They drove to New York in a frenzied bomb to make it there by nine. Listening to a book on tape with the windows down, cruise control on the rented car, Pinky with her painted toes sticking out the window. She was driving. A story about the fall from grace; it is not a kerplunk. In fact, it’s barely perceptible. A young toddler’s death. Terrence Roadman had heard it before, or he read the book, he didn’t remember. He sat watching the drivers of other cars and trucks and vans as they swiftly passed. Three guys on the side of the road in Connecticut, with their heads hung low like the caught and despondent, their hands cuffed behind their backs, unsaddled motorcycles parked in a tidy row. The remarkable thing the five or six police cars, lights flashing, traffic slowed. Poor guys, nabbed guys, they must have been speeding, racing, offering a chasing for the excited cops. The weather steamy and oppressive; not the kind you would expect first weekend in May. Even in Montreal, the late spring their usual, men and women yearned for cold showers. The weekend a success, of sorts, depending on perception, and after the suffocation incident on Sunday, they awoke renewed at one in the afternoon. It was a slow rising. Pinky with her head on his shoulder. Terrence with his mouth open and a baseball cap over his eyes, a slumbering cowboy in a western his head propped against a tree a rattlesnake nearby, and somebody snapped a Polaroid. Later he placed the photo in his breast pocket. Certainly overdressed: doesn’t mean clothes too fine that means too many clothes, trousers instead of shorts, socks adding to the discomfort. They collected slowly, the playoffs on TV in the corner, and a younger brother and his high school buddy and a girlfriend. A call for breakfast or brunch and the drinking had been mighty. Terrence still stumbled and when the fumble was too great in the bathroom decided not to brush his teeth. He drank water and a handful of aspirin. Then the hoof in oppressive heat of too early and unannounced to the first bagel place. Closed for renovations. People all over without shirts, loungers at the outdoor cafe, on the sidewalk smoking cigarettes and probably conversing about the night before. Ice coffee now instead of what have you. They found a diner and set about sitting the way most of you do in diners. The waitress nice with a smile and an accent when she said ‘grapefruit’ with rolled Rs as from the Mediterranean. She had brown lips. Painted. Of course, Terrence asked for homefries and he’d been there before. The waitress, used to this next move, looked up at the grill to see if the pile was still there, the way they do things most places, and it was a green light and she wrote homefries on her slip. The rest of the table ordered them as well. The only variations between sunny-side or over-hard or French toast versus hotcakes they call them. The lady with the slip and pen in hand approached the table after a quick and said, “Sorry, no homefries.” Terrence eyes flashed the grill and the cook manning the grill, to where the waitress had tossed a glance, and then to the cook’s eyes and he said “man, this happened to me last time.” The grillman, with spatula and long knife, took extreme offense to the mouthing and in a yell jumped over the counter, his elbow the spinning fulcrum his hands indeed full, and in that flash stood over Terrence. He pointed the knife at our guy. He yelled “you have a problem with my grilling?” He waved the knife. The pancakes steamed melting butter. He began slamming the pancake plate with his spatula, over and again, shouting “No homefries! No homefries! No homefries!”
Deer teach the beauty of thorns. The rose says to the large quadruped, “I am beautiful, fuck you.” Eggplants succumb.