Dave had no clue what the fuck Patrick was
talking about with his forward ‘Do you mind?’ query until Patrick asserted the
question once again to an even more bemused somewhat broken and disheveled
hearted David and then Patrick asked the question a third time, this time
yelling out Kitty’s name over the phone line so loud that Dave had to go
into the other room and explain less mother begin to think he was talking with
one of his drunk ex-girlfriends, most noticeably Sarah Tuey, once again. Before
Patrick hangs up the pay phone and clicks his heels together in public ushering
out a signature Hale “whew-whoo” in exclamatory tandem, David tells Pat that,
just in case Pat might have forgotten, Dave has just, I mean, just, worked his
way out of a semi-sort of-serious relationship and tells Pat that his heart is
shaped like the chipped edges of a broken blue willow plate to which Patrick
responds by holding out his hand and rubbing his thumb and pointer finger
together, telling Von Behren over the convenience of a public pay phone that,
oh look, the world’s smallest violin has
requested the tune Cry Me A River but no one cares to honor your request at this
present moment in time sir. Sorry.
Every great romantic hero holds his
own golfers green when it comes to romantic flaws. Patrick’s major league flaw
is that he can’t ask a girl out for the life of him w/o seeing the look of
every other girl he has ever been in love with. On Kitty Petite's forehead his eyes
perceive Riley Love’s third grade Elmer school glue smile. He sees the denim
jeans belonging to Amy Coleshaw. He sees Amber and Amber’s olive skinned friend
from over seas. The femme fatales profiles slide across Kitty’s forehead
like movie previews. Dakota North. Rogue. He sees Jackie last winter in his
bedroom and Nathan, refereeing the situation, calling time out by forming a T
with both hands, calming both of them down after they kissed, and sending them
both back to Pat’s bedroom, respectively, to finish off the quarter encouraging
them both while jovially reminding Jackie that a best defense is a good offense
and congratulating Jackie on her superb ball handling techniques, something
which freezes Nate’s testicles when he thinks about it still to this day. He
even (brief flash of the light bulb inserted here) sees the
444-something-something-something-something number that belonged to Ambra Slaake
of Warsheenton. For the life of him, Patrick can’t remember if he ever met
Ambra Slaake, but he remembers phoning her up and falling in love with, in lieu
of a better phrase, her digits, her voice, what he saw inside his head.
Once the
fresco of past amours fade into the summer shaded décor of LUMs family
restaurant, Patrick looks across the table once again and smiles his seminal
Ethan Hawkish grin. He thinks that Kitty Petite looks like the front of a
Christmas card. Like the sidewalk in winter before the placid snow is shoveled.
“Well?”
Quotation mark. Silence. Courtney is working tonight instead of Mary. Amy is
bussing tables and humming a Tori Amos song, wishing she had a piano bench to
recline on. The temp oriental manager is working on his English in the back
room, asking one of the less conspicuous waitresses if a gerund isn’t also a
type of rare pork. Behind Patrick sits a very old liver-faced silent couple
smoking Pall Malls and who look like they have been cut and configured out of
damp ruffled cardboard. Behind Kitty sits two boys with tye-dyed short
haircuts and nose rings, listening to walkmans and slapping down magic cards.
Kitty is sipping a coke and looking down at her shoes through the mahogany
wood of the table. Patrick excuses himself to the necessary room where he
admires the dents he made two weeks ago by punching the bathroom stall when he
saw Tim Gillick and Amber together. He takes a four minute piss (coffee
drinkers by Murphy’s Law have elongated bladders), and feels like his heart
resembles the filter in the urinal rather than a presumably reddish sac of
fluid and membranes. He feels like his heart, as well as everything else in his
life, is always getting pissed on, by a giant pecker whose owner is also found
of ninety-nine cents bottomless cups.
As he
saunters back out into the restaurant and slides back into the mocha colored
booth both Kitty and Patrick look out the window. The caramel colored
windows abutting the brick structure of LUMs looks like a sleepy eye with the
blinders that have a permanent split-lip. The sun is beginning to detumesce and
the moon is almost full, strung out in abeyance of the late summer sky like a
glow in the dark yo-yo, slowly rolling to the antipodal corner of the pool
table, looking for an intergalactic orifice to fall inside off—to momentarily
pocket the eight ball only to eventually rack the balls up once again. Without
thinking about Kitty’s disposition to nicotine, Patrick fires up a cigarette
using a match. He exhales slowly. Deliberately. Trying to form O’s by making an
odd sort of Lama face with his lips.
As Patrick
quotes the opening lines from Glycerin, whisking curved fingers around his
imaginative bass, Kitty reaches out for his hand and squeezes it. Her palm
is kitchen floor smooth with a smell of expensive mall-purchased lotion.
Patrick feels a frissoned jolt enter his shoulder, tacking a warm nibble,
numbing his socket. Perhaps her arm is an extension cord plugged into something
much more deeper and abstract than what he can at this time fathom. They
squeeze each others hands like a stress reliever on a secretary’s desk and
Patrick looks at both hands and thinks about the Chinese bridge in Bradley
Park. He thinks about miniature gondola’s ferrying courtesans strolling beneath
their hands, a bridge rainbowed by knuckles and nails. Kitty can make out
the individual hairs on Patrick’s hand harvesting into a fold beneath the
movement of waitresses and caffeinated refills, the menu and the perfunctory
drink queries and choices. Patrick lets his cig transpire form ash to cork and
Patrick stares at Kitty and wonders why she has chosen this exact moment in
space and time to extend her fingers and flex her knuckles and grope and
grapple and squeeze.
Minutes later she will perhaps let go.
Minutes later she will perhaps let go.
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