ARR 1988 - Flipbook - Page 26
Lines of Kilter
On a Thursday afternoon, just when the spectacle of March's colorful incest was
beginning to unfold, Brendon sweated over his steering wheel. J Street was jammed as
it usually was at this time of day, tired commuters baking monotonously in their
automobiles with confused looks on their faces. As if they were placed in a microwave
oven as the experiment of a deranged housewife, they looked ready to explode purely
from the inertia of heat and boredom.
Brendon changed the station on the dashboard radio. The smooth and languid
voice of a woman said something about a telephone number anyone could call to have
a sexy conversation with a sexy female who would talk about anything. The number was
simple and Brendon, almost without thinking, memorized it.
As the woman's voice repeated the number, Brendon pulled up to the curb in front
of the coffee shop where he was meeting Vince, a friend. FRESH ROASIBD. The
letters shimmered in deep green neon and the smell of coffee hung suspended in the air.
He walked to the table on the sidewalk where Vince was eating a muffin, a crumpled
looking thing with raisins. Next to him sat a middle-aged man with a pipe. As Brendon
approached, he could see the man's lips and fingers gesturing enthusiastically, and,
coming closer, he could hear complicated words and phrases. Brendon looked quickly
at Vince to confirm his confusion, but Vince just sat there nodding occasionally, taking
a bite of muffin, nodding again. He seemed to respond according to the degree of
intensity with which the man waved the pipe, an orchestra member following a baton in
the hands of a master conductor.
The man stopped talking for a moment while Brendon was seated. Vince
introduced them, asking the bearded man's name again to let Brendon know covertly that
he himself had just met the man.
"Ah... name's Jim, pleasure to meet you. And how're you, Brendon, you from
around here I mean are you from around downtown?"
Brendon glanced at Vince, but again there was no sign of confusion. "I live in the
suburbs," Brendon said with some effort. "You live here?" he asked, taking a raisin from
the top of his friend's muffin.
"Ah, oh yeah, around here. Recently, though. I move a lot, business man, you
know, I'm just feeling out the place if you know what I mean there's a lot of places to
go but you just can't know." With this he placed his forefinger and thumb to his cheek
and kind of twisted as if he were a pitcher signaling some strange new curve ball, and
moved his eyes far to the left and then back to Brendon. "You know what I mean?"
Brendon thought maybe he was gay and was making some signal secretly directed
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