Wednesday, December 06, 2006
26 Iced Coffee, Part One
“You’re acting funny,” she said that day when she returned from vacation.
“No I’m not.”
“Are you stoned?”
“No.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. I don’t even have any stuff. If I had some maybe I’d be smoking it. But since I don’t have any, scientifically speaking, I can’t be stoned.”
“OK. Then, why don’t you have any pants on?”
“These are pants.”
“White boxers?”
“Boxers are pants.”
“I still think you’re acting funny. You seem sort of edgy but, yet, you have this funny look in your eye.”
“Rev, everything is fine. It’s hot in here so I’m drinking iced coffee. I think that’s what’s throwing you off. You’ve never seen me drink coffee so late in the afternoon. I’m in a coffee mood is all. If it were six in the morning and not six at night nothing would be unusual.”
“Alright. If you say so.”
She leaned in to kiss him but stopped short after catching a whiff of something.
“Did you have a cigarette?” she asked.
J sometimes smoked, but he had not had a cigarette in several days.
“No,” he said, not lying.
He had not had a cigarette, at least not the traditional kind.
“I’m going back to my place,” she said. “It’s hot over here and things just got weird all of a sudden.”
“Rev—”
“Maybe next time I come over you’ll have some pants on.”
“Rev, I’ll change—I just did some laundry—”
It was true about the laundry. But she was halfway down the stairs and by the time he reached for his iced coffee it had become a tasteless morass of mushy ice and brown water.
Next: Willie
