, when I told her about that sick-fuck spoon fantasy of yours, she saw how she could use it to screw with you."
       "Down my nose? I'm sorry your Joni misread my expression. It's probably that I'm just shy."
       "It's probably that you're just arrogant."
       I thought of delineating for Bob, the difference between the eye of arrogance and the eye we old souls cast over the workings of the nether earth plane. But green souls like Bob--sober or no--didn't have the gear-works to comprehend such fine delineations. It would be like trying to talk a squirrel out of climbing a tree.
       What Bob did have, I had to believe, was gear-works enough to comprehend the major thing his girl, Joni, was clearly getting for me.
       I closed my Professor eye, opened my cavalier eye. "I don't know, Bob. Your girl screwing with me is one thing, but for her to go to all the trouble of meeting my complicated spoon fantasy, and then, on top of that, going out in public with no make-up to further push my attraction buttons, well, makes a guy wonder what message she's really trying to send."
       "Get off your high horse," Bob said. "Joni never wears make-up."
       "But she wore tons that day you hit on her in the grocery store."
       "That was a fluke. She was on her way home from her mom's. Joni hates make-up, but gobs it on for mom."
       "Mom?"
       "Her mom wants grandchildren."
       "Wow, Bob, you're a victim of false advertising. And the bedroom, Bob. How the hell can John Thomas find his hard hat when Lady Jane makes her entrance with no mask on?"
       "I'm surprised myself. But, you know, Joni's been an eye opener for me. I can see now, make-up isn't that big a deal."
       This concerned me. This was like a Ford man browsing the Chevy lot. I closed my cavalier eye that I might dust Bob with my detective eye.
       Sure, that's what this was: Bob and Joni's ploy to screw with me, phase two.

****