First Date With Florrine, part 2

We rode along at 80 mph in the rising sunlight, drinking brews and listening to live Led Zeppelin bootlegs, which were from mainly uninspired, poor quality concerts, poorly recorded and heard through the car’s low-fi automotive playback system while we were not thinking too much about the present or future.

The redneck passenger regaled Florrine with histrionic presentations of how he and ‘Eddard,’ the driving redneck had just returned from burning down the barn of a man who had “mis-payed” them. It sounded like the most noble barn-burning ever and Florrine seemed to see the point of view of “Rock”, the story-teller perfectly well. I figured she was going along to get along, but in retrospect, over-estimated her.

I started to think, ‘well this is fun, but I gotta turn around somewhere,’ and asked ‘Eddard’ if I might be let off at the next town, “Arbritonlia” whose name I had seen festooned on a highway mileage sign. Eddard acceded and stopped at the Abritonlia Main Street exit. Florrine, however, made not a move to exit the muscle car.

“Hey,” I said. “We got to head home sometime.”

“You go ahead, I’m going to keep going South. Is that okay with you fellers?”

“Sure,” they said.

“Uh, well okay then,” I said happily from under the combination of beer, sleep-deprivation and pain pills. “I’ll see you back wherevering.” I felt really good and didn’t actually think much about this turn of events. The car sped away and I forgot where they said they were going, didn’t catch the license plate or any other nagging little details.

Sure, this seems like a good little town. I strolled down to the everytownsgotone “Come Back Inn”, where I saw two guys smoking cigarettes out front who looked like they were doing an imitation of chimpanzees or gorillas smoking cigarettes – they would take a drag then admire the cigarette, puff out smoke with pleasure and animation, then shake their heads and look around pleased as all get out. Now, its funny when you see simians in humanlike poses and expressions but not as funny when humans do simianlike operations. Its more like a mildly perturbing annoyance.

I smiled and said, “Hey fellas, how’s it going?”

They interrupted their chimpsmoke gymnastics to say “Hi, buddy,” and “Hey, how you doin’?”

“What you mooks doin’ here? Is this place cool and all that?”

“Oh, yeah yeah, we hang here all the time, this is cool here,” said the bigger mook.

“This gotta pool table and all that? I’ll shoot ya some?”

This got their attention. They nodded, grimaced and starting smoking more in earnest, grimacing and “ahhh” ing as they finished their butts. Then we went in and got some beers and a table. I felt right at home. I was shooting some real lousy pool, couldn’t roll a ball straight or sink anything. These two mental midgets were beating my pants off but it was all in fun whilst the hours dribbled away. They talked about how they wanted to learn kung-fu and what movies were cool (monsters) and which weren’t (cowboys). These guys weren’t bright by any measure but they was ’ight.

Then some dude in a faded yellow t-shirt walked in and the short mook said, “Hey, its God.”

I shook the dude’s hand. “You’re God, huh? I was wondering when I’d be meeting you. Can you show me some billiard miracles?”

“Sure,” said God. “Rack ‘em.”

The big mook racked ‘em and God took his cue and hit the break. All the balls went in pockets, the cue ball backing straight back to in front of his cue where he hit it.

“Damn, let’s see something else,” I ventured. This could be a trick, I thought, but hey, maybe this guy is God.

The next break’s balls also all went smartly into holes – the rack wasn’t even tight.

“Pretty good,” I opined. “What else?”

Next God jumped the cueball into the rack peeling the back rightside stripe ball into the corner pocket and jumping the cueball back on to the middle ball of the rack, where it balanced.

“OK,” I said. But maybe you’re somebody else, not God, you know? Could you do something so GOOD, that I know you’re not a demon or something?”

“Like what?” he asked, all innocent.

“I don’t know.”

to be continued