It’s the little things that matter most.

The globules of toad spit on the green blades of grass were illuminated by the sun and looked like the glitter on a pimp’s cape. I pressed my morning hard on against the screen in the back door and the hinges creaked like the spine of an arthritic chamber maid. The air had the faint tang of burning oil and rotting fruit in it and I gazed up at the ever expanding hole in the ozone layer. My inner factions agreed it was a beautiful world gone bad; a magical place smogged under by the corporate Jesus freaks and their belief that paving everything under would make it easier for them to drive their gold plated Hummers over on their way to the Pearly Gates.

I sipped from my coffee and looking into my mug I saw my reflection in the rich black beverage. It sort of looked like the velvet Elvis painting on my dentist’s office wall. I thought how I was ever so gradually drifting towards the ultimate blackness, the closed eyed decay that strips the meat from our bones, that leaks the images from our brains, that dries the love in our hearts. At all costs I would battle this blackness. I would charge it with my lance again and again and again until it lay defeated at my Burmese Jungle booted feet. Yes, you ask but what if I failed to slay the beast? Well, I had a plan for that too. A second more scientific way to attain immortality and it went something like this: I would record my every thought, jot down the sequencing of my DNA, store it in a computer and shoot it off in a rocket aimed at the next galaxy. Surely some mad outer space creature would run across it one day whilst out jetting inbetween the stars in his pimped out Vlectan 350 (Yeah the cherry red one). What would then go down next would be the locking of hard drives, the spinning of my digitalized brain stem and then the rebuilding of my soul in stainless steel. But as is my nature I digress…

“Come on,” I yelled to my Chihuahuas who were chasing squirrels out onto the road in front of the daily precession of exhaust spitting automobiles as they careened towards the elevators and escalators of the city.

Splat!

A cloud of gray fur and exhaust hung in the morning sky.

“That’s all folks,” I said.

* * *

With a strong eastwardly wind at my back, which caused my cotton madras shirt to billow out like the sail of some wayward pirate vessel, I made for my Cherokee via my cracked brick sidewalk. With my hands shaking I threw open the driver’s side door and jumped inside. Nestled firmly in the cracked leather seats I pounded down on the gas and ripping up fists full of gravel I shot out onto the road and was officially on my way.

The route to work would devastatingly routine and to brace myself against such banality I would need to make one stop before I reached the downtown and my office and this side adventure would be located in-between the four prefabricated walls of the nearby Seven Eleven. You see my caffeine levels were running dangerously low and if I was to brace myself against the predictability of yet another humdrum day I would need the help of my little caffeinated friend. My veins weren’t rattling like oyster shells in a muffler but my mind wasn’t fully evading the stillness that threatened to take it over, wasn’t running from the Reaper’s sickle; the cocksucker threatened to slice it in half like a honeydew melon if I slowed for even a moment. I had to keep moving, every single molecule of my compressed soul demanded it.

As I opened the door to the Seven Eleven the stale air conditioned air poured over my skin like a some sort of crazy industrial soup. I could feel its staleness clogging my pours. I shivered and proceeded forward.

The Pakistani owner behind the cash register winked at me and patted at his stringy comb-over. I nodded. Yeah, it was weird but the fuck if I know what their traditions were and so focused in on the miniature city of coffee makers on the counter in the far corner. There was enough caffeine there to jump start Walt Disney’s cryogenically preserved corpse.

As I passed the aisles I could help but take in those that occupied them like stuffed animals in a wealthy industrialist’s study. There was the usual down trodden; the state workers in polo shirts and khaki slacks, with the clickers going off in their heads; 5, 735 days until retirement. Click. 5734 days until retirement. Click. 5733 days until retirement. Click. I wondered if that was really a life or if it was just a replica of one.

An elderly black gentleman in a blue striped seersucker suit and a Panama hat was leaning over the counter scratching madly at instant lottery tickets. “Muther fucker,” he said, straightening and then tossing the tickets in the trash can beside the cash register.

A fat little boy ran by me, his legs jiggling from under his short pants, Snickers bars piled in his arms. I thanked God that recent reports indicated Americans did NOT have a weight problem. It was good to know every other person I saw wasn’t obese but rather I was seeing things.

This place was weirding me out. I needed to get my coffee and get the fuck out of there before I became one of them, before I lost my identity and was sucked into the anonymity of the everyman. This was the kind of place no one ever left. If I came back in ten years all the same people would still be there doing the exact same things. I needed to get out sooner than now. I ran towards the coffee machines.

I fumbled with the cups and lids trying to find a match.

“Why the fuck don’t they label these things,” I grumbled.

“That would be too easy.”

I started at the dirty floor and worked my way up, taking in the long tan legs, the knee length navy blue skirt and jacket, the curvaceous hips, the creases of her nether place, the swelling breasts. I locked on her lips and canvassed her eyes like they were an open bank vault filled with the green emeralds and I was a safe cracker.

“Gorgeous,” I said.

“Thank-you,” she said, shyly looking away.

“Right,” I said. “Can I buy you a coffee?”

“I already have a coffee,” she said.

“How about a Danish? I hear the cheese Danishes are very…uh, fresh.”

“Thanks, but I don’t eat refined carbs.”

“Me either I prefer the unrefined carbs, you know roughage and all.”

“I bet you do,” she said and turned, making for the cash register.

I was desperate. She’d stolen my heart in nanoseconds; dipped it in her coffee and taken a bite out of it like it was powdered donut. I needed to wrestle my heart out of her throat with my tongue, to join our souls at the hips, to wrap myself around her like a boa constrictor and never ever let go…unless of course I found someone hotter.

“Hey,” I said, lightly tapping her shoulder. “Here.”

I thrust one of my business cards at her. She took it and glanced at it quickly.

“A writer,” she said, “I’ll remember that.”

I wanted to follow after her but suddenly I felt like I shouldn’t. Something wasn’t right. I was being WATCHED! I could smell the smoke from the eyes burning through the back of my shirt. I turned on my heels like a gunslinger and there he stood; prim, proper, stuffy. In short all I despised in a human.

He hurried to the counter and stood beside HER! He slipped his reptilian hand around her hips.

“Cocksucker,” I said under my breath.

“What is that?” the guy asked, looking at the card in her hand.

“That guy is a writer. He gave me his card,” she said turning it over in her delicate white hands.

“He couldn’t do anything important,” the guy said loud enough for me to hear.

I turned; my eyes two molten replicas of hatred’s own. I looked the guy up and I looked him down. The cut of his suit was perfect, aerodynamic, possibly designed by Divinci and let loose in the computer terminal of some space age tailor. If he had a propeller up his ass I’m pretty sure he would have been able to fly with little to no wind resistance.

Be quiet,” the woman said.

I shuffled up towards the line behind them scuffing my Burmese Jungle boots on the ground so as to cause a distraction but just as I was about to get in line behind them the fat kid with the Snickers bars butted in line in front of me.

“Hey kid I was in line first,” I said.

“Were not,” he said, chocolate on his lower lip.

“Look free Ding Dongs,” I said.

The fat kid turned and I stole his place in line.

“Hey there’s no free Ding Dongs,” he said.

“Someone must have gotten the last ones. Maybe if you weren’t so heavy you could have beaten the last person to get the free Ding DOngs,” I said.

The guy in the suit turned towards me.

“Was that necessary?” he said in possibly the most condescending voice I’d ever experienced.

“Actually it was. I’m concerned about the kid’s weight. Three or four more years of pounding chocolate like that and his parents will have to roll him around on an industrial dolly,” I said.

She looked at me and smiled; her lips like great merlot filled zeppelins. I puckered involuntarily for the need to lock lips with her.

“Are you mocking me?” the guy said.

“Of course, it is after all my nature,” I said and winked at her.

“You’d better get a grip on reality pal. You’re nothing in this world. I’m somebody. What you say and what you think don’t mean anything. I make the wheels turn,” he said and swiped at his slick back hair.

“Tricycle wheels?

“Do you see what I’m driving out there?” he said, his face reddening.

“A milk truck?”

“Not the milk truck you idiot. That BMW, the 760Li Sedan. Something you will never have.”

“Stop it Peter,” she said. “You’re being a complete ass. I’m sorry.”

“There’s no need to be sorry. By your definition I’m nothing and that’s just fine with me because by my definition you’re nothing.”

“Whose next?” the Pakistani store owner asked, his comb over hanging in his eyes.

“Go ahead,” she said, gesturing me around them, “I need to get something else.”

I set my coffee on the counter and fished the small leather bound notebook I kept my cash in out of my pants pocket.

“And the Snickers bars that kid back there has,” I said.

I paid and made for the doors.

“Hey mister,” the fat kid said.

“Yeah?” I said turning.

“Thanks,” the kid said looking guiltily at his candy.

“No, I’m sorry for saying that stuff I was worked up over something else. I was husky when I was your age. I mean I didn't have the rolls thing going on but I can sympathize. I know it can be hard...I was a fucking idiot.”

“I don’t want to be fat,” he said.

“I’ll tell you what. You know where Bruno’s Gym is down by the mall?”

“Yeah?”

“Meet me there at five. We’ll work on getting you into shape,” I said and guzzled from my coffee.”

“Okay,” he said.

In my car I turned the key in the ignition. There was a sharp rap at my window. I looked out. It was HER. She had something in her hand. I rolled my window down.

“Here,” she said, handing me her card.

“Let’s get a drink tonight after work,” she said.

“I can’t I have a date with the fat kid at the gym,” I said.

“Are you going to stay there all night?” she said with a smile.

“No?”

“Eight o’clock at McDuffy’s?”

“Right,” I said and she was gone.

I rolled up my window and slammed my car in reverse nearly taking out the fat kid who was busy unwrapping a Snickers.

I didn’t know where any of this was leading but I knew I’d done at least one thing right this morning and for me that was one more than I usually got in during the course of a day. Yeah, there were blue skies on the horizon and yes I would probably fuck things but I had that moment and really that’s all that really mattered.

I waved to the fat kid and tore out onto the highway.