The strange feeling of a sunny, cold afternoon (with
mosquitoes) floated through the windows of the ’61 Buick LeSabre. For a moment
we forgot about the fact that we couldn’t put the top down; the pile of toasted
bologna sandwiches was that good. I bit into my fourth and stuffed some kettle
chips into my mouth at the same time. When Bill passed me the half gallon of
milk, I gulped from it, leaving a dirty-finger, kettle-oil residue on the
carton. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten while sitting, not looking
over my shoulder at flight-sacrificed crumbs. In one fleeting second I a)
imagined what Ally Sheedy felt like when she ate that Cap’n Crunch/Pixy Sticks
sandwich in The Breakfast Club, b)
remained unbothered by the cow-juice-saturated white bread as shingled its wet
self to the roof of my mouth, c) enjoyed the sensation of breathing slow while
chewing, and d) pondered the spring board meeting in which taupe was deemed a
fit shade for the new LeSabre.
“Think we
should try to get the top down again?”
Abel
squeezed the question from his lips while pinching once, twice, a third time at
a fresh chaw.
“Why?” I
eyed the last bit of my sandwich and wrestled with whether I wanted it or the
final handful of chips to be my last bite. “S’broken”
“It ain’t
broken, dipstick,” he said. “Needs a fuse.”
“’Kay,” I
said. “You got a stash o’ fuses in your shorts?” I hid a satisfactory smile;
finishing with the chips had been the right call. There’d been a time I would’ve
shared the thought with the long-time acquaintance. Many months had passed
since I’d called him friend.
