Lums Bums (a.)

 

It is a dour, stale mayonnaise-colored Saturday afternoon in what is presumably late March. Strickler and VonB sit inside LUMS. The two of them are seated in the non-smoking section, although both of them are taking turns to cross the dotted Mason & Dixon line to fire one up and talk to either Jo or Mary. Seven cigarettes between them are shortly reduced to corky butts and a sprinkle of ash.  Strickler is telling one of the waitresses about his crazy weekend.

 

“So, anyway—It was like-yeah-we were all down lingering past the railroads tracks that smell like urine and shit and-yeah-my friend Rusty-the-four-forty-a-day-fuck-up placed a wager to us, saying there was like no way in fuck that I could hobo-hop a train and of course I say ‘Bet-whatever’-and the next coal train that shoots down the track I chase after it…”

 

Mary’s eyelids surf into a constipated blink. She look into VonBehren’s thick-shine of hair, suggesting an under the table inquiry of more coffee. Strickler continues.

 

“So like anyway a coal train sure enough a coal train with something like three-hundred cars shoots past and Rusty and his friend Walter just sort of point at the train and what do I do?”

 

Mary doesn’t respond. Strickler, of course, continues.

 

“I charge it. I charge it with everything I fuckin’ got. Jolt straight towards the steel fucker that is easily going, about a-hundred miles an hour. Walter and Rusty yelling at me, saying, ‘Go Strick, Ah, man, look at-ehm-a-Strickler Go!’ and I’m still pumping my elbows up and down and hauling ass as the trains just ruggedly slides in front of me and for every sprinting step I take about three cars zip past in a haze-blur which kinda reminds me of one of those Monets where the paintings all look blurry like he is either drunk and near sided or shit and, well, everything happened so fast the next thing I know the caboose is coming up and I’m still in an elbow ruckus and all my friends are like, ‘Dude, you’ll never make it and all that shit.”

 

            Patrick toddles in fraught with his dilapidated back pack, dutifully scrawled notebook and his Metallica, double-birded hat and his “Music my parents Hate”  CD pack.

 

“Dude man—fly this way.” He motions with his arm.

 

            Strickler and DVB both modulate to the smoking section for good, cuffed earlobes of the coffee mugs in knuckled transit, leaving behind them a litter of vacuous sugar packets, a half finished poem correlating teenage despondency with Trojan condoms and CURE lyrics.  Whenever any of the group leaves a table they always leave behind a cluster of paper shreds that looks like bird poop below the variegated stain glass brim of the overhead Tiffany lampshades shining down as if it is performing surgery on the mahogany tops of the tables at LUMS.

 

Jackie strides in and Patrick alights his place, rushes up greeting her yelling, “Jackiieeeee” once again, placing a superfluity of vowels in his salutation.

 

The gaggle of foreheads in the restaurant turn as if Jackie’s last name was more “Onasis” and less Clevenger. Hale has always found Jackie’s last name more so appealing.

 

 

 

 

 

“Would you like a little cleavage for your Clevenger.”

Jackie’s skin always looks so porcelain and so ravenous every time she flies in—

her shoulder length velvet salon cut trickling down her neck, brushing her shoulders with a devilish dash of feminine sexuality. She taps her cigarette holder and totally ignores the Treasure Troll’s hospitable inquiry of where she would like to sit today.  Dave & Pat & Nate have all felt her up but only Nate has done so sans bra and panties. Strickler would jump the flint gun for Jackie though he feels ‘Drea would stop talking to him for real this time. ‘Drea’s been a tad irked ever since Strickler started reading Ezra Pound before smoking up.

 

The four of them-Strickler, DVB, White Trash Pat and Jackie all huddle more or less comfortably inside the designated booth. Jackie reaches into her purse, pauses looking for a light.

 

 

A Corral of familiar faces. Both Dave and David Strickler scurry next door to SL to purchase cigarettes and ask Franzetti if he has any matches. Franzetti sells them the smokes and cozens them into purchasing a pick three for the matches, making them promise that if they win they split the state funded gratuity with Senor himself.

 

“’Sat to you say, partner?”

 

The two lads comply and tell them that if they hit the pick three Franzetti will be able to open up that Store in Skokie he’s always dreamed of owning.

 

            Mary tallies forth two more cups of coffee and giggles when Patrick imitates his thoroughly oppressed and rightfully pissed off Irish Ancestry: “I be goin’ te me pub to get me a pint.”  Berkowitz pops in like the ornery weasel he is squeezes into the table and hides VonB’s camel filters beneath the oak.  Mary brings out another porcelain cup for coffee, holding the cup by the jugged ear lobe before setting it down on the top of the table. Since business boomed at LUMS last spring they happened to get new coffee mugs-a chalky white superseding the taupe milky mud-puddle of which all of us were ever so fond.  

 

 Berkowitz (the sheer little twat, always showing up uninvitingly) is acting like the  sophomoric Freshman he is asking if anyone can give him a ride home before 11. Jackie snipes why he’s so ornery. Berkowitz inquires to Jackie if she ever realized that the word ‘poop’ is a palindrome.

Through the glass mouth walks Nate, Allan and Sean Art. It’s almost unanimous-Sean and Jackie look good together. Almost everyone at the table seemingly concedes to this idea. The temp-oriental manager swaggers past and asks if there is a Patrick-Aaron in current residence dining here tonight. Patrick pops up like a slice of burnt toast and proceeds to the register to answer the phone.  Back at the two table booths Nathan takes center stage-mostly mimicking Tarrentino interpretations with his fingertips informing all of us how drunk he got last night. 

           

            Mary once again slides past bearing another carafe just as Hale glides through the door smiling and waving hello.  Hale is dressed in a tequila shirt and has stashed in his upper left hand pocket an expensive cigar from Paul’s Pipe shop that is enclosed in a little glass beaker the looks like a feces specimen.

...actual poem, "The waitress” written for Mary circa 1996

Mary gently pats Hale on the shoulder as Hale motions with his arm to David.

 

            The waitress who looks like a rotisserie Barbie doll calls Nathan Boner and, when her back is turned, Nathan tells us how he once again had unsafe sex with her daughter, Kat, on rotisserie Barbie’s couch last week. Strickler makes a purring Kitty-cat sound and Patrick arrives back at the table to inform us that he’s rushing down the hill to pick up Amber and Laurianne. Jackie makes a silent gesture as if to see if Patrick will take Berkowitz home as well. Hale asks for a menu and inquires if they serve anything with chives.  Jo steps up and informs Hale that he’s fortunate that the boss isn’t here or else she’d coerce David to extinguish his stogie. Sean Walsh is situated next to Jackie drops his napkin and wonders if Jackie will droop down beneath the table to pick it up.  Strickler utters his requisite/hourly ‘Who/and/or/what the fuck is Elmo’ get up.

 

            Goth Dan struts in with a nonplussed-pale apple expression sewn into his forehead. Apparently he has been sleeping in the van-o-hale.

 

            Hale greets Dan before acknowledging Nathan by wreathing an independent arm around his neck like the lush after hours barking out into an unwarranted rendition of “How dry I am.” Nathan starts quoting PCU:

 

            “Beer—it’s your best friend you drink a lot of it. Classes—nothing before eleven. Girls—you’re a freshman-that’s pretty much out of the question.”

 

            To which Hale replies: “Ladies and Gentlemen of the press, this is the Gutterman. He comes over smokes like two/three major Bongloads.”

            “Gutter, dearest do you have anything to say for yourself.” Jackie adds in a savvy voice over which suggests she may or may not be wearing any panties.

“I-uh-didn’t EXHALE.” Nate snorts.

 

            “Works for me.” Lush Hale gives closure to his panegyric.

            Berkowitz (i.e., frogger) laughs out loud and brown fluid sluices out his left nostril and almost hits Jackie’s blouse. Jackie picks up a pepper shaker and throws a curve and Forger takes cover and screams out the first vowel. Frogger says, “Hey—

that almost hit my earlobe.”

 

“Dammit Matt go! Just fuckin’ leave. We don’t want you here.”

 

            “It’s alright girl.” VonB scoots over and gives Jackie a backrub. Jackie’s whole body is a vessel of feminine sexuality. She is warm. Both Nate and Sean feel envious for some reason.                                                                            

Jo comes back with the dented Peppershaker and tells Jackie to next time please, try to channel her anger in other methodologies, she almost knocked the dentures out of the patron situated in C-6. Jackie smiles, obsequiously accepts the plastic container, purses her lips and then publicly excuses herself to go pee. David seriously looks at Frogger and tells him to please, in the immortal fourth grade maxim of Hale, ‘act your age. Not your I.Q. Frogger shrugs and then asks what he did before quoting Depeche Mode lyrics out loud. Jackie returns, crosses her legs, making a sincere attempt to blow her smoke in the direction of Berkowitz. VonBehren’s chin silently ascends into the upside down lotus of the above Tiffany lamp, lost in the branches of smoke and coffee steam drifting up into the centered sun, wondering what appearance the periphery below must resemble from above, wondering what elongated shapes and a chords of wit and laughter and maybe even a shade of wished for joy.