The Best Side: Part 4

It was my turn to pause. “No,” I finally said. “I honestly never thought about it.”

“And back to stupid,” the Dame said, letting go of my arm. “I have information. You have a strange, almost Buster Keaton-ish ability to survive. If you can protect me until the war ends, I’ll tell you why the ninjas have been after you all these years.

I eased back down into the chair, keeping my left leg out straight to the side. “Give me a hint.”

She nodded and after a quick glance around, leaned forward. “Fresno,” she said quietly, barely above a whisper.

“Fresno,” I said, in one long breath. The world slowed and faded. A petite girl in black was looking over her shoulder at me. There was a hat made of paper. I staggered away from a field, my vision blurring as I looked down at my red stained hands. A grape was squashed in slow motion. In the distance, a cow farted.

A sudden shock of cold brought me back to Iggy’s. The Dame had an empty water glass and I was soaking wet, ice-cubes in my lap.

“I really, really hate flashbacks,” she said.

“Well,” I said, as I flicked ice-cubes off my trousers, “at least you didn’t shoot me this time.”

“I didn’t want to cripple your other leg.”

“Oh, my leg’s fine.”

“Then why are you walking like a geriatric peanut salesman?”

“It’s a secret,” I said. “And I completely don’t get the analogy.”

She shrugged. “Lots of shells. So, do we have a deal?”

“I don’t know. Fre- that place has a lot of ghosts. And raisins,” I added. “Besides, despite my ability to survive, we may not last the next ten minutes.”

“Why is that?”

“The ninjas are finished and the mimes are pretending to sharpen knives. Once everyone goes potty, it’s going to get dangerous.”

The Dame glanced around. The lone waitress was nowhere to be seen, though a small bucket of dead flies had been left behind. The doves started to fly back out of the kitchen, then realized that they were early and flew back in.

“There’s only seven of them,” she said. “Hell, we could just let them fight it out and then shoot the winners.”

“Not a bad plan,” I replied. “Except that there’s about 30 ninjas outside hiding in the shrubbery and about the same number of mimes in a tour bus out front.”

“And how do you know this?”

I tapped my head. “Sometimes clever, remember? My dad told me to never go into a buffet without a good recon.”

The Dame took a deep breath. “So we’re boned,” she said. “Guess I could’ve kept smoking after all.”

“Not necessarily.”

She frowned at me and I tapped my left leg. There was a metallic ‘ping.’

“I’ve got a secret.”

Next: Part 5

HOT

Well, the current news from my corner of the Pacific Northwest is: it’s hot. It’s frickin’ hot. I actually saw a small dog explode from the heat. Well, it was either that or cats have developed advanced missile technology, either is possible.

NOTE: I didn’t actually see a dog explode. I did see some sort of critter go off, but I can’t say with 100% certainty that it was a dog. It might have been a marmoset. Or a chupacabra. I dunno.

The joke is that I used to live in Fresno, California (The Raisin Capital of the World). It routinely got to 110° in the summer. Anything below 100° was ‘warm.’ Anything below 70° was practically sweater weather. Ice did not naturally occur in Fresno, it was something you got out of a soda machine.

Anyway, it may be just me, but the weather has been ‘mad scientist crazy’ lately. We had serious, deep snow several times during the winter and now it’s hotter than . . . well, not hell, but definitely much hotter than it has any right to be.

I would normally blame ninjas, but they’re worse off than most, what with the black, full-body pajamas. I could also blame Canada, but I already blamed them for the cold snap we had, so that would be redundant.

Therefore, I choose to blame the guy in the red Honda that beeped at me for no reason at the stop sign today. I rolled up, stopped, and was letting another car go when be ‘beeped’ at me. It wasn’t an angry honk, just a quick tap, but I don’t know why he bothered, as it was going to cost him maybe ten seconds. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t trying to warn me that there wasn’t a psychopath in the bed of my truck, preparing to assault me with a pair of salad tongs (I check for that every morning).

Obviously, his beep was some sort of code for ‘ha ha, I made it hot.’ So damn you, red Honda guy, damn you for making me uncomfortable and slightly sticky.

Okay, really sticky.

Cheers,
-Jason