Temporarily Here

Bob turns the radio down; she turns the radio up.

“Don’t mess with the dial, I’m driving.”

A car cuts her off, she lays on the horn and speeds up, almost wrecks.

“Yo! What the fuck are you doing?”

“I’m driving, shut the fuck up.”

They’ve been fighting all morning. He turns the radio dial down, she slaps his hand. The light turns green, the car jets forward.

“Yeah, pull over, I’m out of here.”

The baby girl cries in the baby seat.

“Bitch pull over.”

“Get a life I’m not pulling over.”

They’re in the far right lane and she’s not slowing. 35 mph give or take, he opens the door and jumps out of the car onto the shoulder of the road.

He crashes down, but rolls to his feet.

Marie keeps driving, baby girl crying in baby girl car seat, radio up. There’s a parking lot as big as a small country, he walks through it.

The bar is slow, it’s early afternoon. Kyle sits alone, and the bartender is eating Chinese food on the wrong side of the bar.

Bob walks in, it’s strange that there’s another patron this time of day. He says, “I want your tallest and strongest drink.” But he’s bleeding severely from his head and doesn’t know it.

“Can’t serve you. Get going.” The bartender points to the door.

Kyle stands up, “Robbie?”

“Oh hey, man.” It’s a coincidence, they haven’t seen each other since high school.

“You’re bleeding on the floor. Get out or I call the cops.”

Kyle says, “No! He’s with me, bro. He’s cool.” Ultimately though, they’re both not getting served there. Bartender crosses his arms and everything. Kyle grabs his car keys and says to Bob, “Let’s get out of here, this place is lame.”

They’re in his Pontiac and pulling out of the parking lot, back onto the highway when Kyle finally says, “So how’d you get all mangled up.”

“Hit my head on the road. Jumped out of my wife’s car.”

“Whoa. That’s intense. Trouble in paradise?”

“She’s a psycho.”

“She’s so crazy you jumped from a moving–oh, hold on–” Kyle stops the car in traffic, rolls his window down, vomits.

Cars zip around the stopped Pontiac, horns sounding off.

“You better move!”

Kyle vomits again, but he rolls the window up as soon as he’s done and puts the car into gear.

There’s breath mints in the ash tray, which isn’t used as an ash tray, it’s used to hold wrapped mints.

“Sorry, got rained out at work today.”

Bob looks up at the infinite blue sky. “Guess I had a few too many.”

They park behind the Food Universe. Two reasons for that, Kyle has to piss and there’s a picnic table under a shady tree next to the card board dumpster. Kyle has a car bar. His trunk has fifths of bourbon, rum, vodka and even pilsners on ice in an igloo cooler.

They sit at the table and relax.

“Where are you supposed to be?”

“Mother in law’s house. This is better.”

“What’s happening there?”

“Birthday party for her dad.”

Kyle hands Bob a large leaf from an oak tree. Bob sticks the leaf on his head where the blood is trickling out. It works.

They’re both drinking now from the fifth of rum, passing it. And the air is cool behind the supermarket. And it feels like another world. The meadow is full of chirping birds and Bob says, “I can’t remember the last time I heard birds chirp.”

“Sometimes it’s the only joy I get.”

Bob remembers something, knows he shouldn’t mention it, but it’s already on the tip of his tongue so he just says it, “I watched Greg Pollock kick your ass in front of the school bus that day and I didn’t do anything about it.”

“Oh that’s a painful memory.”

“Sorry to bring it up. You were bleeding from your head. Worse than this.”

“Know why he did that?”

“I heard some things.”

“Cause I’m a fag.”

“Well fuck. That’s no reason to try to kill somebody.”

“That’s just what some kids do.”

“My dad would have shot me,” Bob said.

“That’s just a myth. Your dad wouldn’t have shot you. He’d have understood. Would just take sixty or seventy years to warm up to the idea.”

“My dad would have though, for real. He did shoot me once.” Bob pulls his shirt sleeve up and shows where the bullet went through his bicep. There was a scar on the tricep where it exited.

“For what? Why’d he shoot you?”

“I came home with the car empty. Didn’t put gas in it.”

“Wow that’s extreme.”

“He drove me way out into the woods, must have driven down trails for three hours. Finally he stopped. There was another pickup truck there waiting. A friend of his. Dad said goodbye, climbed in the truck and said, ‘If you can find your way home you’re a man.'”

Kyle killed the last of the rum and said, “Well I’m sorry you got shot.”

“And I’m sorry you got your head split open.”

He smiled at bleeding Bob with his pal leaf stuck there like a baby octopus. “Now, I gotta go inside and stock motherfucking catfood. This was fun, but I have to roll. Let’s do this again sometime, yeah?”

“Sure.”

Kyle gave Bob some iced down beers from the trunk, slipped on his Food Universe smock and walked over to the loading dock doors without a wave.

Now Bob walked down the shoulder of the highway again. He was bleeding from his head more than ever. The blood had thinned. The leaf had disintegrated. He wiped the blood with his shirt sleeve and now he looked like a murderer covered in blood walking down the side of the road. That’s life.

A police car stopped. Two female cops stepped out.

“Excuse me, where are you coming from?”

“Haha, still coming out of the woods.”

One of the officers, Pam, she recognized Bob from high school and she said hi.

“Oh hi, Pam. This is all my own blood.”

“It’s cool,” she said. “You want to get in the car?” She opened the back of the squad car. Bob climbed in without resisting.

“What happened?” The lead officer said.

“Jumped out of a moving car.”

“Want to go to the hospital?”

Pam opened the medical kit in the glove box, she passed back some gauze through the partition.

“I’d like to just go home if that’s okay.”

“Pass your ID up. Gotta run it first to see if you’re a wanted man. Then, sure. No problem.”

His ID checked out and they were moving south down the highway and Bob was looking out the window.

“Saw Kyle Yearling today,” he said. “Remember him?”

“Oh” Pam said. “Of course, King of our prom.”

“He’s doing pretty good.”

“Glad to hear it.”

Pam said to the officer who was driving that it looked like a nice sunset.

Bob’s cell phone rang. It was his daughter.

“Daddy where are you?”

“In a car.”

“Another car? I’m confused. Why’d you jump out of our car?”

“Sometimes people just make mistakes.”

“Yeah.”

“Remember yesterday when you threw your PBJ on the floor.”

“Yeah.”

“What’d I do?”

“You picked it up.”

“Yes I did. I picked it up and I made

you a new sandwich and then I ate the one you threw on the floor.”

“Yeah.”

“You know why I did that?”

“Because you love me.”

“I do.”

“You and mommy going to get a divorce?”

“No. No we aren’t. I promise.”

“Good. Daddy, I have to go, the cake just came out. Bye.”

“Bye.”

Bob leaned against the glass. “Can I ask a favor?”

“What is it?” Pam said.

“Can we turn around and go the other way? I don’t want to go home. I’d like to go to this birthday party instead.”