story
Benny says to his friend Louie, who is a bartender, “Jay gave me a wheelbarrow with a shovel in it the other day.”
“Oh really?” replied Louie.
“Yep. In exchange for me painting his house.”
“That sounds like a fair deal” he said.
Louie gathered up all the alcoholic containing bottles and shuffled them about. And he poured drinks to the costumers as well. By this time, a young English fellow walked into the bar.
“Sir, can I have a pint?” said the young man.
“We only serve glasses here with the beverages on the inside.” said the bartender.
By this time Benny collected himself and walked out of the bar. He leaned against the wall and smoked a cigarette. It actually was the first cigarette he had that day, since he was low on money. He bought the pack shortly before going to the bar.
He exhaled with exhaustion since he had walked all over town earlier in the day. He decided to go home since nothin’ special was happening this night of the week.
When he went home, he decided to drink some rum and watch Singin’ In The Rain. He looked through the cabinets of his home looking for phone numbers for his lady friends. He found a few and called them. He received no answer.
Then as soon as he sat smoking a spliff, the phone started to ring.
“Hello?” he spoke into the telephone piece.
“Hey… It’s Mary. Haven’t spoken to you in awhile!”
“Hey Mary! Good to hear from you. Have you moved to Seattle yet?”
“Yeah. I finally finished moving this morning. It was such a pain… unpacking all the boxes and sorting through some of the stuff. Are you still working at Burger King?” she said.
“No. I lost my job. I could hardly make it there in time while riding the bike… Usually I made it there a few minutes late, but I couldn’t make it there in time enough.”
“Damn. That’s a shame. What are you doing these days, Benny?”
“Most of the time I roam around town and buy small things to make the shelf in my apartment look fancy. I’ve collected quite a few items, but most of the shelf looks kind of empty.”
“Oh, that’s cool. Say… I’ll be in D.C. this month for a meeting concerning work. Do you think you’ll have time to get together and maybe have lunch? I haven’t seen you in years.”
“Mary, that sounds great. My schedule’s pretty much open, so I think I can probably have lunch. There’s a restaurant down the street from me, I know a band that plays there some of the nights. They’re real good and they’re pretty cool guys. I’ll have you meet them.” Benny said.
“Sounds terrific. Then I’ll call you around that time, and we’ll see what we can do,” she said. “But actually right now, I think I might have to go. I’ve got a lot of things I’m working on for this project. It was good talking to you!”
“Yeah, you too! I’ll talk to you then, Mary.”
“Bye.”
Benny walked outside onto the balcony of his apartment. He also brought an orange with him for a mid afternoon snack. Then he smoked a cigarette. It was around this time he opened the newspaper to read about some embezzlement case concerning an assortment of CEO’s in a corporation misusing money. He thought with sarcasm, “what a surprise…” Then he tossed the newspaper aside to finish eating his orange.
By this time Benny daydreamed of working as an amusement park attendant. And it went a lot like this…
“You are too short to ride this ride” he spoke dreamily.
“What do you mean?! Jackass, I asked you for a fucking Pepsi. Are you sedated or something?? I’ve asked you four times! And you always redundantly repeat that phrase!” The middle aged man withdrew from the Hotdog Stand with frustration.
Benny swallowed his pride and gave the man a hotdog.
“I’m not paying for this…” The man said, “I’ve spent nearly five minutes trying to convince you to sell me a Pepsi. And as soon as I speak using sentences with punctuation, using words that are more than mere monosyllabic, that’s when you give me a hotdog. It’s horseshit!”
“Settled.” replied Benny.
Regardless, the man walked away towards a popcorn vender cursing and began eating the hotdog.
“We need you to work at Space Mountain this evening at 6,” said Elisa who was working as Benny’s imagined supervisor.
“Settled,” returned Benny. Then his consciousness turned into clarity as his realized the importance of the matter. “Hold on, I can’t work this evening. I have band practice at like 4 o’clock.”
“It doesn’t matter Benny. We need you here. You know Space Mountain is always packed on Saturday nights.” she said.
Benny turned to the side and muttered, “fuck!”
“So you can do it…?” she asked.
“I guess so. But Elisa, you owe me,” he said. “We haven’t had band practice in like 6 months.” Then he exhaled with frustration. Then he remembered Elisa was one of the few coworkers he knew who smoked. He happened to be out of cigarettes that day so he asked, “Hey… do you think it would it be ok if I could bum a cigarette off you?”
“Sure.” She tossed him one of her mentholated cigarettes. Then Elisa hurried off towards the management office.
It was around this time a guy who resembled the looks of Shaggy from Scooby Doo came towards the Hotdog Stand Benny was working at.
“Hey Man!” Shag ‘as was his nickname’ spoke. “Dude, get this. I know this guy who hooked me up with some of the best Hawaiian headies bud you’d ever know, man! I got about like half an ounce with me now!” Shag said this discreetly with enthusiasm but just loud enough to produce the excitement for Benny.
“Fuck it. Let’s get stoned!!” shouted Benny.
Then he threw his apron on the ground and they baked out.
End.
