Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of living in such a secluded neighborhood, like this peninsula we find ourselves in, is that what seemed quaint and bucolic must soon turn monotonous, for there is but one long, drawn out route entering and exiting this remote wooden plot. Every. Single. Time. Call me a jaded, unrepentant urbanist, but there’s something to be said for leaving one’s home and having a wealth of potential routes at the ready.
So here we are. But if the drive back to civilization is a snooze, at least I can count on compelling though scattershot conversation from that duo up front. What I can make of it, anyway. While with one half of my brain I’m contemplating the evening ahead, scrambling for some sort of insight to prevent it from turning into the pointless, drunken incoherence of last night, with the other I’m listening to these two ramble on, to the ever looping tune of the Moody Blues.
“Jammerz, huh?” Faraday’s shouting, “isn’t that the next, uh, poker deal? Might as well hang out there until it kicks off tonight.”
“What? No, uh, actually it was at Jammerz last night. How messed up were you? I’m pretty sure I told you that’s where we were heading. They even talked me into signing up somehow.”
“How much is that, anyway?” I manage to insert, leaning slightly into the gap between their seats. Already, I am selective with my phrasing, plotting every utterance for maximum efficiency. Working up the effort to scream above the wind is one thing, but I am also going slightly hoarse. Meanwhile, Tom holds up a pair of fingers, then twists his wrist, which is one advantage those seated in front possess.
“Well Christ, how the hell should I know?” Faraday shrugs, though his hands are both on the wheel, “you know how it is in these places, it’s so fucking loud you just nod and pop a handful of peanuts in your mouth and finish off your beer. You could have told me you were blowing up the White House and I would have smiled and waved.”
“Two bills? Are you kidding me?”
“Yeah, but it is for a good cause, though,” Tom allows, head sideways to pitch his voice approximately in my direction.
“It’s a charity or some shit, right?” Faraday questions, then adds, “I’m off to a decent start, actually. Probably screwed myself skipping last night, though. But maybe not.”
“Well I mean do we really want to spend x consecutive hours hanging out in a bar again anyway?” Tom says, the voice of reason I’m not quite confident enough to project. “Call me wildly ambitious here (holds hands up, shakes them for effect), but I do have a couple other ideas for how to spend my spring break.”
“You have a plan?” Faraday asks, and his head looks from this angle to nearly rest upon the wheel, as he faces Tom with a quizzical expression. Now the professor straightens up and squares himself in the seat, suddenly the very picture of sound posture. “But, eh, whoo…what I really need to do, I really need to track down these dickheads holding my boat hostage. Instead of all this other…you know what, though, what we should have done was pool our resources. Buy in once between us and split the prize. Or actually I guess we still could – combine our cards and split the prize. That’s not a bad idea.”
Tom’s chin rises slightly, along with the corners of his mouth, conspiring to display a crooked, incredulous grin. “What, you think you’re the first person to come up with this? And anyway, how would we split a television?”
And in such fashion, they have entertained me to outskirts of a town named Houck, without my ever pondering our destination. On the left, we pass three consecutive businesses which are all self-storage facilities, each a different company, color scheme, orientation, and square acreage consumed. Followed by a boat repair enterprise which Faraday apparently never considered, but maybe should have, and in the distance beyond this I spot the yellowish brown bricks of an unfamiliar local bank, as we are already nearing this charming community’s downtown. Meanwhile, on the right, some kind of miniature golf slash rock climbing wall complex. The speed limit has dropped down to 25 but we are creeping along even slower than this, behind a pair of puttering vehicles, the lead one a maroon SUV. We are moving at such a glacial pace, in fact, that I am able to count the parking slots. Four lines of sixteen each in a pattern of 1-2-1, the center ones abutting and facing each other, with the entire front row consisting of handicapped spaces.
The motorist directly ahead, driving an oily deep blue sedan at least two decades old, creeps around the corner into a side street, although we make little progress before hitting our first of many stoplights. Then another excruciating block behind this SUV, at which point we hit a traffic circle, requiring us to halfway circumnavigate it in order to continue driving straight. Unfortunately our friend the pace car here hangs right with us, and bogs the proceedings down further still as we crest a series of asphalt mounds in the road – speed humps or speed tables or whatever the current terminology might label them. As we descend into a state just barely above stalling out, Faraday flings his head back on its padded rest and stares skyward, mouth agape.
Eyes glued to the road once more, on the off chance something might happen, he observes, “gotta love these people with their monster truck sized, offroad worthy SUVs, going three miles an hour over speed bumps.” A sentiment punctuated by a weary shake of the head.
We soon emerge from this dreadful district, however, into the remnants of a once vital retail zone. Jammerz is located in a strip mall which counts K-Mart as its anchor tenant, for example, never a good sign. A shuttered standalone wooden monstrosity at the spacious lot’s front edge, near the street, is peeling now where paint still exists, in shades of yellow, white, and blue, the front walkway wooden and rope lined. In other words, it was clearly a Long John Silver’s.
Nonetheless, life proliferates in the strangest corners. You can’t just write off an entire town half dead and unoriginal, based solely upon one meager drive-by. I am therefore curiously upbeat, as we pull into the newly asphalted and repainted section of an otherwise war torn lot. Optimism justified, too, after parking and entering a spacious but warm – atmospherically speaking, not so much the temperature – cavern which somehow has all the trimmings of your proper sports bar, and yet, possibly owing to brighter than usual lighting and a gleaming tile floor, almost feels like a delicatessen, somehow.
Just slightly recessed from the room’s center, yet another square bar is elevated nearly a story higher than the rest of this establishment, a bar surrounded by the obligatory ring of stools and then another band of tiny two seat tables beyond. This floating island is buttressed by wooden beams and black metal railing, accessible by stairs on two of the four sides. My eyes naturally gravitate to such a spectacle, meaning that in trailing the other two I almost collide with them as they draw up short. Without fanfare they have stumbled upon the remainder of our party, which improbably enough consists of Brad sitting at a round table with Marianne Landis and two other girls, one of them I’m pretty certain the pale brunette sitting on the couch with Tom last night, and then Benny over at a distant air hockey table engaged in battle against some intense looking raven haired beauty. Her black ponytail tornado-esque as it dances in her wake, occasionally touching down in shoulder blade country, as she parries every move Benny makes. Standing alongside the table between them a middle aged man in ten gallon hat and cowboy boots, a downturned horseshoe mustache, pulls on his beer and watches these two lock horns. And while Brad over here looks both unable to believe his good fortune yet terrified witless, by contrast even from this distance Benny’s broad grin and hearty laughter make it clear he’s basically having the time of his life.
“Crystal Finnegan!” Tom cheers, approaching the air hockey table. Massive hugs are doled out, as the game is temporarily placed on hold. “I wasn’t sure if you would be in the mix or not.”
I find this exchange illuminating in that such open faced good cheer is the first genuine sentiment I’ve seen Tom express, aside from maybe his flippant life advice way back when, during our initial meeting at that diner. And yet also demonstrative of the effortless knack I’m told he has – or hell, who am I kidding, haven fallen prey to myself – for drawing others under the big top tent of his ongoing circus. For example he seems to have had no clue she was arriving, and probably never devoted much thought to the topic either way, but is able to play it off as though her appearance, just like everyone else’s, is critical to the success of this week.
“Yeah I kinda sorta heard you were in the area. From ah,” she laughs and begins withdrawing the rubber band from her ponytail, step one in rearranging it, “anonymous sources. But yeah, then I texted Marianne this morning, since you weren’t answering.”
“Touching,” Benny guffaws, tips his head toward the table, “it’s 7-6.”
Behind us, the goosebump raising commotion of chair legs scraping across tile draws our attention. Two female employees are combining a trio of small square tables into a much larger conglomeration, adding chairs as they go, to accommodate our current party of nine and who knows how many other mysterious arrivals. They are clad in football jerseys and jean shorts, a look I’ve always admittedly found kind of hot. Maybe it reminds me of the cheerleaders I could never have in high school: bubbly, beautiful young creatures wearing their boyfriends’ uniforms to class. At any rate, these not quite navy blue editions with their white numbers and red stars, the Jammerz logo in front and the waiter’s first name above the numerals on the back, also in white, are a visual hybrid somewhere between the Patriots’ and the Cowboys’ road getups, but on the bodies of this waitstaff they are a definite turn on, hinting at good clean frisky fun the likes of which I haven’t enjoyed in, well, ahem.
“What’s going on?” I ask Marianne, upon drifting over her way. Noting, as a purely neutral piece of reportage, her charcoal eyeshadow and flesh colored lip gloss, the phrase subtly gorgeous pops into my head.
She beams up at me and replies, “we decided to have a nice meal like normal people.”
Our base of operations fully assembled, the squadron now assumes its beginning formation. Faraday leading the charge, as he drops into the closest seat available, the central on the long side opposite where I stand. Figuring it’s a lot less awkward to claim one now rather than give the appearance of cherry-picking a neighbor, I follow suit, grabbing the closest chair. This has me facing him, offset from the middle by one – and much to my relief, Marianne follows, with a redfaced Brad slinking in beside her and then a handful of others fanning out, wrapping around the table to my right.
Relief and horror are closely intertwined, however. Viewing the vast wasteland to my left summons a near panic on par with Brad’s constant jitters. Particularly as Faraday’s side of the table is nearly fully occupied and seems a warm, happy land, viewed from my distant mountaintop, a fierce wind whipping against my open flank. But then a quick look over the shoulder reveals Tom, chatting with two of the waitresses, and Benny’s emerging from a restroom in the corner with a full bodied jangly motion as he adjusts and zips all at once. The lanky cowboy, I observe, has abandoned his spectator post and sauntered up to the elevated bar, and meanwhile, in the foreground, Crystal is flagging down one of the ladies who just set up our tables.
“Okay, I need a double double Crown and tonic,” she says.
“Double Crown and tonic?”
“No a double double Crown and tonic.”
Our poor server, a slightly heavy set, curly haired blonde, mid 30s maybe and with the aura of a lifer, bunches her brows together and asks, “so a quadruple?”
“Yyyy…,” Crystal hesitates, “yes, but in a tall glass.”
With considerable merriment, Tom divebombs into the seat to my left, clasping his hands on both of my shoulders in passing. So distracted am I by this other scene that I never noticed his arrival. Crystal slips in beside him as if afraid someone else might claim that seat, and Benny rounds out that side of the table with only the head remaining unoccupied. Order is restored in the valley.
“St. Louis style pizza? What the hell is St. Louis style pizza?” Faraday grouses, eyeballing the menu.
“The tips are cut off,” Benny mumbles.
Much discussion, both aurally and in the print of the menu itself, centers around some cheese rivers gimmick, too, presumably flowing if not overflowing ditches of cheese down the middle of these pizza slices. I think I’ll pass on that, although concentrating on anything is difficult, for this heady lunch discussion jars another vexing topic loose. It takes a moment to latch upon the question I’ve been meaning to throw at these guys, though pretty certain I already have this pieced together – Brad’s comment yesterday about Benny working at the school cafeteria was my first noteworthy clue.
“Hey all this talk about food reminds me. I have to know: what’s really going on with that taco townhouse operation?”
Tom and Benny share a loaded, meaningful glance, then shrug and emit conspiratorial snickers almost in sync. Absent any discussion between them, or additional prompting, they start spilling the literal beans with Bowman leading the charge. Once a week or thereabouts, those two carnie types I’d spotted at the apartment that day, hired hands paid by Tom and Benny, show up in a box truck at the EDU student union cafeteria. They make a big show of delivering what are in fact empty boxes. Meanwhile they are grabbing theoretical empties that Benny has stacked moments before their arrival, outside, by the giant metal recycling receptacle, and load these into their vehicle. Which are of course filled with product.
“Aren’t you worried about getting caught?” I question, “I mean, if they tally up everything you’ve taken…”
“Pssh. Nobody’s tallyin anything, man, trust me,” Benny scoffs, “no cameras, nobody knows what the fuck’s goin on around that place.”
“Yeah, I mean,” Tom pipes in, with the luxury of someone who’s never even on site at the cafeteria, “we’re pretty far removed from this. And Edgar and Simon are solid. Nothing ever happens on a college campus anyway. Things always get blown up into some other bigger debate to the extent that people completely forget about the criminal aspect.”
“Um…how so?” I ask, not entirely buying this line of reasoning.
“Well I mean Edgar plays basketball and Simon’s on the lacrosse squad. So then because of that somehow the coach of the freaking team would probably be implicated first somehow, you know, he’d be catching a ton of heat in the papers, then the next thing all of the sudden there would be this huge issue about what classes they were taking and if they were getting special privileges, i.e. allowed to just skate by because they were athletes. And so some other heads would roll with this angle, over here, et cetera…you see where I’m going with this?”
Say one thing about Tom, he clearly buys into his own convoluted lines of reasoning. Staring me down as he does, now, with an animated smirk and borderline possessed glint in his eye.
“Um…well…I don’t know…and lacrosse? Or even basketball at EDU I’m not sure is really…,” I stammer.
“Yeah so see,” Tom shrugs, “like you said, this kind of thing happens all the time. I don’t know why. People completely lose their minds when college athletes are involved in anything. You could rob a bank and all they’d really want to know is if the professor was hooking you up on grades or the coach recruited you with gifts. Part of the subterfuge would be intentional, too, the university throwing these people under a moving train to protect their meal tickets. You’d probably be better off after robbing the bank, actually, because then you really would start getting some special treatment.”
Tom hasn’t exactly won me over with his lyrical gymnastics, but he’s right to a certain degree. It’s true that our national obsession with sports, collegiate ones perhaps most of all, is creating a runaway situation with that train, one we may need to collectively check someday real soon. Just not today. What would family get-togethers be like, after all, without the neutral middle ground of sports, for distant uncles and nephews, goofy neighbors and family friends, to gather around in living rooms, hoping to avoid all real conversation and particularly any controversial topics? To just get through the day with minimal hassle and maybe even a nap on the floor, once the momentary relief of stuffing our faces is relieved, before dismissed from this torture and permitted to drive back home. The tradeoff, though, yes, is that we are creating a thousand headed monster, sitting on a pile of gold coins taller than the NFL commissioner’s ego.
“Why are you shaking your head, there, Bradley?” Tom wants to know.
Another hand tapping the top of mine, repeatedly, in a rapid fire pattern of drumbeats, compels me to turn toward its performer. Here I find Marianne’s broad, radiant smile, as though proud of itself for remembering, asking me, “so, how’s the article coming along?”
I reply with the forehead raised, eyes widened expression that is meant to convey open faced sincerity, though probably accomplishing anything but, and reply, “good, good, you know…I’m piecing some things together,” a comment accompanied by liberal vigorous head nods.
“I didn’t know you were, you guys, you were like, uh…stealing the stuff,” Brad mumbles, barely audible above the instrumental football arena anthem booming overhead, which is itself undercut by the buzz of various televisions sprinkled throughout the precinct. One dangling nearby, tuned to ESPN Classic, plays a random NBA game from the late 70s or thereabouts. And meanwhile closer to home Brad continues shaking his head but has now gone red in the face.
“Dude, we throw out so much food there as it is, you have no idea,” Benny says, in what I’ve been terming all along a mutter, but I suppose is more accurately labeled his natural voice – a mushmouthed style, but plenty loud enough.
“Yeah, so see?” Tom grins over at Brad, “it’s a victimless crime. I mean, does it really matter, anyway?”
“Yes, I mean, okay, but! I mean…if I knew…I can’t…I never would have gotten involved…”
“You really need to relax. Kind sir. Like those term papers, to cite but one example. You’re giving yourself a massive coronary over…what, exactly?”
Marianne reaches over and squeezes Brad’s upper arm, tells him, “you just need a good woman!” with a giggle, another self-satisfied smile and shrug as she glances over at the rest of us. And I laugh, to be a good sport and because on one level this is funny, but it still bothers me. You can tell yourself someone is too young or too out of your league or whatever, and believe all of it, yet still find certain evidence troublesome – like that she might flirt with any number of guys, that you weren’t to be her exclusive focus.
I glance up at the basketball game, which now bears a tiny disclaimer in white at the top left corner, that this is the 1981 Eastern Semifinals Game 7. Bucks versus Sixers. Such is the encyclopedic repository of outer space flotsam, which were are expected to know as sports journalists – though in all fairness, I would probably obsess over anyway – that I’m familiar with this contest, replaying above me in its entirety. Sidney Moncrief against Dr. J, with the awesomely named Steve Mix absorbing a flying elbow to his soon bloody nose. Nobody in the stands for some weird reason, meaning the Philly unfaithful missed a nailbiter for the ages. Decided by one point, if I’m not mistaken.
When the waitressing tandem reemerges with drinks – excepting Crystal’s, that is, as she apparently stepped outside the boundaries consulting that blonde from another section – they also take our orders, and not a moment too soon. All this talk about food, combined with the metabolism ramping effects of that rare breakfast, has produced some genuine hunger pangs, and I opt for something called the Assassin Burger.
“Okay, but, you have to learn to tune out this chatter,” Tom’s saying, refuting some point I had missed, “most of it’s just noise. Contradictory noise, at that. Don’t waste food, but don’t overeat. Get your money’s worth, though. But don’t buy too much, however, and yet somehow also avoid making unnecessary trips to the store every day. You time killing, gridlock creating, greenhouse gas spewing monster, you.”
“What I think Crystal means though is that’s easy for us to say,” Marianne interjects. “Spending, what, twice our hourly wage on a freakin hamburger? Followed by, um, heh heh, if the past is any indicator, probably half a week’s pay on drinks tonight? Some of you will, anyway. Not this homebody.”
“Well don’t me get wrong, I know everyone means well,” Tom continues, undaunted, “and yeah, if you had a non-perishable or something to donate, by all means donate it. But all this jibber jabber about how much food you’re throwing out is for the most part pointless. The main thing is that you purchase the food. Whatever you do with it after that is pretty much your business and irrelevant. Purchasing the food is better than letting it rot on the shelves at your local grocery store.”
“How do you figure?” Crystal protests. “What I’m saying is you could be giving money to, you know, buy food for people going hungry. We all could, I mean. Obviously.”
“Okay, and I get that. But this has nothing to do with how much celery or whatever I’m throwing out at home. Maybe I bought it for an art project. Maybe I bought it for my pets. Maybe I’m trying something new and it sucks. Most likely, I bought the celery because I thought I would eat it. I’m not sending the celery after the fact to a foreign country. And anyway, let’s not forget how this started: shouldn’t we really be getting on these supermarkets and restaurants and so on about their ordering practices?”
“Rotation too,” Benny chortles.
“Exactly,” Tom cackles, “Whatever the case, I guarantee any operation you care to name is pitching reams more than your average consumer. So what’s the difference? It’s like this week in sixth grade where they had us weighing how much food we threw out at lunch. It sounds good and makes certain people feel good. Certain teachers were berating us over the statistics. But then you do kind of stop to think, later on: what the fuck was the point of that, really?”
“To teach you to be more appreciative,” Marianne suggests, playful only on the surface – tongue out, top teeth clamped upon it and giggling, yet sending daggers his way underneath.
“Well, if that were the case, then, you know, that would have been cool, even,” Tom shrugs, “instead it was: LOOK at this, you miserable twerps! You should be ASHAMED! This is BAD! People in other countries are STARVING! Hyperbolic claptrap.”
“Claptrap how?” Crystal wants to know. Her blue eyes, nearing purple, are afire, when she briefly glances past Tom and meets my rapt, grinning caricature, but unlike Marianne, I suspect she is just pushing his buttons. But who knows, I could be wrong about this.
“Claptrap because again the relevant fact in that scenario is that we bought the lunch. Someone bought the lunch. Maybe a government program bought the lunch. It doesn’t matter. Point being the lunch didn’t sit in the kitchen. Explain to me again how that would be the superior outcome? Leave lukewarm mashed potatoes sitting in the cafeteria kitchen, unless we’re absolutely certain we’re going to finish them?”
Call me an inactive escapist with my head in the sand, but I for one am glad when our lunches arrive and we can move away from this dreadful topic. And call it a hunch, but it would seem I’m not the only person adhering to such a sentiment. Faraday does an admirable job tuning it out altogether, and though Brad’s wiggling in his seat, I have a feeling this stems from his earlier turn in the spotlight. This Carrie chick opposite me, however, pale, chestnut eyed, with long brown hair, curly yet bordering or ratty – smooth of skin, though, and reasonably pretty somehow, with a wicked smile carved from her prominent cheekbones – is glaring at the primary participants as if horrified by every angle presented. Based upon this expression I would be hard pressed to gauge which side she favors, if any, though it does make me feel like I’m in the proverbial crossfire, collateral damage in the locus of her hateful laser beams.
“This cole slaw sucks,” Professor Faraday declares, doing the whole lips smacking, open mouthed thing as if a critic sampling the flavors and attempting to get a handle on them.
“Must be St. Louis style,” I joke, without any conscious intention of doing so. From whence do these sentiments originate? Maybe spending enough time around jackasses generates jackass comments by osmosis. No, wait, I’m almost positive that’s exactly how it works, no maybe about it.
Benny coughs out a laugh and adds, “yeah man, Baltimore style I’m okay with, Houston style even. But this?” He makes an elaborate show of lifting up a forkful, maybe a foot above the bowl, and letting the runny concoction dribble back out to its source.
I would confess relief at not ordering the slaw, but in my estimation this is common sense. Occasionally the food at a joint like this can prove delightful, okay, although it pays to hedge one’s bets. You can’t go wrong with a burger and some fries, and barring compelling evidence otherwise, these are my fallback picks. As for this Assassin concoction I have ordered, it appears to be a play on words hinting at not only its size (half pounder), its potential for annihilating your hunger, but also the lethal heat: ghost peppers, pepper jack cheese, a jalapeno BBQ sauce.
One bite into this sandwich, I happen to look up at the door, and witness a familiar sight on the other side of the glass, split seconds before this figure opens it. That crazy bearded Chester guy sashays into the scene now, wearing a satiny collared shirt – white, but with palm trees planted liberally upon it – and beige cargo shorts to accompany his black socks and hiking boots. His truly righteous mane is hair sprayed to perfection, shellacked into these glorious grey and white tendrils, and I realize now that my initial kneejerk Kenny Rogers comparison had been way off the mark. What this whistling, beaming maniac actually resembles is that infamous Nick Nolte mugshot, except he leaves the house every morning dressing that way on purpose. He spends a good hour, maybe more, intentionally crafting this look. A couple other fellows drift in behind him, garden variety hillbillies in his posse, but they fade from view even while in plain sight, up against this spectacle.
“What’s the word, babes?” he calls out, to no one in particular, hands on hips and chuckling as he draws to a rest, surveys our motley band. I would say this table is projecting a weird vibe, although that’s probably true of any randomly assembled crew, our size or larger.
Faraday cranes his neck over so slowly in response to the voice behind him, as though disbelieving that this figure has materialized. Though its components would break down as a precise 50/50 blend, equal parts irritation and amusement.
“Where’s your boy?” he demands of Chester.
From where I’m sitting, though, there’s no ambivalence concerning the creature’s appearance. I can’t really say for certain why. Possibly it’s the pair of large, still somewhat early meals coupled with either my second or third beer, the exact tally already a little bit foggy. But I really can’t envision another day unfurling identical to the previous. Barring some definitive answers or at the very least the glimmer of hope that we might do something other than barhop and bullshit, I will have to pull a Brad and ditch these people.
“So…what’s the plan for tonight, anyway?” I ask, envisioning a breezy, unconcerned tone that I probably don’t entirely nail.
I am not alone in registering Chester’s emergence as some sort of division, if subconsciously. Like the way we often won’t leave someone’s house until a television program has ended, regardless whether we liked or were even watching it. Tom and Crystal stand in unison, as he turns and whispers something to her, a comment inspiring her to smirk and giggle as she sizes up this crazed figure across the table. Faraday has stood, too, and is jawing at his fellow senior citizen, whom I’d assumed was a friend, though you wouldn’t know it from the current heavy aura, and Brad as always sits looking half distressed, elbow on table and forehead in corresponding hand. At least the bass heavy anthems with sirens have gone silent overhead, a temporary lessening of the noise.
“We should go clubbin,” Benny suggests, pantomimes a little dance in his chair a few beats after I’d kind of forgotten about even saying anything.
“Uh…no!” Marianne emphatically declares, on the other side of me.
“What, this homegirl is going out with us?” I joke, as our faces meet squarely for the first time today. Somehow, I am comfortable enough to size her up without breaking away, taking in the bleached dishwater blonde hair darkening at the roots, the raised, lightly drawn eyebrows a shade between those two extremes, and most of all the green eyes like shallow water – or at least the touched up, digitally enhanced version – on some tropical coast. The pleased, playful simper matching my own.
“Homebody. And yeah. Well, maybe. It depends on what we’re doing.”
“Right, that’s where I am. That’s why I said that.”
“C’mon Mare, whatchoo got against clubbin?” Benny asks with an affected Southern accent, for unknown reasons, as he again mimics gyrating in his seat.
“We don’t have enough insulation for clubbing. Not even close.”
“Insulation?” I ask.
“Yeah, you know, we need more guys. There’s not nearly enough guys here…well, not enough, uh, valid guys,” she continues, and I get the gist but wonder who’s implicated by this, if it’s an age and/or dorkiness barometer and on which side I sit, “there’s, like, just a few of us girls and we’ve only got…well, whatever. Forget it. Trust me, we get up on the floor without enough guys and the next thing you know we’ve got all kinds of strange dudes with their bajonkyjonk all up in our business. Like, instantly.”
“Bajonkyjonk,” I chuckle.
“Yeah so you basically need to surround yourself with this wall of guys you brought along if you hope to avoid this. We do, I mean.”
Benny laughs uproariously and observes, “that’s kind of like, oh wait, what’s that one weird chess move you see people do every now and then? Like, the king climbs in a corner and shields himself with…”
“Um, yeah, that’s called castling, Benny, and it pretty much happens every game,” Tom deadpans, from up above us. “If you plan on winning, anyway.”
“You should come see the Clones,” Chester suddenly says, addressing those of us across the table, as I’m sliding my chair slightly backward, preparing to stand, “that’s where we’s headed.”
“The Clones?” I question, pausing ever so slightly midstride.
“Yeah babes, the Cyclones? They got a game tonight,” Chester further explains, and then to my surely lost expression bracketed by a shrug, adds, “the minor league kids,” as a theoretical additional prompt.
“Sorry, but I really don’t know too much about the area,” I offer, apologetic, and am robotically drawn into making my way around the table. In so doing, I observe Tom nod once up toward the elevated bar, to Crystal, who meets his wordless prompt and leads the way, just the two of them. So it would seem we are all splitting into our natural factions, whether intending to or not, as the only souls affixed to their stations those who truly fit in nowhere – at present, this would mean just Brad and Carrie – drumming their fingers in boredom half a table apart. Under normal circumstances I might be one of them, and even now can sympathize with their plight, but at present this clique is calling my name, ears buzzing with these hints that a thin sports angle might reveal itself yet.
By the time I make it over to them, however, they’ve already moved along conversationally.
“My boat’s at your house?” Faraday questions, as though completely baffled by this concept and – just going out on a flimsy limb here – justifiably so.
“Well yeah babes like I said, they was out on the lake, then they’s over Admiral’s Landing way, doin I don’t know what, somethin about seein a guy about parts or somethin, then they’s back at the compound. Toolin around with that fuckin beater Patterson’s got parked there, but like I said, I really couldn’t tell ya.”
“Actually, I don’t know anything about the area,” I interrupt, unable to dream up any other means of steering back this discussion to where it had been. “This is my first time here.”
With pursed lips Chester lifts his chin to the left and upward, in my direction, like a pawn shop owner appraising merchandise. What does he have on his hands here, exactly? What indeed.
“So ya ain’t been out on the lake, either?”
“No, huh uh,” I shrug, “I literally have never been anywhere near here before.”
“I’ll have to take you out on my boat then, babes. But so yeah anyway, the Clones was warshed out last night. Should be game on tonight, though, yessir.”
“Who is this, again? A minor league baseball team? You said it’s the Cyclones? For some reason I can’t…”
“Yeah babes the Townsboro Cyclones. They’s the, what you call it, Class A squad for the Padres.”
“Townsboro?” I retort, “That seems kind of redundant.”
Unexpected to the point of jarring, Chester howls and slaps one leg, turns to Faraday and declares, red in the face, “he’s sayin that and he’s never even been there!”
Maybe my mental filing cabinets are only rearranging themselves to fit the known facts, but this information is sort of creaking open doors to long shuttered rooms. I think I have heard of the Townsboro Cyclones, although probably just in passing. The back of a baseball card, an injury report on some veteran. The dossier on a prospect who was projected to rocket through the ranks and, chances are, never quite got there. A hamlet you’ve heard of but never thought enough about to wonder where it was.
A song suddenly erupts from the song bank, another country staple. This time it’s Honky Tonk Badonkadonk – it takes me a moment to connect this song, barring a wild coincidence, with Marianne’s recent colloquialism – and Benny is the man with his hands upon the dials. We look up in unison to see him grinning back at us from the 36 trillion song bank machine, head rotated over his left shoulder, as he bops along with the track. And continues to pick out still others.
“So anyway,” Faraday sighs, weary with the apparent effort of extracting useful information, “you said Cleveland and Patterson should be there a while? At your house?”
“S’far’s I know, babes,” Chester shrugs.
“Good. Maybe I’ll see you at the game. Let me go see what these ass douchers are up to,” Faraday says, sliding his empty drink glass across the faux wooden surface of our table, and stomps toward the door. I’m not exactly invited, but don’t feel I can miss out on this scene, either, and follow him right through it.
— — — — — — —
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