* * *Chad opened the window.
“Now can I smoke?”
“Go for it,” said Ed. “I’m not a smoke nazi, just don’t fuck up my car.”
Chad lit up and said, “I dug that there were almost no rules.”
“No rules?” Ed glanced right and cruised through a pale yellow light.
“I mean, I could smoke everywhere, for one thing.”
“I thought it was all outside.”
“There was a sort of café like thing. Lost of people hung out there and had coffee and lit up. Like the good old days.”
“Tobacco?”
“Mostly. And, you know, like all these art cars and shit, people piled up in ‘em, totally unsafe. I rode the Teeter Totter of Death--“
“Hah!”
“Sucker went up and down and around in circles too. Had wheels under the seats. There was a safety sign showing a guy getting his head knocked off.”
“Cool.”
“I almost fell off the fucker. Oh, but dude! The Thunderdome!”
“Thunderdome?” Ed smirked and went right onto Hillsborough, turning wide around a woman with a baby stroller. She glared at him. “Like in the movie?”
“Totally. Dude. I totally kicked some dude’s ass.”
“No.”
“Really. We picked each other in the crowd, you know, fight a friend but I didn’t have any friends and I guess he didn’t either. They strapped us into these bungee-like things that were hanging down inside the dome--“
“A geodesic dome?”
“Yeah. And pulled us back and let us go and BAM! We slammed into each other and wailed away with these smurf bats or whatever they’re called. We got each other good. I kicked him in the face and he got all pissed. It was awesome.”
“Sounds fun.”
“No, seriously. He wanted to kill me. I knocked his bat away and he started on me with his fists. There were all these biker dudes running it and they pulled us apart.”
“And stopped it?”
“Hell, no, just gave him his bat back and started us again. I had a black eye for two days. It was great.”
“So who won?”
“I did. I got more fair hits or something. Whoa, dude!”
“What?”
“Stop! Stop! Pull over!”
“What? What? I can’t! There’s traffic!”
Ed slammed on the brakes. A pickup truck blew its horn and went around.
“Oh. Now there isn’t.”
Ed went into reverse, backed up and slid into the parking lot of a small shopping center.
“How’s that?” he said.
“Dude, you’re crazy,” said Chad, grinning. “Check it out.”
Chad was pointing with his cigarette at a sandwich shop at the corner.
“See that blonde,” he said, “talking to that old black guy? She was there.”
“That chick?”
“Yeah! Dude. I told you there were Packers there. Knew about ‘em from the internet, went and met up. Met her. I totally fucked her, man.”
“Did not.”
“Did too.”
“Did not. You didn’t go all the way across country to Burning Man, meet some chick from Raleigh, and fuck her.”
Chad stared at Ed awhile.
“You expect me to hook up with some total stranger?”
“I don’t expect you to hook up at all.”
“Fuck you, asshole.”
“So go say hello.”
“No. She was a bitch.”
“You’re a total liar, you know that?”
“Yeah, I am. But I think she was there. Seriously. I recognize the tatt.”
“Boy, you crack me up,” said Ed, and turned out of the lot and back into traffic. Chad watched the woman’s cigarette smoke curl around her neck as they drove away.
10 comments:
Gotta say your research is pretty good. My first thought was you must be from around here somewhere. Otherwise how'd you nail down the location so close. Then I thought, yeah you coulda found the original post of the photo and that would've given you the street and the city and a pretty close location. Wasn't until after I'd looked up the original post that I thought you might've just Googled the place... it's pretty much one of a kind. And "Packers"? I'd say it's not a term commonly in use, but I'm old... so maybe it is now. Took a couple of reads to make that connection.
Ed and Chad must've gotten a way closer look at the blonde than I did though... I missed the tatt.
The story's not as implausible as Ed thinks though... I've run into people from Raleigh lots of places you wouldn't expect. Like when my son went to school 800 miles away in Upper Tundra, NY and we ran across a mother and daughter from here at the college bookstore.
The other plausible part is that If I'd overheard the conversation between the principals, I'd probably have understood it just about as well. In a broader context I could probably have picked it up, but the short version left me feeling a little disoriented. (And really old.)
I wonder if this girl will ever know she's gotten famous?
All Google. I made up Packers because the school athletics page referred to the Wolfpack and I didn't spend more time finding out what they really called themselves. Drawback of not following college sports ...
See, I knew BM was all about peyote and orgasms.
cheech and chong meet edward hooper on google. i can hear tom waits crooning in the back ground. complex with smoky overtones.
so, you get to showcase your short fiction chops-and we get a few of the burn tales at the same time. that works nicely.
peyote :( is an endangered species. it wasn't meant to be white mans medicine, but that didn't stop people from pillaging more than their fair share, starting a couple of decades ago.(yeah, i'm frickin' debbie downer over here.)
No worries, Annie. Vodka pops my cork just fine ;)
So, no telethon for peyote? No "Save the Peyote" bumper stickers? Shame.
All Google.
I was just thinking of this the other day, trying to stretch my memory back to what a horrible PITA it was when you had to go to the library to look this stuff up. It must've taken people years to write books. :)
This feels like a total insider story. I was disoriented from the start. The "all dialogue, little action" approach didn't help with keeping it straight; who was saying what got a little confusing at points.
The good details "bothered" me, too. The casually coasting through the yellow light, slamming on the brakes and pissing off the pickup truck driver... Ed's a lousy driver! :)
I would like to have seen more action filling in between all the dialogue, and a sense for who Ed and Chad are.
Thanks, Farrago. When roughing these things out, I have a fear of loading in too much detail. I want things to move. Feedback to the effect that I may be moving too fast, that some of the detail actually wouldn't hurt, is very useful.
But then, there was that five hundred word limit, and I had given myself only twenty five minutes of lunchtime ... :)
Thought the all dialogue thing was good in telling the story. Could have been a story by itself without the subject photo. I thought the photo was the gig?
Oh... and I can tell you what is is hip. I finally found some sunglasses that are as hip as I am.
-d
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