What the f**k is the matter with failure? It’s everywhere under the sun… flavored coffee, anything soy, Domino’s pizza and my relationships, every f**king one. Failure’s always an option, always a choice, like Del Taco and Madam Wu’s pork buns. But I digress.
George lost the Trop. But I needed coffee, bad. I’d been up all night wrestling with six unruly words and a twenty year old busboy I wish I’d had. George was now working the counter at the Beachwood cafe so I drove up the hill for a cup. Since I rarely came up this far, she wanted to know what was up. There was a girl at the counter, beautiful, strong, eating eggs over easy and ketchup-ed hash browns. When George brought her a side of two short stacks, I noticed slung over the girl’s slender arm was a thirty year old M.E. Pentax. As cool as the look in her eyes.
George poured me a coffee and asked, “You bailing on me tonight?” … she was gonna make us a grilled onion and Romano pizza from scratch… and read our cards from a forty year old deck that once belonged to Garbo but got snatched. Now… I could use some direction, a little clairvoyance, any glimpse into my future I wouldn’t shrink from. But I was wary of reading too much into negligible leads… the ones I’d had, had dried up like mist in an August dawn. So I told her, “Yeah… I gotta work, gotta chase down a beer-battered prawn.” My apatite, I could always count on.
And who knows… maybe I’d run into someone.
Rhea.
