Spilled Milk

Helene was no particular slouch in the looks department, though approving her in the looks department would be like approving a V8 engine in a bicycle. Best to play it honest and give her due credit for what would be in any appraisal a tongue-ejecting specimen of smoke and sex. Honestly? Such a thing to ask for with Helene. With perfectly toned legs that, as they say, go all the way to the top, the merest hint of acrobatic sexy-flexy more than just made a bottom half begging to be twisted and turned in a tumult of steaming potency, instead making it the men brought to the begging positions, sparing her knees the effort. Even without being US-legal a drinker, she was a punch-drunk knock-out stretch of coiled sleekness. Why she was working in the bar-- nobody knew.
When she moved, it would always be as a pouring of muscle in every sense of the fluidity one thinks of with the words 'lithe' or 'mercurial' come out in your paper's yellowing crossword puzzle. Add a pair of wings to those heels she has a hidden stamina for wearing from one end of the evening to another, and she's suddenly a Hermes on the decidedly pink end side of the androgyny wall. Well, pink and black.
The engineers would come in and make whispered jokes about getting the numbers on her curves, and sometimes she would smile at their barely suppressed premature ejaculations of calculus notation, spreading all along the edges of whatever writing paper could be found. And sometimes she would taunt a more literal reaction out of them by daintily picking up one of their rulers or protractors, holding it to her breasts, asking for measurements (it was never elaborated on who would be providing them).
After all, it was all about fluidity: stalking from one dry spot to another, watering down whatever sobriety threatened to bollock the mood fuelled by cheap jukebox jingles and cheaper ethyl of varying quality, spills and splashes of conversation, blood, beer, vomit, laughter, song, urine, or unmanageable combination of most of them. The pub heaved and sighed, crested and waned, and Helene hopped about to treat the dry sores.
It wasn't that Jason ever remembered the place as being nice, or fun, or even forgivably cheap, nor did he ever expect that it would get better, worse, or change in any particular sense. The point that it was a constant hodgepodge, predictable in its turbulence, a little chaos fractal generated by the simple equations containing the usual variables and coefficients for tempers, stupidity, pathos, and intake. Simple things, simple people, leading to something occasionally fantastic, usually if you zoomed out or waited long enough to see it. Oh, sure, bias in hindsight, maybe a little bit of cognitive dissonance where your memory decides to Stalinize every last image with an airbrush of nostalgia, attachment, or other crap-- still, the place was as it was and as it always would be, the firmament that came with the void and chaos just because there needed to be a place for people who, from the moment the first fermentation put the first protoplasm a good two sheets to the wind, had been giving the whole of Creation the finger. Ernie's Den earned that distinction, being a repository for all manner of assholes, ingrates, and fuckers with a reputation that could outdo Hades if only it were to get itself a proper mastiff guardian instead of the limp-wristed security that pretty much regarded the legal drinking age as a suggestion.
That had been the initial appeal to Jason and Stan, who had moved beyond the faux maturity of the trendsetting cliques who drank (heavily sweetened) cappucinos, complained about migraines, and broached the octogenarian mode of thought in that they inundated one another with contempt for how the world was turning out under the leadership of people whose greed blinded them (preferring instead the visionary idealogues whose clear political and social iconoclasm were obviously the only reasons for their repression). By the time that the mid-stage teenagers had discovered the ether pit that was Montreal, flocking as they would to the buses and parents who would be wont to purchase summer homes in Dorval, Brossard, or else on the island itself, the two had already become afficianados of malt, hop hedonists of the snobbery of which would regularly further the divide between the Pabst-drinking pursuivants of the high-proof rush and the selectively consumptive have-nots who preferred the complex tastes of the brasseries to actually admitting that even heavy integration into the former group of swill-drinkers would not in any way get them laid by a woman of Coors-compromised critical faculties. So it was that Jason and Stan would grace the hormonal urges and demands of their newly de-alopecia'd genitals with the company of suds rather than sex.
In moderation.
Mostly.
Ed's, the bar in question, was as much to them a part of their education as the classes they skipped out on to go there. They didn't just learn about throwing a punch (in Jason's case), or taking one (in Stan's), playing darts, or hustling at pool (again, also Stan's)- they made their own strides of maturity in deft contrast to their social superiors, most important of which was not the contempt of the popular groups, but instead a rich and fertile pragmatic cynicism.
Of course, other lessons were learned, a necessity in the face of the fresh and screaming infant on their shoulders that was puberty, which could only be moderately stunted by immoderate consumption of abortive spirits, or perhaps by gorging onessself on engorging imagery followed by self-administered release motions. Nevertheless, despite the varying strategies to calm untested lust with a literal handful of strategies, the only clear resolution would be to actually go and divest themselves of their virginal charges.
“Helene.” said Stan, one night, knee rattling worryingly against the underside of the table. He gripped his Pilsner with an intensity that might fling it out of an already sweat-filled space between hand and glass. “I totally need to fuck Helene. Oh, Christ, I need to get laid.”
“Nobody fucks Helene. Not only is she more likely to lay you out than lay you, but you have to deal with the fact that she's a cocktease of lethal proportions. Picture a nymphomaniac who exudes venomous barbed wire from her skin. That's Helene.” Jason busied himself with overdue homework, already spattered with flecks of drying lambic, the particulate remains of which were a vague eyebrow-raising worry as to when the pub had last cleaned its taps.
“Don't make me picture that, Jesus, don't you see I'm already jonesing for this?”
“Boys.” There was a stifled squeak from Stan as he only partially succeeded in reining in his sudden anxious terror. The glass did not make it, ruining a full page of Jason's scribblings, causing him to move in one motion to the backing of the booth and raising his arms and hackles to their full height, his mouth framed in a wordless 'O' of fury. “Another round for you?”
Helene had a habit of flowing into the environment without being noticed. She had her lips curled in a canine demi-smile, and was dressed in her usual oil-slick dress that resisted the greasy anarchy around it to a level of remarkable endurance that was on par with her resistance to being worn down in heels. She flicked a mascara-rich lash at Jason. “Better get that blow-dried.”
Jason, oblivious to the wink or at least feigning it to further punish the ham-handed unhanding of the hops (which was working, by any measure of the full-body stiffening of Stan), dryly said, “Stan, you can help me with that, can't you? Just purse your lips, huff, puff, and stop blowing down your damn beer.”
Helene's canines exposed themselves further. “I'll get you a new one, Stan-man. Can't have you jonesing about like that.” She bent past a crimson Stan, bringing a suddenly produced washcloth in swoops about the table, mopping up the beer. This exaggerated the movement of her breasts, and with the barely measurable proximity that Helene was putting herself, a similar tinge to Stan's red crept up Jason's collar. Helene straightened up, slapping the cloth onto the dress that wouldn't even notice it.
“I'll tell Morgan at the bar to set you up. Call me if you need me.”
She slinked away in a writhe-inducing writhing, and Stan slammed his face down onto the table.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Also:Fuck.”
Jason, however, was drawn to the one dry corner of his workbook, where appropriated ballpoint sounded out a local number. A 'call me' would probably have been superfluous, distracting from the point that the number had been given at all. “That's new.” he said. It wasn't. It was just Helene attending to the dry spots. A knowing smile crept about Jason's face. “Cheer up,” he said to the bruised ego sitting opposite him, head still in an unmopped puddle of flat beer, “You don't have to deal with barbed wire and venom.”
Stan muttered a thanks steeped in sarcasm and followed with profanity. Jason tucked the number in his pocket without particularly announcing the motion. No point in being excessive about it. Well, even if such things promised to exceed... Well. The pragmatic cynicism drifted into his now unflappable good humor. Virginity's loss, by the large, would already be humiliating, disgraceful, and probably forgettable. Better to go in being certain of that. Better still to have a fucking wonderful time doing it.
“Well, blow me down.” said Jason, rather relieved at the prospect of dousing his ailing parts with something less volatile than booze.
“Just shut up and get me my beer from the bar. I'm jonesing.”
Of course he was.

Loco Motion

In an ocean of heat, he sat with the kind of sagging posture that, had he been any younger, would have been the immediate attention of a orthopaedically obsessive parent. Instead, he simply endured snide looks from people whose nipple-tuck beltlines instantly marked them out as bitter seniors. Boredly, Carlos’ eyes would flicker to the fifty-something in barely sufficient khakis, who sat opposite them with her legs simultaneously on top of the table and splayed out, giving a shudder-inducing view to anyone not yet overwhelmed by apathy. Her thighs seemed to drift and wander in the currents of the ceiling fans, and with the blank expression on her face, there was an obscene sensation of being winked at, if not beckoned. ‘Come out and play, nobody else is home!’.

If Carlos had marbles, he would have tried to flick one in.

“How long until the train?”

Six hours. “Reply hazy,” said Carlos, half-eyelidded to mask the frank magnetism of the flickering inner thighs. “Ask again later, but fuck off until then.”

Tim stirred in his seat, having lost count of the Mississippi-seconds that had escalated into the realm of the exhaustively long. “Ffffffffffffuck,” he declared.

He pulled himself from the chair, hearing a small rip of leatherette chair as it sweatily tried to follow him, and ambled over to the ticket counter. A newspaper-reading attendant sat behind the inverted T of speaking space, presumably designed to minimized the less-welcoming effect of regular Amber Alerts in far-away counties, Terrorism Alert warnings, and the stern message that those who left their baggage unattended would be left to the overactively imagined punishments of a few uniformed and enthusiastic sadists with latex-clad arms greased up to the elbow.

Carlos had muttered earlier: “I always get the impression that the better part of the Border Patrol have done time. Who better to stop the rampant threat of terrorism than a group of gold-tooth fuckers with prison stars and cobwebs? Bin Laden will shit himself.”

The teller, at least, looked calm and bookish, pen ticking out the day’s Sudoku while also attending to the consternations of synonym-finding in the crossword, a well-worn thesaurus at arm’s length further indicated the commonality of the hobby. Air conditioned chill poured from the bottom of the window, drenching Tim’s front with a ball-clenching shiver of envy.

“Six hours.” The teller hadn’t even looked up from his paper, smirking only with an accompanying 9 in the centre square of his Sudoku.

“Fffffffuck. Excuse my French.”

“Mmh. Dastardly prevention, six letters…”

Carlos, on the other hand, had pulled his eyes from the peeking come-hither hairs, and concentrated his attention on the efforts of a pinched woman pulling back on the leash of a dog whose unfortunate lineage had probably been assembled from breeders who simply hated the well-being of other people. He couldn’t tell the exact breed, but it was almost certainly the kind that would make the most satisfying sound when crushed roundly beneath a heel, a sound that would, with equal certainty, be drowned out with the relieved sighs of everyone around.

A mail courier came in, apparently celebrating a canid bastardization of Daddy-Daughter work day with the appearance of a black lab whose size and beauty was mentionable even in the absence of a comparative Snap-Crackle-Pop mutt such as the one owned (though the word was only barely applicable) by the pinched-looking woman.

“He doesn’t bite,” smiled the mail courier.

The fuck he won’t, thought Carlos. Chow down, if there is a God, the lab has a taste for mouth-sized mutts. Silent thanks to a provably existent deity were whispered when the mutt launched itself at the lab with decibel-scale disregard for its own safety. Come on, come on. The sudden image of brain-atrophy’s general correlation to the degree of domestication materialized in the very front of Carlos’ prefrontal, aided by the lab’s three degrees of difference from its lupine counterparts. Do the smart thing, do justice to Cujo and Cerberus and all those other wonders of your kind, o lordly lab.

The lab, however, pussified in the clear absence of its balls, backed off, the mail courier giving an obliging dogs-will-be-dogs look at the pinched woman.

“Foofers does bite, I’m afraid,” said the desiccated dog-owner.

“Fffffffuck.” Came the distant exclamation of Carlos.

“Agreed.” Said Tim, neatly settling back into the welcoming slop of sweaty leatherette.

The clock ticked on with a mean-spirited disquiet. Crowds had come and gone in the face of false hope bursting up from the depths, before being dragged under again: “It’s going the wrong way.”

“Fuck’s sake. I just lost count of the Missisippis.”

“You need to get a watch.”

“You need to watch as I bang your mom.”

“Well, you are virginal enough to get a pity-poke from her.”

“And that’s how you were born.”

“Only if you seesaw the blood alcohol levels of both party with the time involved. I’d say she’d need a new liver after your thirty seconds in heaven.”

“Heaven is right, man. Just love those Pearly Gates on her.”

“Yeah, I like that, Biblical. I can see that you’re speaking from experience, getting that whole Rod of Judgment thing from those curly-haired cherry-bum cherubim over at the local hole of glorying.”

And so on…

“How long until the train?”

Three hours, but Carlos was giving out a band-saw snore, squeezed ass-to-neck inside the leatherette dividers along the bench, his bucket hat pulled over his clumped hair.

Ffffffuck.

“Would sir care for a nap?” Asked the affable Stephen Fry Jeeves, conjured up from the air in a gentle poof of dulcet-toned English. Jeeves proferred a tray of imagined daiquiris, strawberry slush drenched in the humid sweat that if nothing else was sensible for the mirage’s setting.

“I’d like that, Jeeves, but more useful would be my time-control slippers.”

“Very good, Sir. I’ll simply inform the laws of natural temporal passage that you are not to be bothered. Would that be all?”

“No, Jeeves- if you’d be so good as to modify my imagination’s output into something more… erotic, I’d be much obliged.”

“Also a very good choice, Sir. The usual able-breasted sophomore nymphomaniac line-up?” Stiff upper lip, eyebrows ever-rising into an unwrinkled and unfettered brow, Jeeves always understood without passing judgment. Or, at least, without passing judgment in a manner that wasn’t in some way drily tolerant a barb of disapproval.

“Shirtless. And no bras, Jeeves, I will not abide that.”

“But of course. I assume also that Sir will, once he has wiped off the ropy strings of excitement from his abdomen after the passing of that so-momentous occasion within the restroom’s cubicle, appreciate something to alleviate the injurious self-loathing?”

“The Long Island Iced Tea- without the snark, Jeeves.”

“Your wish is my command, sir.”

And so on…

“Uch, dude, you stink.” Said Carlos to the rejoining and unnoticeably flushed Tim.

Tim paid him no heed as once more he slapped into a chair unhygienically marked as his territory. Antiperspirant, he thought, all the while waving a dainty pinky against the refreshing heat-hallucination cocktail, should have brought some of. Make a note to Jeeves.

The magnetic cougar flaps across from Carlos had now been replaced with a lumpy figure swaddled in bandages in the area of a surgical brace. The man’s arm had been placed in a plaster cast set at an angle against his torso, propped up by a sturdy looking device that together with the other white wrap of gauze gave the curious sense that if the man were tipped sideways, the fingers on his broken side would drip tea. His eyes snapped open in time with a uni-tooth mouth.

“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.” Came the wail from the oxycodone-deficient man, settling in for periodic repetitions apparently unnoticed by the apathetic tolerance of the observers.

Two hours. Carlos pulled the bucket-hat down over his ears as far as could be done.

“Fffffffuck.” Said Tim.

And so on…

“How long-“

“As long as my dick, cabron, so stop asking.”

“Hey! You’re right, it’s here!”

Carlos leapt up with an implacable ferocity. “Oh, fuck! Yes!”

Masses set into the neat lines of the queue-forming variety. Yips of excitement joined a burbling hum of grateful smiles.

“Only three hours until we’re there!” cheered Tim.

“Three hours? What?”

“Three hours!”

Carlos squinted at the timetable on the wall. Slowly, his eyes screwed themselves together in some tremendous mental constipation to combat the shitstorm. “All the times are printed in military time. 24-hour clock. That arrival time is in the AM.”

“…Fifteen hours.”

The Unison, “Fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffuck.”

Dreamt something better

The covers are warm and inviting, and heedless of his redolence. They want only his lust for sloth, his naked embrace of textiles. It is so simple to collapse into them, taking mind to keep at least one orifice pointed gargoyle-like over the edge of the bed; a combination theory and experience has taught him the value of choosing the orifice most connected to his various breathing/life-sustaining parts. Semi-paralyzed in a sea of cotton and synthetic fibre, his mouth flops open and closed as much as could be expected from any such landed creature unused to the unyielding firmament. He can only just breathe, escalating to a wave and crest of hyperventilation. A joint actually moves, the precursor of total motionlessness. Dream, dream, dream... Bittersweet, as always, is the amber wave of memory that he plummets into.

Memories of the first, a title so well-deserved, bubble to the top, bringing words as gentle and soft as could be. Thoughts of her, next to him, warm with the gentle play of hands on hands and suggestive smoothing of her back- on a dare, almost, his hand might move next to her face on the carpet, a bold gesture for the secret prize of closeness, of having her warm breath fall gently onto his fingers. Remember the wide eyes when she looped up her foot to bring it around his ankle, playfully rubbing that in the mind turned to images of subtle games played under tables by winking lovers, socked toes darting furtively up leggings to caress bare calves-
Her face, and body, a mirror image of his except in the broken symmetry where she had crossed over heel-to-heel, where his hand rested just moments away from her cheeks. Pale hazel eyes, always on him, glinting with bare appreciation-- warm embers of the usual fire, perhaps doused by an unusual sense of trepidation.
“Jason...” It was intended as more than the whisper it came out as, evident in the way she kept parting her lips, eyes darting up and down his face.
At this point, even a usual preference for risk-aversion would have dipped itself in purple, torn off its overgarments and gone screaming into a crowd of hungry dogs.
Hungry dogs, right.
As an archer pulls the bowstring taut, so deliberate was his hand motion, fingers coming to rest on the angle of her jaw. Gentle, but firm, utterly driven.
But it was unnecessary. His patience was replied to with startling immediacy, and as their lips met, an almost overwhelming distraction from the sudden trauma to his nose might have ruined everything.
Not now, not with that one moment. No time for the minor naggings of pain when his face was flushed with the sudden flare of their heat.

Here, he is almost pushed, in his dreams, to a finite regression, remembering those other 'firsts': fumbling and sweaty apologies for experience trotted out by a constant hormonal screaming. Then, it was all about making it to the next level, tasting for the first time that salty pinched flesh between trying-it-rough teeth. Then, it was spit and tongues, and the tickle of nostril-breath on your cheeks as, for the first time, you felt someone else's tooth enamel. Then, it was a time of shameful surprises that creep up on you before you're even aware of them, and the rest of the exercise becomes a disaster management scenario that only now can bring at best a wan smile of stupider times.

But back in the first, that puncturing of overcast and cloudy memories by that wholly different need for the sun to shine, and having just that one moment to show you what the good days can look like, and what the best days might look like if you're lucky enough to live them for as long as you can. Fireworks in your head, scattering the stars.
So you do what you can do, for anyone who shows you that bright side. You let them know how much they're needed, how much you ache for them and that it's built to a passion and a lust by even the littlest glimpses.
Pull her to, pull her on top. Pull her in closer and curl your fingers into her braided hair-
“God..”
And everything about her says 'yes'.
And everything she has smiles as the first buttons pop out.
And the only thing he wants is for her to see his face beyond the stupid 'oh' that is all he can manage in the cascade of skin as she falls to him, followed by the rush of his hands...
To see...

'Cruelty, thy name is Consciousness, thou pigfucker' he rails, grasping and gasping on the suddenly-there linoleum tiles, his face plunged into the mercifully white toilet. 'You utter fuck.'

Identification Please

The morning routine, pronounced usually with an emphatic 'rut-een' in the minds of most of the workers, settled in with the traditional rush of the coffee machine's dispensation of the morning's necessary allotment of stimulation mixed with refreshing mocha, the earnest creak of asses taking up residence in their appointed desk-chairs, and the unprotesting hum of monitors and terminals as they too were sped into their own awakenings. Fingers twitched with the false anticipation of trying to remember the passwords they'd inputted only yesterday.
Someone entered his first dog's name.
Another entered her birthdate.
Another entered her favourite football team's mascot.
Another entered in sequence the name of his wife, son, and daughter, compressed into a 12-character response.
Yet another typed in his favourite Godzilla movie (simply and perhaps a bit unimaginatively, 'Godzilla' out of reverence for the Japanese original).
Yet another rapidly entered in the name of a certain game show host, whose image was brought to mind whenever she attended to the intimate needs of her boyfriend. The conditioned response of this always made her hips shiver, and nobody could see into the cubicle to wonder why she would lick her lips and pout her jaw with heavy breath.
Another entered an alpha-neumeric sequence that contained the maximum allowed number of characters for any permissible password. The illusion of unbreakable security that this gave was unbroken by the fact that it was so complicated that it had to be copied from a sticky-note attached to his monitor, helpfully prefaced with the heading “Password:”.
Another entered his mother's maiden name.
Another entered, with a dreamy look on his face, the song that had been playing when he'd lost his virginity, a rather unplanned venture involving a shuffled CD-changer that had happened upon his little sister's boy-band best-of. The dreamy look was nothing if not guilty.
Another entered the name of his patron Saint.
Another entered her dream car's make and model.
The entire floor had progressed from a trickle of keyboard clicks from the chicken-typing lot whose newness was further announced by a refusal to plunge into coffee addiction, instead heading to their desks with an enthusiasm and desperation to make impressions that in itself would achieve the end of its life-span in a matter of weeks. Now, the steady resonance of inputs poured freely, an avalanche of the speed-typing veterans whose pupils firmly moulded into the picture of caffeinated concentration.
Only one man still sat at his desk, oblivious to the city-enveloping sun that shone through one of the few windows. The one man who knew without error each of his floor workers' memoir, coveted as it had been to be the first willed recollection in the morning rut-een. It was a window into each character, compressed into a 5-20 character appreciation. Just as well they reminded themselves what they were working for, why they were here, imprisoned as much by their contractual obligations as by their earnest desires for their passions-- their passwords. Individual, unique, and binding. Employee identification, employee identity.
And he alone would scrutinize them wordlessly. He would keep track of whether they would be kept in line by their dedication, or fall into unproductive distraction. His task, and his job: the watcher, the voyeur, the man who made it his work to oversee.
The monitor flashed, demanding his input.
“Panopticon.”

Saturday in Soweto

The city pulsed into the hospital on a nightly basis, a collection of fresh scars, scabs, and throbbing masses that would bounce moans of pain off the sweat-covered walls from which the paint bubbled and chipped. A hell of humidity turned the air into a near-clotting fluid one had to wade through.
Anticipation was almost enough to supplant the need for coffee- almost- as if adrenaline from the probable flood to come kept everyone breathing. But it was early yet, and so Roos Hoek filled her senses with the least offensive blend of Java available. Just one cup of it, no more or else caffeinated alacrity will turn to a set of nerves that won’t stop humming with activity, overcharged and out of control.Unsurprisingly decaf can’t be found fresh in the break room. The last jar is a cake of powder that has fused into a sweaty solid, bleeding oil and essence.
“How’s it?”
Pieterzoon, already out of his scrubs and disquietingly clean. Blonde sweatless brows seemed entirely alien given the morning perspiration that clung to every other surface. “It’s them blerry payday weekends, eh? Ag man, I don’t envy you tonight, not at all.” He’d speak in English to be understood, heavily accented in English-Dutch inflection. Roos was, after all, only Dutch in name, and still blanked
whenever peppered with Afrikaans by conclusion-jumpers who saw just another Afrikaaner who spoke the language. Hell, she spoke more French than anything else, having only elected to take English to escape the bored townships of Provence. With that, she found herself in Johannesburg. Peachy. Be careful what you wish for.
She tilted her head, shrugging. “It doesn’t help that Thabola and Mbosi are still out on holiday for another few days.”
“Fok aye. You know those tits try to put themselves out of harm’s way on these nights by penciling in vacation time years in advance.”
“Don’t be so cynical, man. They’re at the top for a reason. --And before you say it, that reason isn’t Mandela.”
Pieterzoon dropped his eyes. “Whatever, girl, whatever.” A sigh. “I’m out for the shut-eye and peaceful recuperation. Say high to the dronkies for me, eh?”
He brushed past her without another word, almost brusquely. Maybe he was right, maybe he wasn’t, she couldn’t say, but dammit, why did everyone have to be so goddamned touchy about it.
Well, it’s not like they didn’t have a history of it, mmm, muttered her inner voice, now they’re just grumpy that the shoe is on the other foot. But nothing was that simple. Apartheid had switched to reverse racism, and the iron-clad oppression of bigotry had for a brief while been swept away, only to fall into a disjointed attempt to control a population discovering freedom without the gradual acknowledgment of its excesses.
Hell of a way to start the day. Hell of a reminder.
“Et merde,” she muttered to herself.

Saturday afternoon, and already temperatures were running high, a fever of cheers from everyone who'd slaved through the week with the expectation that they could now reap the rewards. Money, freshly minted, flowing opposite the stream of cans and bottles into plastic bags. The sun still breathing down peeling necks, thirsts were still being created rather than quenched. What better cure to the burden of thirst than with newfound libation? It was an answer that trickled into minds as the hours wore on and the boots came off, and by the time the horizon had pinched off the heat of day, liquid relaxation flowed freely.

Already Roos was blinking hard in the haze of stale beer and belched curry as the starting wave came slopping in, dragged by fortunately sober friends who passed the time by blending in with the crowd, passing between themselves drinks with feigned covertness. But few took heed of the drunk and orderly when there were their counterparts to mind. The sound of a pleading spew of vomit from a teenager was as much a starter's pistol as she was going to get.
Good evening, Soweto...

A glint of something

She marked the time with the patter of her fork, slow and seemingly purposeful chews separating each and every tick against the cheap china. She was out of uniform, so it was fine having her eat listlessly at the counter. A few of the regulars not convinced enough to buy cheap eats elsewhere would be all that would recognize her, given that was both the usual hostess and easily the prettiest worker at the rest (no doubt the two were connected), the rest of the workers seeming to have succumbed to the undesirable combination of affliction that comes when gravity meets cellulite. Lydia's only droop seemed the usual one around the edges of her mouth, not simply because of the feigned exuberance that put prospective customers in motion towards their waiting booths. Always, from management- 'Happy workers, happy customers, happy meals', even for smiles kept up by toothpicks.

“You'd better eat some of that, darlin'.” Said Catie

It was true. While Lydia was the prettiest, it was in spite of, not because of, a rather rail-thin figure. The manager, were it not for Lydia's stalwart consistency, would have felt more genuine in whispering things about cocaine and amphetamine rather than that founded only in jealousy of the young girl's figure.

“Trying.” Said Lydia.

The truth was that her mind was rather far away from there, lost to the endless discharge of precipitates from the asphalt arteries that burst into the diner with a disjoint of baseball caps, tattoos, and sad Middle America affectation that leads to premature droop and a sort of pansexual hirsuteness around the face and jowels. Wobbling chins and all-day breakfasts smothered in table syrup and served with crackling pig fat fresh off the sheet grill. Days wore you down rather than simply wearing on as might be expected. Little pills from the doctor, yellow tabs to treat the blue days, but more often than not they just left you with your mouth dry and your seat wet. A perfect match, perhaps, to the palms sticky with fake-maple sugar.

Lydia could still hear her mother's voice, the strong Vermont can-do pout, “Table syrup, more the misnomer than you can imagine, little Liddy. None of that junk on the table, not on my watch, not ever.”

The thought of this would make Lydia sink more towards her plate, towards the fries smothered in the alien vinegar rather than the common ketchup.

“You wouldn't believe what we got today.” Said Catie, quite prepared to accept the possibility that Lydia would, in fact, believe it. “Some queer from New York comes in and asks for a veggie burger. Annie was serving him, and had to be shown just where on the menu it was! I tell you, I don't get those queers- they won't eat meat, but why? So afraid of eating their own, but they all look more like the beansprouts they eat to me!”

Lydia continued to dig her fork into the malt-and-bitter-smelling frenchfries, staring blankly at the little chips that would fly off from the crisp little strings.

“He got the dipping veggies, and we had to find a bottle of ranch dressing- just for him. He just returned it to us after the meal, said he didn't need none of it, said that we could keep it for other customers. Chef and I had a big laugh pouring that little shot of ranch back into the bottle!”

Still, Lydia's fixation had dulled her to her friend- instead she found herself trapped in a thought that kept at her, growing in spite of attempts at ignoring it. Embers, she now thought, stoking her fries as if they were fires on the logs.

“Exactly like embers!” Boomed Mom, glancing to and from traffic at the sporadic pirouettes of light along the highway-side. The bright orange gobs of fire that lept up from the tall grass and the cat-tails of greenery held her mouth open in a constant 'oh' of wondrous fascination.

Mom had pulled over some time later, where Lydia had danced about waving her hands exultantly in a rambling chase to catch a handful of fire. But Mom was quicker, and fast as quicksilver had a fistful of quiet light. It seemed to snore between Mom's fingertips, waxing and waning- and the gasp when she parted her hands to show the source...

Lydia started up, the floor protesting the sudden movement of the chair she'd tortuously dragged along it. She smiled at Catie, who could only look back quizically.

“What's gotten into you? You're all smiles. Weirrrrrd.”

“I,” announced Lydia, no small hint of confidence, “am going out to catch some fireflies.”

"You sure there's still enough light out?"

"That's exactly what I'm going to catch!"

Mother, standing, walking a skipping child back from school, swinging a basket of food gaily in her off-hand. Peals of laughter mingling with peels of zesty tangerines, unraveled as they walked by fingers sticky with their juices. Mother and son, making faces with orange segments, confidently confiding in the other about the distance to be had by seed-spitting. She let him win, of course. His day out, her day off, the rest of the week’s inevitable toiling washed away in a little wooden crate of sunshine hidden among the rest of the produce.
“Do they grow on vines, mom?”
“Vines, dear boy,” came the voice of wisdom, still laden with Belfast-bereft-of-bombs. “Why, no. You’re thinking of grapes and tomatoes.” The boy wrinkled his nose at the thought of the bitter tomato, whose inclusion in his mother’s usual breakfast choice frustrated him almost as much as her repeated attempts to convince him that it was a fruit. Nothing as bitter and horrible as a tomato could be a fruit. “Tangerines grow on great trees in orchards. Like the way they grow apples and lemons and- and coconuts.”
“Coconuts grow on palm trees! I learned that today!”
“You’re right they do, m’boy. On big trees that grow out of the sandy soil like arms of giants buried in the sand.”
“Arms! Wow!” The child paused, holding one cheek in a still-sticky palm. “So- that’s why they’re called palm trees, because they have a hand at the end of them?”
She laughed. “That may well be the case. You’ll just have to find out.”
“I will! I will!”
The exuberance of youth, the constant energy and wide-eyed wonder piled on top of Vel-Cro sneakers, mismatched socks, and scraped jeans stained with dew and chlorophyll. Matching stains on the elbows and palms of his hands meant that he’d probably been spending another sunny afternoon face firmly pointed earthwards, watching insects climb the micro-metropolis of grass and weeds.
“Can we get a tangerine tree, mom? I’d feed it and water it and climb in it.”
“Alas, dear boy, there’s nowhere to plant it. We’ve no lawn to speak of, and no back-yard that isn’t covered in rock. We’d not only need to buy somewhere new, but also somewhere warm and nice for tangerines to grow.”
“But why can’t we?”
She paused for a moment, slipping in stride and suddenly tired. “Because we’re not able to buy things like that, dear boy, I’m sorry.”
The boy paused, looking up at his mother, suddenly feeling like he’d said something rude or wrong, like asking grown-ups how old they were. It was an ache, having that kind of thing be so possible, that the simple things and questions could really hurt someone. Even the person who kisses it better can be so vulnerable to their own little collection of nicks and cuts. He wanted to ask if they were poor, but he felt with horrid certainty that this was another question that might hurt her, or make her sad. These things might have been as true as the little scrapes, but they could still hurt, and very much so.
He grabbed her suddenly, little arms circling around her hips, face pressing into her abdomen.
“What’s wrong? Jason, are you alright?”
Their eyes met, a vertical stare. “I’m fine, mom.”
“Well then,” she said, suddenly bursting into laughter, “that’s grand.”
It was. Hand in sticky hand, they resumed their walk. But the thought lingered with Jason, having been confirmed: even grown-ups need someone to make it better. Maybe everyone does. Maybe everyone needs someone to be special for them, someone different from everyone who just calls them by their name, someone who says ‘dear’ or ‘honey’, or ‘buddy’, or best of all, Mom. Someone who knew more than just a stitched-on nametag on an anonymity-ensuring uniform- Not just Eily Connolly, but Mom.
His mother kept her smile, and started to hum- “When Irish Eyes are Smi-liiing….”