I sipped on the large shake for a good fifteen minutes, calming down just enough to look up through the windshield at the sky. Though my dashboard’s clock flashed 8:00, it was still as bright as it was at noon. I had expected a red or orange or pinkish dusk and became strangely disappointed that a light blue, cloudless sky was there, wringing the low city buildings. Squat brick law offices and upscale retirement villages. A sky like that brought a dull boredom, a frustrating feeling of laziness to a spot directly behind my eyes. It was the supremely unsatisfying combination that always saved itself for the Sunday evenings I found myself alone, stationary, in my car.
"He was running like somebody who eludes the law for a living."
Still, I didn’t want to drive my stick-shift with a huge, melting milkshake and a lit cigar burning away in the ashtray. I pulled a lever, reclined the soft, navy velour seat and thought music to be a good idea to calm my nerves.
I turned on the radio to a static.
“The American dream.” I laughed a little to myself, took another hard swig, then turned the radio to the only station that didn’t play country. There was no music, just some advertisement, a corps of trumpets blaring.
Very regal, I thought.
Then, the voice of Martin in the Morning. I always got a laugh out of the guy. A scornful laugh, I admitted, but only because he was the city’s wacky morning DJ and also the singer of the most solemn hymns for St. Patrick’s during the Good Friday Mass. Every year when he belted, “Were you there when they crucified the Lord?” I had to hold in the titters.
I turned up the volume to see if I could get a good laugh.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t the usual Martin who talked of weird news or crazy factoids. It was a calm, urbane persona used only in commercials. “That’s this weekend. Cumberland’s Culture Extravaganza: Elegance for you and the family. On the Mall. Have a drink, a steak at one of the finest eateries Western Maryland has to offer. Marvel at the landscapes of famous painters from around the area. Bring the children. Come see the animals.”
I cut off the radio.
“Come see the animals,” I repeated, looking at my milkshake, shaking it a little. “The fucking animals.”
The line of people outside of Dunch’s had dissolved into Roy, an elderly man and his grandson, two teen girls dressed in bright red Fort Hill sweats, and Lauren Holtz in the window.
She was a disaffected blonde skank with heavy, waxen makeup, and eye, lip, and ear piercings. I had gone to the public high school with her before I was expelled, and when I bought my milkshake from her, I wondered if she remembered me.
I ordered, said “Hey Lauren,” and she responded with only the price I owed. It pissed me off at first, but I took her lack of memory for nothing, blamed the August heat for my irritation, and assuaged my ego with the idea that I looked much more handsome than I did as a freshman, and the fact that she had never gone to college, never married, and worked as a cashier at a fucking ice cream shop.
I ripped my key out the ignition and got out of the car to toss the milkshake into Dunch’s bright red trashcans.
Lauren arched out of the drive-thru window and began to hand Roy another chocolate cone. She was short; her tits looked big and plush as they pressed against a white plastic border around the window.
I tossed the shake and considered the possibilities of getting her number, fucking her.
But then, Roy. With his hands on the brick surrounding the window, his head close to hers, his mouth taut, he kissed Lauren on her pale, closed lips.
I heard the window shut, then from within Dunch’s, “I’m calling the fucking police!”
Another elderly voice, female, gently expressed some vague sympathy from inside the shop.
Then Roy, gargling, pounded the window with the back of two limp arms. “Don’t baby. Don’t go and do that.” He took a step back and put his hands up to block something.
Lauren smacked the window open, threw her forearms up and raked them over her lips. “No! No! Get the fuck out of here.” She spat. “I will not fucking calm down. You get the flying fuck out of here before I fucking kill you.” She kept on hocking up saliva and spurting near Roy’s feet: a particularly masculine gesture that turned me off to the idea of fucking her.
“Okay, baby. Okay, baby.” Roy was now jumping up and down, possibly out of some alien feeling of remorse.
She threw a cup full of dark soda out of the window and screamed, “Go!” and “Get!”
The old guy and his grandson pulled back to the street and were watching in mild horror, and the teenage girls giggled and basically talked shit like, “Oh, I bet she liked that!”
Roy pulled his arms down, stared vaguely into the window for maybe three seconds, and then took off running. He jumped a fire hydrant, crossed the entrance of a pawn shop and kept on burning down the road. It was then that I knew Roy realized what he had done. He was running like somebody who eludes the law for a living. A gradient speed of fast to lightning.
I stayed around the parking lot to see if any cops showed. But after fifteen minutes or so, I guessed that nobody had called.
I got back in the car, took the remaining third of the stogie from the ashtray and puffed on it with a smile. Its smoke leaked up from the lit end in a stiff wire of transparent gray, filled the car with a light haze. The smell of burning soothed me. I pulled out of my spot for a drive around the town.
Continue to Part 3 »
