Previous chapters:
Chapter One: Georgie
Chapter Two: Guns, Blurbs, and Steal
Chapter Three: Big Jugs and the Hairy Arm

CHAPTER FOUR

Sophia, the Pain in My Chest, Part 1

CYNTHETICA LEADS US TO a long wooden table near the bar. It’s a big table, long enough to fit four tall stools on either side. It’s also plenty wide, more than enough space for the two of us. I sit diagonally across from Georgie so no one gets the idea we’re a couple of homos, and he unwraps a fresh pack of smokes. I shouldn’t have to remind him there’s no smoking, but I will anyway.

“Dude, there’s no smoking in here.”

“I’ll smoke it outside,” he says. “Mind if I unwrap them at the table first?”

“Whatever.” I can’t worry about him because there’s a room full of stacked young girls darting back and forth to serve the ever-increasing number of King of Prussia’s finest patriots. I chose this place for my talk with Georgie for two reasons. First, the people who eat here are my kind of people. There are a lot of NRA members, lots of Tea Party sympathizers, lots of folks who own cabins up in the mountains with stockpiles of munitions and guns and freeze-dried food. I have all that too, but I have to keep it in my house. This is a perfect place to recruit Georgie to our cause.

The other reason we’re here is Sophia.

It is as bright as ever, the kind of bright from fluorescent light bouncing off of metal appliances and varnished pine table-tops. I see Wang in the kitchen.

“Check it out,” I say to Georgie. “Wang’s working at Big Jugs now. What’s that, job number fifty-three?”

Georgie lights up and looks at me with that coked-up stare, the kind with white all the way around the iris. He must’ve done some of Justin’s stash before we left. Justin’s gonna be pissed.

“So, how ya feeling?” he asks, grinning ear to ear. “You feeling as fucking fantastic as I do?” He sniffs and wipes his nose.

“George?” says a voice.

“I wish I didn’t have to drink by myself,” he says between long tokes off of the cigarette he holds like a joint.

“George?” I hear it again.

Georgie and I notice Cynthetica at the same time, like she magically, deliciously appeared.

“George, you have to go outside to smoke,” she says apologetically.

Georgie looks up, as innocent as a newborn.

“Sorry, Love,” he says. “I didn’t know. I’m not from around here.”

“He’s full of shit!” I yell triumphantly. “There’s no smoking in pubs in England either, or in all of Europe. You can’t even smoke in an outdoor Parisian café.”

The left corner of Georgie’s mouth twitches. He gently grinds out his cigarette on the sole of his shoe.

“Cynthia, old girl, I’m afraid he’s right. I was just taking the piss. Allow me to apologize in your American tongue.”

He lets his final drag escape slowly as he speaks.

“Eeeeeeeeeeeee, my bad.”

He grins with teeth parted and fully exposed, like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, with eyes that dart wildly from side to side and then come to rest unmistakably on Cynthetica’s huge knockers.

“Heeeeeeeerrrrreeee’s Jerry!” he says and slaps me on the shoulder.

She laughs. She folds her arms and then mashes her painted lips together in a failed attempt to keep from smiling more, but it only digs her dimples further into her face so I can practically see through her cheeks and out the other side, out onto Dekalb Pike, traveling five minutes back in time to where we were before we entered. Or maybe I’m looking into the future to where Georgie and I will be an hour from now as we head home. But how would I know? If I threw out my watch, how would I tell if I was coming or going? I guess the sun would be in a different place, but then get rid of the sun, and then what? I wouldn’t be able to see at all. Maybe…Yes! That’s why light is so important! I get it. Man, I wish I had studied more physics. There is a relationship between space and time that men much smarter than me figured out long ago. It explains it all. I look to where I was—it’s the same place I’ll be going. It’s the same place I’ve been going to back and forth, over and over again. I’m like a planet orbiting between my house and Big Jugs, never changing course, just changing position relative to some other point of reference.

“My boobs can do amazing things,” Cynthia says at me, “but they’re not microphones. I’ll get Sophia, but I don’t think hers are microphones either.”

“What?”

Cynthia spins and jiggles her twenty year-old ass straight back to the kitchen. I snap a picture of it and upload it to my Facebook wall.

Georgie chuckles violently in his seat.

“Mate, I’ve never seen someone order a Diet Coke into a bird’s tits before.”

“What?”

“You’re a tosser, G&D.”

My phone buzzes. It’s another text from that same number.

“I think that bird over there fancies you,” Georgie says.

“Which one?”

“Two tables on your left, although she looks like she should be eating at ‘No Jugs’ instead of ‘Big Jugs’.

I turn to see a very thin woman with jet black hair staring at me. When I look at her she doesn’t look away. That’s nice and all, but she’s not Jeremiah-worthy.

“She’s a little bit of all right, eh Prophet?”

I turn back to her, but in her place is a woman with platinum blonde hair.

“Here comes your lovely,” says Georgie.

I turn back and see Sophia as she stops to chat with some Hispanic dude and laughs as if to say, “Oh, go on” or “You are too much” and slaps him playfully on his tattooed bicep. He makes a muscle that she squeezes as if to say, “Wow, it’s so big” or “How much do you work out?”

I hear that low-frequency hum again, but this time a little louder. I can make out a slight pulsation in the sound.

“Mate, you all right?” asks Georgie. “You look like you’re gonna kill somebody.”

I look around the room and everyone has their heads buried in their phones, and it looks like the cameras in the phones are all pointed at me.

“I’m fine,” I say, and suddenly I am, as if by saying the words the hate leaves me and evaporates. And then everything is okay because Sophia is heading toward us, and all misdeeds are forgotten, and she is just as she was the day I first saw her, the way she’s always been to me, both here now and in my bathroom fantasies. She walks toward me, tall without heels, all toned muscle and smooth skin with shoulder-length hair she must’ve curled today. I love everything about her, down to her collarbones and thin arms, which may seem like odd things to notice, but I mean that she is lanky and gangly in a just coming out of puberty way, in a way that makes me want to pick her up and carry her off somewhere, anywhere, even to the American Appliance a few stores down. I just want to hold her against me and feel her against me and feel her heart pound into my ribs and her long legs dangle over my arm as the world burns to a cinder around us. I want to rescue her. I want to see the flash of a car bomb illuminate her face for only a second, one that is forever burned into my memory as Black Hawk helicopters hover above us and unleash withering torrents of 50mm gunfire. A look at her face and everything else vanishes into a meaningless void, a still and silent tunnel leading to a mattress at Sleepy’s, for the rest of your life.

“Hello, fellas. What can I get you?”

She is naturally fair, but tan from the summer and brown freckles dot her nose and cheeks and upper chest. Her nose is large, but in an Uma Thurman way, and her big eyes show enough lid to give off a Lolita vibe that makes me want to change my name to that dude’s who was nailing that child in that book in that Sting song.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hi,” she replies. Her lips are a dark maroon.

“Hi,” I repeat.

There’s a pause. “Um...hi.”

“We’ll have a pint of Lager, an order of the 911 wings, and a Diet Coke for my blood and blister here,” Georgie says, pointing to me.

“You’re what?” she says, laughing.

“Me blood and blister? Oh, it’s just Cockney slang for ‘sister,’ who my friend here is acting like.”

She bites her nail and laughs. She laughs at me.

“Don’t mind me mate,” says Georgie. “He’s a bit all sixes and sevens today.”

She looks at me. “You know this guy?” pointing to Georgie with her thumb. “This guy...George, right?”

“That’s right,” Georgie says.

“This guy is crazy. Watch out for this one.” She giggles and then tells Georgie how funny he is and how she loves his accent. “Say that again,” she says.

“What? That me mate’s all sixes and sevens?”

The prick is having a field day.

“I love your accent,” she says again.

“Maybe you should come across the pond.”

Maybe I should smother you in your sleep.

“They would love you over there,” he says. “Simply love you.”

“Really?” she says.

I’m going to shove him into oncoming traffic.

“I’ve never been to Europe.”

“Oh, it’s better than Europe. It’s England.”

“England fucking sucks,” I hiss through clenched teeth.

She widens her eyes and laughs in a failed attempt to lighten the atmosphere and exit gracefully. “Okaaaay, I’ll just go get your beer.

“Please hurry back,” I say. “This man just propositioned me for sex.”

Georgie gives her an awkward smile and rolls his eyes.

“Right,” she says. “Well, I’ll be back.” She turns and walks off, and I watch as a man at another table puts his hand on her ass. I type a note into my iPhone to come back tomorrow and pull all the fingers off his hand.

“What the hell’d you say that for?” asks Georgie. “Why you trying to mess things up with me and Sophia.”

“She’s just acting friendly because that’s her job. She’s only doing what she gets paid to do.”

“So you say.”

Sophia returns with one pint glass of Lager. She puts a Diet Coke down in front of me. She doesn’t sit down to talk to us like she does with the other assholes who come here. I can’t figure out why she always acts like she’s never seen me before. I don’t understand how she can never remember my name. I’m her neighbor for Christ’s sake, separated by terrorists who live between us. I’m not the kind of guy you forget meeting. I’m a presence, a force that dominates a room.

“Jerry, try to relax. It’s not your fault. American birds love us Englishmen. It’s like the Beatles and the Stones.”

“I would die before I saw her with you. Shouldn’t you be off somewhere enslaving a race of people and destroying their culture?”

“Sorry, mate. That’s America’s job now.”

No, America’s job is bailing all you fuckers out.

One of the televisions is tuned to Fox News, and it has a calming effect on me as it usually does. The news does that, especially Fox News. Most people say it stresses them out because it’s all bad, but for me it’s the opposite. It allows me to come down from the mountaintop like Zarathustra and become one of the masses who pour over the steady stream of shit that reminds each and every one of us that we are not in control of anything. Then I ascend, I struggle and claw my way to the top, stronger for the journey, but stronger still for what I have learned. Like Glenn Beck says: “No one who has passed through the storm has ever regretted the journey.” That is so true, except for maybe those sailors in the movie The Perfect Storm, or the people who had to eat each other when their plane crashed in the Andes. That story really got to me, especially the part about the guy who had to eat his mom’s legs while knowing how much he had sweated and slaved to pay for her salsa dance lessons; and then when he had to smother her legs with salsa just to force them down, I’ll bet that “Gift of the Magi” dude could not have thought up such bitter irony. But it took Mr. Beck’s insight and originality to distill it into one simple, uplifting sentence.

The TV drones on with details of our futile war against terrorism.

“Today, U.S. war plans pounding ISIS strongholds in Raaqa…”

Sophia has appeared and vanished like a fairy, leaving behind another pint of Lager and a Diet Coke. Georgie plowed through that first one something fierce. He holds out his pack of Benson and Hedges. “Want a fag now?” he asks. He shakes a cigarette out of his pack and hands it to me. I take it. I shouldn’t take it because my chest hurts again, liked I’m being cooked from the inside. It happens every time I smoke. I’d quit, but that would be pointless. The damage is done, but I’m sort of glad that I’m dying. Death frees you from the consequences of your actions. When Sid Vicious murdered his wife Nancy, he must’ve known that he’d be dead soon himself. He must’ve laughed at his arrest and the court preparations because he knew that it was all meaningless. He knew he’d never live to see his sentence carried out. He was above any form of justice, like a god. Death allows your true self to emerge, and it lets you observe how you would behave if you had unlimited, absolute power, which is what a zero consequence lifestyle grants you. It’s like when you wake up inside your own dream and realize you can control it. I got pretty good at doing that and it was fun for a while until I horrified myself with my actions. I did grotesque, unspeakable things that I can barely admit to myself. The upside is that the cancer that is eating me away from the inside has given me priceless insight into the mind of a suicide bomber, into the minds of my neighbors.

“Tonight at eleven, another Indian residence has been burglarized, making it the fifth one this month. Police in Center City are asking community members to report any suspicious activity…”

Georgie raises his hand. Sophia’s over in a flash, another full pint and a Diet Coke.

“Another round?” she asks.

“Absolutely,” says Georgie.

“You behaving yourself?” she says to me. She smiles, but her eyes are nervous.

“Me and me mate here are gonna have a few more beers,” he says.

“Really?” She smiles brightly and takes a stool next to Georgie. “And then what?”

“I dunno,” says Georgie. “I reckon we’ll do whatever seems proper.”

“Whatever seems proper?” She laughs like she’s just heard the funniest thing ever. “You are soooo funny.”

“But if you’re gonna be here, we may never go home,” he says.

I hear Georgie’s voice, but I can’t stop looking at her hands. She has the prettiest hands I’ve ever seen.

She fixes a schoolgirl stare on Georgie. “That wouldn’t be so bad,” she says. She flips her hair and it sends a wave of flowers crashing against my face. “You’ll feel right at home.”

Georgie is beaming, and I think he might actually be trying to bang my future wife.

“You are too lovely for words,” he says, then turns to me. “What do you say there, Jeremiah?”

“You have beautiful hands,” I blurt out.

Sophia looks at me in a way I don’t know how to describe.

“You’re not talkin’ to me then, are you?” asks Georgie.

I grow quiet, and then so does the table. As I go, so the table goes. So does the world in a fireball set off by the clicking relays of a million suicide bombers, swarthy zealots hollowed out and stuffed with C4 and nails, they run at me as I stand on the 110th floor of the South Tower, inching closer and closer to the windswept edge as I do the calculations, as I search for the mathematical answer that will somehow give me the strength to jump. I see a million hairy fingers on a million homemade detonators, each one so goddamn, unbelievably hairy.

Sophia looks at me with her put-on Lolita eyes and then narrows them to slits, all icy with hotness. She’s totally in character and she’s owning it. She owns me, but she doesn’t know it yet.

“Did I ever tell you what a cool name Jeremiah is?” she asks.

“What?”

“Jeremiah. That is such a cool name.”

“Really?” I knew she dug me.

She smiles and lowers her brow slightly and fidgets about in her seat before adjusting her tight shorts with a little pout.

“Sorry. Sometimes these shorts ride up and give me a wedgy.”

I am embarrassed by how much value this has added to my life.

“Well that’s a little bit of all right, eh Prophet?”

I guess. Don’t ask me, man. I’m lost. She notices too, but it’s all okay. She looks at me with her enormous eyes and had I a kingdom to give I’d promise it to her a thousand times over if she’d come across the street and let me bang her on the mattress I bought at Sleepy’s.

“So, Sophia, where do you live?” I say, knowing full well she lives two doors down from me. She lives on the other side of Hairy Arm’s place with her quadriplegic father.

“You don’t know where I live?” she asks, seemingly hurt, although it’s probably an act meant to get tips.

“Do you live in the area?” I reply. Georgie rolls his eyes at me and I scratch mine with my middle finger.

“Well…we’re neighbors, aren’t we?”

“We are?” She’s never once acknowledged this fact.

“Yeah, um…did you move recently?”

“No. I’m still right there, at the end near the fence.”

“Oh. I guess you never saw me come and go. I see you.”

“I guess I haven’t. You know, there’s a big hole in the fence. You should be careful.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why should I be careful?”

“I think what he’s trying to say,” Georgie says, “is that you should be careful you don’t get sucked into the Acme, because of all of the huge savings.” Georgie kicks me under the table.

“Right,” I say. “The coupons have created a savings black hole. It’ll make you question your belief in God.”

She laughs. “You guys are a riot.”

I accidentally put my leg next to hers under the table.

“So what do you do when you’re not a Big Jugs girl?” I ask.

Georgie winces.

“Umm…I go to school.” She withdraws her leg.

“Oh that’s nice,” Georgie says.

“What are you studying?” I ask.

“Nursing.”

“That’s sounds like a well good profession,” says Georgie.

“Why?” I ask.

“Why what?”

“Why do you want to be a nurse?”

“Well, ever since taking care of my dad—”

She stops. Something in her eyes has changed.

“I figure you gotta do something for money,” she says, “so why not help people?” She laughs softly and shows us the faint dimples I had missed earlier. They do hold my attention. They make me want to protect her, to give my life for her.

“Taking care of your father?” says Georgie. “That is the nicest thing I’ve heard in all my travels.”

She blushes. She actually blushes. This is too much, especially because it’s not a nice thing at all.

“I think you’re a sucker,” I say.

Georgie is stone-faced, and Sophia tries to respond but can’t and just looks at me perplexed, like I blew her mind, like she can’t comprehend anyone ever saying those words in that particular order to her. She tries to speak but all that comes out is “Uh-uh-uh…”

Georgie looks at me. His eyes curse me in an extremely polite, understated British way.

“Family brings you down,” I educate her. “Did you ever read Atlas Shrugged? You should. Like Ayn Rand says, family is just another form of the collective that promotes self-sacrifice, self-immolation, and self-abasement. It serves only to destroy the individual. Like you for instance, taking care of your dad instead of pursuing your dreams. Why don’t you let your pop take care of himself?”

“He’s a quadriplegic and my mom’s gone. I’m all he has.”

Like I didn’t know that. “See?” I say.

Georgie looks on, resting his head on his hand, grinning in a forced sort of way and with a vague, helpless look in his eyes, as interested in predicting what I’m about to say next as I am.

“You’re enabling him,” I say. “Make him do some things on his own. Remember: that which kills us not makes us stronger.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

She rises slowly, like she doesn’t know where she is, like if I told her we were on Pluto she’d believe me. That’s what happens when your mind is expanded by someone speaking the truth. You lose your compass and get lost in the landscape-shifting process of philosophical deconstruction.

She stands before me. Her bottom lip quivers like Jersey sand dune grass. So, so fragile.

“How could you say such a thing?” she asks, more to herself than to me.

“Be honest. That’s why you work at Big Jugs, right? Why else would a girl like you work here? You’re trapped in your life.”

Both of her arms hang lifelessly by her side as she turns and walks away. They pull on her shoulders and make her slouch in a pathetic vision of bad posture. That didn’t go as planned. I didn’t want her to get sad. I wanted her to get angry, to defend herself and her beliefs, no matter how misguided they are. I’m looking for the perfect woman here.

“Why on earth did you say that?” Georgie asks. “You’ve upset the lovely Sophia.”

“Fuck off.”

“I don’t understand,” he says. “You were doing so great with that ‘hands’ line. Hands! That was genius. Every bloke in this place has been staring at this poor girl’s tits, and you go and compliment her hands of all things. She didn’t know what to say. You had her on the hook, mate, but then had to cut your own line. Why would you insult her? You got a fear of success or something?”

“I don’t know if I could’ve jumped.”

“What?”

“I don’t know if I would’ve had the courage.”

“What are you going on about?” he says. “You have a strange way of sweet-talking the ladies, Jeremiah. You’re somebody’s patient, that’s what you are.” He sighs and cracks the vertebrae in his neck. “You should go to a head doctor.”

“I don’t go to doctors,” I say. “Not after what Obama did to the healthcare system. Soon they’ll be pulling people off the street and calling them physicians.”

“Right.”

“Read The Forgotten Man of Socialized Medicine!”

“I’ll get right on that.”

Healthcare in this country is going right into the shitter, thanks to El Presidente and his second-rater democrap conspirators in the House. I used to have such respect for doctors, but not anymore. Between the government and the pharmaceutical drug pushers, you leave the hospital sicker than when you arrived. It’s all bullshit with a stethoscope and tongue depressor. I’m smarter than the doctors anyway. You don’t even need them anymore thanks to the internet. I do all my self-diagnosing on Horrible-Diseases-You-Just-Might-Have.com. That’s what clinched my lung cancer diagnosis for me. Symptoms: fatigue, shortness of breath, wheezing, headache. It doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots.

I light the cigarette Georgie gave me earlier. I cough and it makes my chest hurt. It’s about time that I start to ease Georgie into understanding our plan and his role in it.

I see that Sophia is about to pass us on her way to another table.

“Hairy Arm and his roommates are part of an ISIS cell,” I say loud enough for her to hear me.

Georgie pauses, studies me. “Of course they are,” he says.

“They’re terrorists, man.”

He laughs. “You are a crazy geezer, Jeremiah.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know you are. That’s what makes you crazy.”

I look for Sophia, but she is now at the other table. The men look really happy that they got her as their waitress.

“So what should we do about it?” asks Georgie. I know he’s mocking me, but I’ll make him see the light.

“I’m glad you asked.”

I straighten my back because it’s starting to hurt, or maybe it hurts from carrying the representation of Great Britain who sits diagonally across from me.

“Well, get on with it,” he says, “but try not to kill my buzz. It’s delightful.”

I don’t know how he’s still standing.

In addition to the sites with pictures of the 9/11 jumpers, I’ve also been to several Islamic jihadist sites, just to get into the minds of my enemies. What I found, in addition to the disgusting and repulsive tactics they use when they do their thing, is that they are undeniable masters of recruitment. Imagine the line of bullshit you gotta have to convince someone to strap on an explosive vest and blow themselves up. That waste of skin Mark Cancer can’t even convince Indian contractors not to fly home to India for a month during an incredibly important production roll-out.

I’ve learned that the key is to make the recruited feel like a victim of society and/or of the world. Then you entice them with gifts like an afterlife filled with great sex. Once you do those two things, the rest is cream cheese. They’ll be begging you for explosives. In the event that the recruited doesn’t believe in the supernatural, you can tap into his sense of national or ethnic pride, his quest for fame or notoriety, or his desire to “positively” affect the future.

“Georgie,” I say. “I’ve known you for what, about seven days?”

“Feels like three.”

“Whatever.”

He gulps down his beer while looking at the super-hot, red-haired bartender with the nipples you could see from across the street.

“However long you’ve been here, I’ve noticed that you drink a lot and do a lot of drugs.”

“No more than anyone else.”

“No, you drink a ton. You drink a lot more than anyone else I’ve ever met.”

“Compared to a teetotaler like you, it might seem so, but I’m about average. And mind you, I don’t drink because I have to. I do it because I want to. It’s a state of mind.”

He’s in deep, deep denial, something I will exploit to the max.

“Why do you think it is that you drink so much?” I ask.

He looks taken aback.

“I’m British,” he says.

“But could it be that you drink to cover the pain of being a white man who is made to feel like the cause of all of the world’s problems?”

“No.”

“Well you should.”

“Why?”

“Because you colonized the earth and formed the current borders of Iraq after WWI and gave Palestine to the Jews which is the root cause of all the world’s problems. If you feel deep down responsible for it and feel really, really guilty, no one would blame you.”

“But I don’t feel guilty. The UK gave the world property rights, the English language, we started the Industrial revolution, and invented modern computers. That’s all well good.”

I’ve never seen someone is such denial.

“But what about those bombings—the double decker bus and the subway bombings in 2005. Doesn’t it make you afraid of what’s down the road?”

“Not really.”

“Why not?”

“Nothing I can do about it, Jerry. Nothing at all.”

“Doesn’t it make you want get the sons of bitches that did it?”

“The RAF is taking care of that, aren’t they?”

“What if I told you that you had an opportunity to get some revenge yourself, right here, right now?”

He pauses briefly, then says: “What’s in it for me?”

“What’s in it for you? How about saving Western fucking civilization.”

“Sounds like a lot of work and not much return on investment.”

This is going to take forever.

“Listen, Georgie. Justin and I are going next door tonight to handle our next door neighbors and I want you onboard.”

“Why can’t we just go back to that Peach Bottom pub where we went the other night and have a few pints?”

“We’re going next door tonight to take out the terrorists who have been plotting another attack for probably a year. I need to know that you’re in.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why does it matter if I’m in on it?”

“For Anglican civility and class.”

That got his goat. He starts cackling like an exotic bird.

“If I tell you I’m in,” he says, “will you shut it and let me enjoy my time at Big Jubblies?”

“I need to know that you’re taking this seriously, that you really want to go over and be a part of this.”

“Get me some charlie, and I’ll go anywhere you want with a smile.”

I wouldn’t know how to buy coke, but it’s just part of the negotiation.

“Deal.”

“All right then.”

Cynthia is back.

“Sir, you really have to go outside to smoke,” she says to me, less apologetically than before.

“Where’s Sophia?” I ask.

“She’s busy with other customers. Could you just put it out?” She’s irritated. “You can’t smoke in here, we’ll get in trouble.”

“What the hell happened in this country that you can’t smoke a cigarette in a fucking Big Jugs? My grandfather fought in WWII and smoked five packs of cigarettes a day and lived to be one hundred and thirty.”

“Jerry, come along. Let’s smoke our fags outside,” says Georgie.

I put my hand on my Glock. “You want to smoke some fags?”

“Come along now. That’s a geezer.”

Georgie leads me outside and we both light up again.

“Why do you carry that thing around, anyway? That gun. What’s the use?”

I’d explain it to him, but he wouldn’t understand. How could he? His country is the reason the 2nd Amendment to the Bill of Rights had to be written. The British were tyrants. Only an American could understand.

Me and Georgie puff away in silence in the faded parking lot with slow, steady breaths, exhaling smoke like factories and watching it drift away into the gray sky. It looks like we’re making the clouds. I swallow hard as the flame draws near the butt and the smoke becomes hot and cuts into my tongue and the back of my throat. I spit and take a final drag and then crush the butt under my heel.

It’s a strange kind of peaceful out here despite the highway twenty yards away. There’s a lot of traffic, probably due to people getting a jump on the Labor Day rush. I can see the roof of my house in front of a massive black cloud that has formed behind it. I take a picture of it with my phone and upload it to Facebook with the caption “It is time.” If only Hairy Arm’s place could get struck by lightning. If only I could leave it to God. If only God existed. If only the array of “if onlys” would align, but God is dead, and I am not, and that means I will not rest until the man we call The Hairy Arm is dealt with in a way that is uniquely American, which means with an absurd amount of force.

I turn away from the highway and back at Georgie who looks at me with an expression I can only describe as “in awe.” He has never seen a commander like me. He has never seen such a dominating, hulkish figure like me. I’m about to throw my cigarette butt at him when I see Sophia come out the main door. At first I think she’s going to make sure we didn’t skip out on our check, but then she walks to the side of the building. I see her, and there’s a man, and the man approaches her, and she seems to know him. I cannot see his face. He stops to talk to her and she smiles. It is a smile not like the one she shows me or other customers.

The man is black, but one who doesn’t have kinky curly hair. It doesn’t really matter that he’s black because I’m not a racist, but it’s worth noting just the same. The man’s hair is straight and long, down to his shoulders. She reaches and grabs his hand. Usually she is the one being grabbed. But she grabs his hand and smiles. He’s not a customer. She grabs his hand and smiles, and he’s not a customer. And he’s black. Black and not a customer, but with straight, long hair whose hand she grabs with a genuine smile, with a smile more than genuine, with a smile of familiarity, but more familiar than familiarity, more like something closer to intimacy. She moves in and kisses him. I can’t see his face to see where she kissed him. I’m sure she kissed him on the mouth. There is no denying it. She kissed him on the mouth. Planes fly into the Twin Towers and al-Zarqawi holds up Nick Berg’s severed head, and she kisses his mouth and touches his black hand with a sincere and intimate smile. She smiles an unmistakably intimate smile.

I’ve stayed too long. Had I left earlier, like I should have, I would have never seen that. Who the fuck did she kiss and why was he so goddamn black? Why is this day sucking so much? Tonight better go more smoothly. Smoother than eggshells, smoother than a newborn baby’s ass. Like glass, man, like fucking glass.

I feel strange. I hear a drone high up above me. Chemtrails zigzag across the sky, remnants from planes seeding our air with chemicals and nanobot tracking devices.

“We’re leaving now,” I yell to Georgie.

“Now, like right now?” he says. “What about my pitcher?”

“Fuck it.”

“What about our check?”

I shake my head and walk toward the highway.

“You’re going to skip out on the check? What about Sophia? What about the lovely Cynthetica?”

I’m tired of listening to his stupid questions, and it’s getting late. I didn’t realize how long we were in Big Jugs. I missed my conference call, not that it matters.

“I’m gobsmacked,” says Georgie. “Let me at least pay the check.”

I cross Dekalb Pike and turn around in the middle of the street as SUVs sail past me on either side, the eastbound ones packed with coolers and beach umbrellas and suitcases and child snorkels and Optimus Prime beach blankets and bicycles with training wheels hanging off the backs. My voice is deep and low, a growl.

“You pay that check and it’s Roto-Rooter time, you hear me?”

“But we can’t leave without paying,” he pleads. “I’ll lose all me Jubblie points!”

That’s the idea, Georgie. That’s precisely the idea.