Post by Steve on Oct 10, 2008 19:01:50 GMT -5
I woke up with my eyelid raking green eye dirt a crossed the surface of the organ. I saw that Liz had already left for work, either propaganda pushing for an upcoming election or the grocery store (trying so hard to be organic) in North Haledon. It didn’t matter; I put my shoes on and made my way to the liquor store. Frank would be passed out at the counter and would need me to wake him.
Frank was a small guy, I wouldn’t even put him an inch passed five foot, short hair that gathered at the crown of his head and stopped everywhere the hair might interfere with his face. Years ago he was clean shaven and G.Q but school proved to be a letdown and after graduating from Fordham began his degree in alcoholism. Ironically it wasn’t until then that we spoke to each other as we had in elementary school. He was an Italian but never wore gold and spoke with a soft slurred intellectualistic humph to everything.
The thick glass door was wet and cold, the sun not shining on that part of the building until afternoon; I kicked the door a couple of times. Frank didn’t move. My foot ricocheted a few more times and on the last strike my foot squeaked and slid off to the right. He raised his head slowly, stared at me; then nodded that he knew I was there. A few seconds and he was opening the door.
I knew better than to talk to him, he wasn’t much of a morning person, he went behind the counter and pulled out two pints of Southern Comfort and they slid onto the counter. I gave him the sixteen fifty that I’d come to set aside in my budget grabbed the bottles and waved as I walked onto the street. He was relocking the door from the outside, ready to walk up a block to bed for the few hours before he began drinking to wake up for work.
I snapped the ribs of the bottle cap in the first bit of shade at the corner of Belmont and Pompton. That corner marked, among other things, the beginning of the hill. The sidewalk was usually littered with road kill or small rodents slaughtered by the stray cats. My camera was back home on the kitchen table. I drank to the good fortune of memory loss; for once it kept me from doing something less than sane.
There was new warmth inside of me that countered the slight chill of the pre-noon shade and I thought about visiting Derik. It had been a week or so since the last time we had spoke and it seemed better to do so now before the crack widened. I stopped and took a three-sip salute to the little creek halfway up the hill and shook my head at the little church just barely on the college campus.
The very top of the hill is where the college nests. From there it branched down and around the sides and into three different municipalities. There was a small slope just passed the campus where Pompton intersected with Hamburg which seemed more suited to be called the top of the hill with its layout of stores. Derik worked at one of those over-priced general stores where you can also get your prescriptions filled on the far left corner of the intersect. There was a car dealership a crossed from a “student friendly” pizza joint and a convenient store sat opposite of where Derik was employed.
His boss was standing by the front register, a small drinking type man, talking to a woman I had previously assumed was his wife but found she was a manager “friend” from up the road. He didn’t notice me as I walked passed and down the aisle directly in front of him. The woman, Patricia, had a sleazy air about her and capitalized on it by showing off the ink on her back with spaghetti straps and tube tops. She was the kind of woman that you saw and knew was insane in bed. A woman who’d do anything between the sheets.
As I passed cans of soup and paper plates I thought about the handfuls of ass she had neatly stored in her faded jeans. My hand slid under the waist of my pants and adjusted my chub comfortably.
I had scanned the condoms, the spermicidal twisted arm length and flavored, had walked most of the store looking for Derik until I decided to check out and use the store phone to call him. At the register Jack was still carrying on with Patti and she was bending over to choose a candy bar, or to show him her own Mounds. For whatever reason she was bent over and I was in heaven. “Say, what’s up Stan?” He wasn’t old but not young enough to use some of the slang that usually fell out of his mouth. “Same old shit different day, just waiting for some rain to wash it away.” I noticed he was turned around grabbing my cigarettes so I smiled at his little not-so-his broad. “Have you tried either of these kinds?” I held up a twisted and a ribbed ultra deluxe sensation, which the package boasted as the toughest, thinnest contraceptive on the market. “The ribbed feels like there’s something wrong, well...it isn’t much better than a normal condom. I mean, well, other woman might like it but I don’t, it doesn’t feel...” “Real.” Chimed in Jack. “Natural, feels more like a scientific breakthrough, the idea conceived by guys who have never gotten laid, and the twisted?” She nodded in agreement “the twisted aren’t bad...” “Are there any that are good?” Jack was jumping from her to I and back again. A customer came in and we stepped back to let them be catered.
“So did you decide?” Jack didn’t seem angry as much as surprised. “We agreed to try the new non-ribbed ultra thins.” Patty was leaning against the counter facing me. I handed a twenty to Jack and shrugged at what was said. “Do you think I could use your phone? I wanted to ring Derik and see if he was home.” “He was just in here about a half an hour ago. Said he was going home to replace strings on one of his guitars.” Patty was smiling and threw her hair back while catching a glimpse of Jack’s face. “Okay, thank you then.” I was waving good bye to the two of them when Jack turned to answer the phone, Patty pulled the front of her pants down to reveal a pink sequence butterfly. She spun around to show the string splitting her in half then blew a kiss over her shoulder. Sometimes it’s the dirtiest and sleaziest things
that gets you off. A woman who’d do anything between the sheets.
Hamburg Turnpike was busy; nearly noon, which meant everybody, was on the road for his or her lunch break, jamming turning lanes and flying passed people driving in the shoulder. I lit a cigarette and swung the bottle back tackling most the bottle that time. Inside my pocket I found a dollar fifty, ten cents more than the bus fare to Derik’s, and happily walked a crossed the four lanes of traffic to sit in the sun and wait for the bus.
It was mostly shaded, his neighborhood, a safe distance from the turnpike and highway. His house was a split-level tucked into the side of a hill; at the bottom were playgrounds and fields for the children in the area. The bus dropped me off at the diner right before Hamburg became one lane and I was drinking a wax cup of tap water a tender old waitress gave me when I asked if I could have anything “free” to drink. An asshole bear of a man replied that there was a hose outside, at this the grandmother turned and fetched me the water. Her hair was once black and age did nothing but strip it of the brilliance it had. It was twisted into a nest where a small wooden bead was hidden neatly and a long feather of hair fell from the center. I thanked her softly, bowing my head a bit, and she walked away to replenish some one’s coffee. I looked over at the man beast and told him that I liked sassy men, that we should have lunch tomorrow. Same place, same time.
The cup was empty as I made the right down the first of the last streets toward Derik’s. The sun was caught in a net of tree limbs; yellow trapezoids and diamonds fell on the ground. The last street, always full sun, I drank the last of the first booze and lit a cigarette.
His mother was tending the back garden and waved hello. “I think he’s upstairs on the computer hun. The porch door is unlocked; you can go through there if you like.” “Thank you. How are you and your flowers?” “We’re fine, enjoying the day off. Getting rid of some of those pesky weeds.” “It’s the best day to play plant genocide. It’s just the perfect sun for it.” “You kids, did you write that book? Oh and how’s your little broad?” Mrs. ______ was the sweetest mother but two stars from being a saint, which were of course divided between Derik and his sister’s eyes. We both took a second to chuckle. She always said I didn’t laugh enough and I knew that she was laughing more at seeing me do so than at the fact that she used the proper word for what Liz was to me. “Could I say negative and cover both questions?” She laughed harder. “I suppose you could. Have you written anything new?” One of her best qualities was how she could pick out what exactly to leave out of conversation. She was excellent at deciphering hints. “A couple of songs and a notebook of poems. Nothing really though.” “That sounds nice though, you have time, you’re still just a sapling.” She looked over her shoulder to give her smile that worked like a sedative to ill feelings. “He’s upstairs, I think he’ll be glad to see you.” I thanked her and walked into the house removing my shoes at the door.
His father was an icicle of a man and liked his house to reflect that. The sun burn, wherever it was on my body, ached as the air wrapped my body. The frozen floor sent my feet to sleep and every step stung as I walked up the stair.
I heard him lightly strumming, his foot tapping the ground sounded spry from the rubber the sole. I sat outside of the room opening the second bottle letting him finished undisturbed. I recognized the song from a coffeehouse show he did a little while back; it was the song I couldn’t help but to feel responsible for. It was a night I didn’t want to remember right then and I piled caramel liquor on it waiting for the sun to ignite it later in the day.
His father grunted passed me and barged into the room flapping off some account of what happened in a store earlier that day. I tried to steer the conversation to me but I heard Derik stumble over the seventh in the E chord I knew as his ending note. “That’s nice dad.” You could see the scarred battlefield of their relationship. “Did you bring home more napkins?” “Of course I did, you can never have too many.” I chuckled and the old man twisted round on his spine and made a frail snarl. “Are we going to talk about putting things up our bums today? Or is it who’s hot Tuesday?” “Very funny.” There was a pause in his thoughts that meant he was on the verge of saying something asinine or insulting. The type of Bogart jive to fuck up your day. “You know Stan; the bill passed recalling all cars older than ` 94. What year is yours?” There it was. “It’s an `86.” “That’s right it is, hmmm...if it was a little younger they are doing trade INS up to I think `93. They replace it with a `96 or `95, which is the new unofficial bottom year.” “Well what’s the bottom year?” “`95.” He walked back passed me without saying another word to either of us.
“He’s grumpy.” “You’re drunk.” “Which I think is a much better thing.” “So how’s the song coming?” It didn’t take him by surprise but there was a shade of relief to just skip to the topics we have in common for now. We’d talk about other things later on with a drink each of us. “I’m going to record a couple of things again, obvious reasons. You can relax but you have to be quiet.” “Could I crash in your bed and you wake me up when you’re finished?” He shrugged, “sure” and slid the headphones over his ears.
At the end of the hall was the kitchen with his father at the table reading his paper. I stumbled down the stair and into Derik’s room, slid onto the bed dreading the dreams I'd have, drunk and sun dried.
Frank climbed the wooden steps behind the building up to the second floor. The top landing was entirely shaded by a deciduous tree. He reached into his pocket and keys leapt one by one into the air. The door unlocked and he hung the keys right by the door. Frank raised his eyes to the door as he was closing it and saw a post-it note. “WE NEED TO TALK” written in thick marker. A condom was nailed to the door left of the stick-it and he tore the note and it fell to the ground below.
The door cracked closed shutting any light out of the apartment. His feet abandoned his shoes by the small round table, a vase holding thin skin like petals and molding pudding stalks set there, and collapsed forward onto the extended futon.
He slapped an alarm clock and let his arm drag him under into delusions and drama-less dreams where time is nothing but a face you vaguely remember.
I woke with my head telling me I was dehydrated. There were voices coming from upstairs. The scraping of chairs meant it was supper and the orange sky meant it would be back tomorrow with a vengeance. I gathered myself and splashed my face in the bathroom sink gulping handfuls of water as well. I walked upstairs and Mrs.______ invited me to sit for supper. A plate of cabbage and corn beef was set in front of me then she took the deli mustard from the fridge and placed it next to my glass of water. Ashley had her father cornered in a conversation he didn’t like and he snapped a quick end to it and the room was silent. “Why didn’t you wake me up man?” “You seemed like you needed your sleep. I tried to wake you but you rolled back over.” Derik laughed and continued to chew and cut his meat. “What? Were you up last night?” His father was irritated and Mrs. _______ heard it. “Joe, he has his reasons. Are you still working for that company?” “Oh yeah the career of salesman.” Mrs. _______ shot him a look and he turned his aggression towards the cabbage that wouldn’t flip and stay on his fork. “No, the company filed for bankruptcy, I’ve been meaning to go to unemployment, and I was up reading this book last night.” “Hmmm, what did the company sell again?” “Paper printing. Small business cards or greeting card sorts.” I stabbed a piece of meat and dipped it into mustard. “You’re fucking weird dude.” Derik was watching as I tossed it into my mouth covered in mustard. “MMM...vinegar, mustard powder and pepper.” Ashley reached for the mustard and drizzled over her entire plate. She never spoke much but her face twisted and snapped back into place after tasting what she had done to her dinner.
I helped clear the table, rinse the dishes and wrap the leftovers. Joe and Ashley went separate ways, leaving their plates where they sat. Derik was alone at the table with his mother and me buzzing around him. “How’s Dan doing?” His mother leaned backwards so he could hear her over the running tap. “He’s okay, his band played somewhere in Kearney last weekend. He’s happy.” “That’s good dear. Did he find a young woman yet?” “I don’t think so mom.” Mrs. _______ shrugged her shoulders and finished up the dishes. Everything else had been done so I sat a crossed from Derik. The water shut off and she turned about drying her hands. “So, what are you boys up to tonight?” “Oh, start some fires go get us a few hookers...” “To throw on the fire of course.” “Go do some drugs” “Because we felt bad about the hookers.” “Steal someone’s pet” “well, not steal so much as hide it in the freezer.” “May be play some guitar” “Yeah, play some guitar.” It was the usual way we spoke when the two of us felt sarcastic, which usually depended on when Derik felt so, I was the constant sarcasm in the pair. “Well, that sounds fine boys. Try and squeeze some sleep into that busy schedule.” She kissed the top of his head and hugged me before relaxing downstairs with the dog and an entertaining mini-series.
"Coffee and a soda?" He didn't like coffee or teas so he got his caffeine from soft drinks. "Sure. Which diner?" He grabbed his keys. "I guess we'll decide on the road."
Frank was a small guy, I wouldn’t even put him an inch passed five foot, short hair that gathered at the crown of his head and stopped everywhere the hair might interfere with his face. Years ago he was clean shaven and G.Q but school proved to be a letdown and after graduating from Fordham began his degree in alcoholism. Ironically it wasn’t until then that we spoke to each other as we had in elementary school. He was an Italian but never wore gold and spoke with a soft slurred intellectualistic humph to everything.
The thick glass door was wet and cold, the sun not shining on that part of the building until afternoon; I kicked the door a couple of times. Frank didn’t move. My foot ricocheted a few more times and on the last strike my foot squeaked and slid off to the right. He raised his head slowly, stared at me; then nodded that he knew I was there. A few seconds and he was opening the door.
I knew better than to talk to him, he wasn’t much of a morning person, he went behind the counter and pulled out two pints of Southern Comfort and they slid onto the counter. I gave him the sixteen fifty that I’d come to set aside in my budget grabbed the bottles and waved as I walked onto the street. He was relocking the door from the outside, ready to walk up a block to bed for the few hours before he began drinking to wake up for work.
I snapped the ribs of the bottle cap in the first bit of shade at the corner of Belmont and Pompton. That corner marked, among other things, the beginning of the hill. The sidewalk was usually littered with road kill or small rodents slaughtered by the stray cats. My camera was back home on the kitchen table. I drank to the good fortune of memory loss; for once it kept me from doing something less than sane.
There was new warmth inside of me that countered the slight chill of the pre-noon shade and I thought about visiting Derik. It had been a week or so since the last time we had spoke and it seemed better to do so now before the crack widened. I stopped and took a three-sip salute to the little creek halfway up the hill and shook my head at the little church just barely on the college campus.
The very top of the hill is where the college nests. From there it branched down and around the sides and into three different municipalities. There was a small slope just passed the campus where Pompton intersected with Hamburg which seemed more suited to be called the top of the hill with its layout of stores. Derik worked at one of those over-priced general stores where you can also get your prescriptions filled on the far left corner of the intersect. There was a car dealership a crossed from a “student friendly” pizza joint and a convenient store sat opposite of where Derik was employed.
His boss was standing by the front register, a small drinking type man, talking to a woman I had previously assumed was his wife but found she was a manager “friend” from up the road. He didn’t notice me as I walked passed and down the aisle directly in front of him. The woman, Patricia, had a sleazy air about her and capitalized on it by showing off the ink on her back with spaghetti straps and tube tops. She was the kind of woman that you saw and knew was insane in bed. A woman who’d do anything between the sheets.
As I passed cans of soup and paper plates I thought about the handfuls of ass she had neatly stored in her faded jeans. My hand slid under the waist of my pants and adjusted my chub comfortably.
I had scanned the condoms, the spermicidal twisted arm length and flavored, had walked most of the store looking for Derik until I decided to check out and use the store phone to call him. At the register Jack was still carrying on with Patti and she was bending over to choose a candy bar, or to show him her own Mounds. For whatever reason she was bent over and I was in heaven. “Say, what’s up Stan?” He wasn’t old but not young enough to use some of the slang that usually fell out of his mouth. “Same old shit different day, just waiting for some rain to wash it away.” I noticed he was turned around grabbing my cigarettes so I smiled at his little not-so-his broad. “Have you tried either of these kinds?” I held up a twisted and a ribbed ultra deluxe sensation, which the package boasted as the toughest, thinnest contraceptive on the market. “The ribbed feels like there’s something wrong, well...it isn’t much better than a normal condom. I mean, well, other woman might like it but I don’t, it doesn’t feel...” “Real.” Chimed in Jack. “Natural, feels more like a scientific breakthrough, the idea conceived by guys who have never gotten laid, and the twisted?” She nodded in agreement “the twisted aren’t bad...” “Are there any that are good?” Jack was jumping from her to I and back again. A customer came in and we stepped back to let them be catered.
“So did you decide?” Jack didn’t seem angry as much as surprised. “We agreed to try the new non-ribbed ultra thins.” Patty was leaning against the counter facing me. I handed a twenty to Jack and shrugged at what was said. “Do you think I could use your phone? I wanted to ring Derik and see if he was home.” “He was just in here about a half an hour ago. Said he was going home to replace strings on one of his guitars.” Patty was smiling and threw her hair back while catching a glimpse of Jack’s face. “Okay, thank you then.” I was waving good bye to the two of them when Jack turned to answer the phone, Patty pulled the front of her pants down to reveal a pink sequence butterfly. She spun around to show the string splitting her in half then blew a kiss over her shoulder. Sometimes it’s the dirtiest and sleaziest things
that gets you off. A woman who’d do anything between the sheets.
Hamburg Turnpike was busy; nearly noon, which meant everybody, was on the road for his or her lunch break, jamming turning lanes and flying passed people driving in the shoulder. I lit a cigarette and swung the bottle back tackling most the bottle that time. Inside my pocket I found a dollar fifty, ten cents more than the bus fare to Derik’s, and happily walked a crossed the four lanes of traffic to sit in the sun and wait for the bus.
It was mostly shaded, his neighborhood, a safe distance from the turnpike and highway. His house was a split-level tucked into the side of a hill; at the bottom were playgrounds and fields for the children in the area. The bus dropped me off at the diner right before Hamburg became one lane and I was drinking a wax cup of tap water a tender old waitress gave me when I asked if I could have anything “free” to drink. An asshole bear of a man replied that there was a hose outside, at this the grandmother turned and fetched me the water. Her hair was once black and age did nothing but strip it of the brilliance it had. It was twisted into a nest where a small wooden bead was hidden neatly and a long feather of hair fell from the center. I thanked her softly, bowing my head a bit, and she walked away to replenish some one’s coffee. I looked over at the man beast and told him that I liked sassy men, that we should have lunch tomorrow. Same place, same time.
The cup was empty as I made the right down the first of the last streets toward Derik’s. The sun was caught in a net of tree limbs; yellow trapezoids and diamonds fell on the ground. The last street, always full sun, I drank the last of the first booze and lit a cigarette.
His mother was tending the back garden and waved hello. “I think he’s upstairs on the computer hun. The porch door is unlocked; you can go through there if you like.” “Thank you. How are you and your flowers?” “We’re fine, enjoying the day off. Getting rid of some of those pesky weeds.” “It’s the best day to play plant genocide. It’s just the perfect sun for it.” “You kids, did you write that book? Oh and how’s your little broad?” Mrs. ______ was the sweetest mother but two stars from being a saint, which were of course divided between Derik and his sister’s eyes. We both took a second to chuckle. She always said I didn’t laugh enough and I knew that she was laughing more at seeing me do so than at the fact that she used the proper word for what Liz was to me. “Could I say negative and cover both questions?” She laughed harder. “I suppose you could. Have you written anything new?” One of her best qualities was how she could pick out what exactly to leave out of conversation. She was excellent at deciphering hints. “A couple of songs and a notebook of poems. Nothing really though.” “That sounds nice though, you have time, you’re still just a sapling.” She looked over her shoulder to give her smile that worked like a sedative to ill feelings. “He’s upstairs, I think he’ll be glad to see you.” I thanked her and walked into the house removing my shoes at the door.
His father was an icicle of a man and liked his house to reflect that. The sun burn, wherever it was on my body, ached as the air wrapped my body. The frozen floor sent my feet to sleep and every step stung as I walked up the stair.
I heard him lightly strumming, his foot tapping the ground sounded spry from the rubber the sole. I sat outside of the room opening the second bottle letting him finished undisturbed. I recognized the song from a coffeehouse show he did a little while back; it was the song I couldn’t help but to feel responsible for. It was a night I didn’t want to remember right then and I piled caramel liquor on it waiting for the sun to ignite it later in the day.
His father grunted passed me and barged into the room flapping off some account of what happened in a store earlier that day. I tried to steer the conversation to me but I heard Derik stumble over the seventh in the E chord I knew as his ending note. “That’s nice dad.” You could see the scarred battlefield of their relationship. “Did you bring home more napkins?” “Of course I did, you can never have too many.” I chuckled and the old man twisted round on his spine and made a frail snarl. “Are we going to talk about putting things up our bums today? Or is it who’s hot Tuesday?” “Very funny.” There was a pause in his thoughts that meant he was on the verge of saying something asinine or insulting. The type of Bogart jive to fuck up your day. “You know Stan; the bill passed recalling all cars older than ` 94. What year is yours?” There it was. “It’s an `86.” “That’s right it is, hmmm...if it was a little younger they are doing trade INS up to I think `93. They replace it with a `96 or `95, which is the new unofficial bottom year.” “Well what’s the bottom year?” “`95.” He walked back passed me without saying another word to either of us.
“He’s grumpy.” “You’re drunk.” “Which I think is a much better thing.” “So how’s the song coming?” It didn’t take him by surprise but there was a shade of relief to just skip to the topics we have in common for now. We’d talk about other things later on with a drink each of us. “I’m going to record a couple of things again, obvious reasons. You can relax but you have to be quiet.” “Could I crash in your bed and you wake me up when you’re finished?” He shrugged, “sure” and slid the headphones over his ears.
At the end of the hall was the kitchen with his father at the table reading his paper. I stumbled down the stair and into Derik’s room, slid onto the bed dreading the dreams I'd have, drunk and sun dried.
Frank climbed the wooden steps behind the building up to the second floor. The top landing was entirely shaded by a deciduous tree. He reached into his pocket and keys leapt one by one into the air. The door unlocked and he hung the keys right by the door. Frank raised his eyes to the door as he was closing it and saw a post-it note. “WE NEED TO TALK” written in thick marker. A condom was nailed to the door left of the stick-it and he tore the note and it fell to the ground below.
The door cracked closed shutting any light out of the apartment. His feet abandoned his shoes by the small round table, a vase holding thin skin like petals and molding pudding stalks set there, and collapsed forward onto the extended futon.
He slapped an alarm clock and let his arm drag him under into delusions and drama-less dreams where time is nothing but a face you vaguely remember.
I woke with my head telling me I was dehydrated. There were voices coming from upstairs. The scraping of chairs meant it was supper and the orange sky meant it would be back tomorrow with a vengeance. I gathered myself and splashed my face in the bathroom sink gulping handfuls of water as well. I walked upstairs and Mrs.______ invited me to sit for supper. A plate of cabbage and corn beef was set in front of me then she took the deli mustard from the fridge and placed it next to my glass of water. Ashley had her father cornered in a conversation he didn’t like and he snapped a quick end to it and the room was silent. “Why didn’t you wake me up man?” “You seemed like you needed your sleep. I tried to wake you but you rolled back over.” Derik laughed and continued to chew and cut his meat. “What? Were you up last night?” His father was irritated and Mrs. _______ heard it. “Joe, he has his reasons. Are you still working for that company?” “Oh yeah the career of salesman.” Mrs. _______ shot him a look and he turned his aggression towards the cabbage that wouldn’t flip and stay on his fork. “No, the company filed for bankruptcy, I’ve been meaning to go to unemployment, and I was up reading this book last night.” “Hmmm, what did the company sell again?” “Paper printing. Small business cards or greeting card sorts.” I stabbed a piece of meat and dipped it into mustard. “You’re fucking weird dude.” Derik was watching as I tossed it into my mouth covered in mustard. “MMM...vinegar, mustard powder and pepper.” Ashley reached for the mustard and drizzled over her entire plate. She never spoke much but her face twisted and snapped back into place after tasting what she had done to her dinner.
I helped clear the table, rinse the dishes and wrap the leftovers. Joe and Ashley went separate ways, leaving their plates where they sat. Derik was alone at the table with his mother and me buzzing around him. “How’s Dan doing?” His mother leaned backwards so he could hear her over the running tap. “He’s okay, his band played somewhere in Kearney last weekend. He’s happy.” “That’s good dear. Did he find a young woman yet?” “I don’t think so mom.” Mrs. _______ shrugged her shoulders and finished up the dishes. Everything else had been done so I sat a crossed from Derik. The water shut off and she turned about drying her hands. “So, what are you boys up to tonight?” “Oh, start some fires go get us a few hookers...” “To throw on the fire of course.” “Go do some drugs” “Because we felt bad about the hookers.” “Steal someone’s pet” “well, not steal so much as hide it in the freezer.” “May be play some guitar” “Yeah, play some guitar.” It was the usual way we spoke when the two of us felt sarcastic, which usually depended on when Derik felt so, I was the constant sarcasm in the pair. “Well, that sounds fine boys. Try and squeeze some sleep into that busy schedule.” She kissed the top of his head and hugged me before relaxing downstairs with the dog and an entertaining mini-series.
"Coffee and a soda?" He didn't like coffee or teas so he got his caffeine from soft drinks. "Sure. Which diner?" He grabbed his keys. "I guess we'll decide on the road."