#FridayFlash - Not All That

Julia glanced over at the counter and pursed her lips. With gel-slicked hair, one ear sporting a small diamond stud, and the subtle hint of a dimple in his chin, the young barista was cute. And buff too. Even from where she sat on the other side of the café, she could see the strength in his broad shoulders, the well-defined chest through his white cotton tee. And the best thing? She really liked the way he looked at her when she had ordered the decaf skinny mocha latte, an extra shot of vanilla. The slight grin, the mischievous look in his eyes, said it all, and it wasn’t about the drink either.

“So…” Across the table her friend, Kim, broke the spell. “How’s the new husband?”

This morning was their weekly therapy, a time slated for the two of them to sit down and visit—talk about the kids, the schedules and anything else that came to mind. Before she answered, Julia took a sip of the coffee and flinched. She liked her coffee hot but, jeez, not that hot. She licked at her bottom lip, feeling the instant burn, and stared back at the barista, who was now busy with another customer, a cute teenager with a ponytail and most likely a diva, too, by the looks of her. She decided next time to tell Mr. Cute and Buff to cool down her drink with a little ice.

And there would be a next time.

No doubt about it.

Placing the cup down, she realized Kim was staring at her. “Oh,” she said, “The husband, right, he’s wonderful. Good listener, well mannered, and low maintenance. No laundry on the floor, the toilet seat is down, and—”

“Wait.” Kim frowned. “He’s a squatter?”

Julia shrugged. “It’s not like I stand there to watch, you know? I’m just saying the seat’s down whenever I go in.”

Kim leaned forward, apparently more interested now.

At the counter, the young barista looked over again and locked eyes with Julia. He smiled, and she leaned back against the chair, the plans already starting to whirl in her mind—what she would ask for, how she would ask for it.

Life was funny when she took the time to think about it. And more often than not lately, she did just that. There were the subtle ironies, like some Shakespearian cosmic comedy playing out on the stage. Take the young man at the counter, for instance. If that wasn’t some twisted turn of fate—life bringing them together after she’d exchanged Husband Number One with Husband Number Two—then what was it? And there was some energy there, she couldn’t deny that. Like two planets defying God’s design, whirling out of their separate orbits and finding each other in some small pocket of the universe yet to be discovered. But now they were going to collide, and just like she knew the time had come to get rid of Husband Number One, put him beneath her feet so she could move on, she knew the time was coming for her and Mr. Cute and Buff. And probably not too far off by the way he kept—

“Julia?”

She glanced back, found Kim staring at her with a puzzled expression.

“I’m sorry.” Julia scratched at an eyebrow, trying to hide her embarrassment. “What did you say?”

“How much did it cost and what’s the rate of return?”

The rate of...

Julia smiled. Yes, Kim was still curious about Husband Number Two, and not just in the general sort of way. Another one of life’s ironies, come to think of it—how, in a day and age when women could purchase the programmed bio equivalent of Mr. Right, women still wondered if they were getting a good deal. And Julia had a good deal, she knew. She had bargained pretty hard for it, too, complaining to the manufacturer how the first husband was flawed, demanding either a full refund or a new model free of charge. The agent finally agreed to the exchange at no additional cost, which in essence extended the life span on her first investment by five years. Not a bad rate of return at all. Still, the nights in bed weren’t what they used to be. Like when she was in school, back before stem cells, when girls hooked up with actual boys and ran the risk of stolen virginities, deflated egos, and broken hearts. Even with all the advances in relationships, however, the passion wasn’t as strong, the caressing not as satisfying.

She looked at the barista one more time and smiled.

“To tell you the truth,” she said to Kim, “I’m not so sure whether I’m going to keep Jim or not.” As advertised, the manufacturer would even program a husband's name and give him some history to talk about. “He’s a good asset in many respects, but the amortization of the intangibles is highly accelerated. In some ways, having the latest technology isn’t all that.”

#FridayFlash - Flowers for Sarah

Listening to the stereo, Lance tracked time and distance with the reflectors on the road. On some stretches, the yellow squares came at him through blackened asphalt looking more like Morse code than a steady metronome pulse. Dot, dot, dot. Dash. Dot… Staring ahead, hands on the wheel, the sounds of Steve Perry and Neil Schon blaring through the speakers, he wondered how long it had been that way. Had some department of transportation employee, working off a previous night’s bender, decided that maybe he would have a little fun? He supposed it might have been possible. Closer to the truth, however, was that the missing markers had simply taken too much stress and finally cracked.

In the distance, under a haze of violet sky, the stars gradually poking through the waning resistance of daylight, wind turbine lights spanned the horizon, their synchronized flashes of on-and-off red like that of a cheap motel sign. Vacancy. Vacancy. There was always an empty room available. Out here, in the middle of Texas, the lights were the only company a driver could rely upon to keep his mind from wandering. From thinking about things said. Or unsaid.

On the seat beside him, the bouquet of flowers lay wrapped in a blanket of green paper. As he picked them up earlier tonight, the florist had looked at him and smiled.

“Going to give your sweetie some nice roses?”

He had nodded.

“Gonna surprise her, huh?”

“No, the surprise is that I’m a day late.”

She gave him a knowing look and, as he turned to walk out, she said, “Good luck.”

Driving down the lonely stretch of road, now about fifteen miles or so south, south-west of Sweetwater, those words hung across the beams of his headlights, dangling in front of his eyes, forcing him to look at them one more time. Luck was a misnomer, a misconception for those who hadn’t seen the harsher realities of fate and consequence. We are the sum total of our choices, Woody Allen had once postulated, and boy did he live up to that one. In fact, if Woody ever decided to pull together a calendar based on his lines, Lance’s face would be the one posted above the month of December, that line serving as more than a caption.

In another mile, he knew, the road would curve ahead. There the beams of his headlights would ride the line of barb wire stretched out into the darkness.

He wasn’t sure how the argument had started, only that he hadn't seen it coming. It had been something about time, though—his time and hers. All she had wanted was for him to massage her feet, and then spend a quiet evening soaking in the hot tub, glasses of champagne perched on the drink tray.

“Not tonight, okay?”

The pouty, disappointed look followed. “Why?”

“I have too much to do.”

“You always have too much to do.”

“Uh-huh, well, look around. You can’t tell me you don’t like the results, can you?”

“Sure, it’s all fine.” She shrugged. “But it’s not enough.”

“Oh, please, not again.”

Noticeable hurt registered in her eyes. “And why not?”

“Because.” He swept an arm around the room, as if to point out all that they had. “We’re not ready.”

“I’m ready.”

“But I’m not. In fact, the longer we go, the more stupid the idea seems.”

From there, the conversation spiraled, sucking the energy of their life down with it. Fifteen minutes later she had walked out, telling him he was a fool. And now, he felt like such a fool. What a great decision maker, a planner among planners, he had turned out to be.

After the bend in the road, he slowed down, allowing his eyes to adjust to the natural rise and fall of the landscape. His turn-off was right… around…

He saw the tree along the side and pulled over. He stopped the car, switched off the engine, but left his lights on. The stereo continued to play and would until he opened the door. Journey was Sarah's favorite band and this, their Frontiers project, was her favorite collection. He allowed the song to finish before he opened the door, finally silencing the music.

Sliding out from behind the steering wheel, Lance stepped out into the middle of the highway and held his arms outstretched. Maybe, if he was lucky, just maybe. A minute later, he realized again that luck had nothing to do with it. It was still all about fate. And fate was a tyrant, never yielding. Unlike tonight, where he could look out and see a canvas of stars that one who lived in the city could never imagine, the night over five years ago had been weighed down by thick clouds. It had rained, too. And in his experience, that was how fate worked, raining down on some while leaving the rest dry.

He walked back to the car, reached in and grabbed the flowers, and then stepped around to the tree.

“Hey baby.” He smiled for a moment, remembering the night they first met, when the world held so much promise. The smile quickly faded then. At the base of the trunk, the crosses were still where he had left them. Of the dozen roses, he placed eleven, all red, at the foot of one; the lone rose, its petals as white as newborn snow, he laid at the base of the second cross—a tiny replica of the first.

Finished with the flowers, he knelt down and waited. Soon, in spite of the clear sky, a torrent of tears would eventually wash over him. It always did.

#FridayFlash - Keep It Clean

“How am I supposed to take a piss with you standing there?”

“Orders are orders.”

“You want to hold it for me, too?”

“You want I should kick you between the legs for getting smart about it? This ain’t no picnic for me either, Remedy.”

“It’s Remley.”

“Whatever.”

“What if I can’t go?”

“If need be, I can call in the nurse and she’ll bring a catheter.”

“You serious?”

“As a heart attack. Though I got to tell you, it ain’t the going in that’s the problem. She’ll put K-Y on the tube first, that way it slides up nice and easy. It’s the coming out that can be a booger. Sometimes—and I seen this just a couple days ago—the balloon don’t deflate and she just has to yank the thing out. The guy it happened to? The catheter came out looking like a grape on the end of straw. He walked in here acting like he was all that, you know? Later, though, the dude looked like he was carrying a hunnert-pound man on his shoulders."

“C’mon…”

“Don’t you worry none, though. The nurse, she got some antibiotics, cure any urinary infection most likely follow something like that?”

“You cannot be serious.”

“Would I lie to you, Remedy?”

“Remley.”

“Again, I really don’t care.”

“Right. So, how does a guy land a gig like this, watching while other guys take a leak?”

“You getting smart again?”

“No, I’m genuinely curious. What’d you do, get caught with the Judge’s daughter or something?”

“Listen, Remedy, outside of this here—mutual arrangement—you and me, we ain’t pals. We ain’t gonna swap war stories or send each other e-mails with stupid jokes or titty pictures attached. We just two guys got to do their jobs. Mine is to stand here, make sure you don’t try something funny. ‘Cause in case you haven’t figured it out by now, the justice department ain’t big on a sense of humor. And your job is to keep your mouth shut, your eyes down. I would hate for you to lose your focus, make a mess all over my floor. The last guy who did that walked out of here with a bad attitude, seeing as how I made him mop it up with the shirt on his back.”

“Jeez, man, you need to relax. You take this job way too serious, you know?”

“Well, I’m glad to see you finally catching on. So what say we cut the crap and you get on with your business so I can get on with mine?”

“It couldn’t hurt, you know.”

“What’re you jawing about now?”

“About you and lightening things up a little.”

“You want me to tell you a joke, that it?”

“I don’t know. Why, you got anything good?”

“Okay, yeah sure. It seems there was this tough looking gang of bikers, out riding around when they spotted an attractive young lady about to jump off a bridge, so they stopped. Now, the gang leader, a big burly guy, gets off his bike and says, ‘Hey, baby, what’re you doing?’ ‘What’s it look like?’ she says. ‘I'm gonna commit suicide.’ Okay, so while he did not want to appear insensitive, the biker didn't want to miss out on an opportunity either, so he asked, ‘Well, before you jump, how’s about you giving me a kiss?’ So she did, and it was long and lingering and passionate, and after she finished the biker said, ‘Wow, that was the hottest kiss I have ever had. That there is a real talent you'll be wasting. Say, why you committing suicide anyway?’ ‘Because,’ she said, ‘My parents don’t like me dressing up like a girl.’”

“Ha-ha-ha-oh-oh… Oh yeah, there we go. That was all I needed.”

“Merry Christmas, Remedy.”

“Kind of looks like a beer, don’t it?”

“Just put the lid on the cup and stick it behind that sliding panel there.”

“Hey, I’m sorry about all that stuff earlier. Just a little tense, having someone in the room and all, you know?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m not really a bad guy. I just made a bad choice and now I’m paying for it. In spades.”

“You guys all say the same stuff.”

“No, I mean it, I'm—”

“Yeah right, out of here is what you are. See you next week, Remedy. Until then, keep yourself clean.”

______________
Author's note: The joke in the story is not mine; I'm not good at creating jokes. Rather, it was something I heard and simply placed in the story, telling it in a way that fit with the character. The way I see it, if Elmore Leonard can do something like this in Up in Honey's Room, then I can do it too.