3.
Reginald, the great artichoke hunter of the upper highlands, was a brute of man who looked down from the roof of the two-car garage and stared with wide eyes at the 2003 matte black Hummer backing out of the roaring hole. Across the street, Margaret Chanderson ignored the sprinkler on her porch for the more liberating activity of stripping her pantyhose from under her business suit and using them to tie the mail man’s quivering fingers to the wrought iron balusters wrapped around her blue-floored porch.
A plane flew overhead, this neighborhood sitting directly under the landing path for the international airport to the west. At the first sound and accompanied sight of the plane, Reginald gave a half growl, half squeak, and lumbered off of the side of the garage roof, jumping onto a woodpile and bellowing when it rolled from beneath his high-booted feet. If Randall didn’t have the stereo maxxed out with The White Stripes while he smoked a pinch of his dad’s weed before his mom got back from the pharmacy, then he surely would have heard the commotion. As it was, he was oblivious to Reginald’s blumbering until the man turned the knob on the backdoor, pushed slightly too forceful to be involved in anything considerate to a ‘gentlemanly’ method of entering a room, and stepped into a sweet cloud of air dust being exhaled from Randall’s flared nostrils and pursed lips.
Across the street, Margaret Chanderson was chanting at the moon.
It was 7:45 A.M. on a Tuesday morning.
Out along the Interstate, 18 wheels rolled along the grey pavement. Travis Tritt played in the cab. ‘Drift Off To Dream’. Driving into a dark rain, from out of a light mist.
Allegories stamped to every invoice, this was the ocean ride. By nightfall, he would find the loop of the belt and slip his finger in, pull his quarry to him, and place a hint of a kiss upon the cheek that chills and trembles.
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Birth sign: Taurus
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