Tuesday is my day off from Subway and, this week, my friends and I all share fortuitously similar schedules. We congregate at Larry's house (in truth an apartment) in the early afternoon, pondering how best to spend the gloomy late-spring day. Like every pack of shiftless, disaffected youth, it takes entire episode lengths of 24 for anything to be decided on as a group. To overpower our stagnant inertia, any choice would have to be enthusiastically unanimous, clicking into place with a metallic "Ah-ha!" Such decisiveness is a rare gift.
A haggardly unshaven Jack Bauer is water-boarding some "evil-doer" in a darkened warehouse, nondescript and vacant---
Greg nobly suggests Ice Cream. Andrew purses his lips in agreement and Larry consents with a "that sounds good." Larry's house is near public transport, so we take TRAX a half-mile west without buying tickets, then deposit ourselves a mere twenty yards from the stores entrance.
Three of us take time to collectively assess traffic, tugging our necks right to left, left to right, as Greg trotts his large frame through the busy thoroughfare with genuine nonchalance. We catch up with him loitering in the lobby, slack jawed and examining the menu with an easy concentration. I start to follow suit when my eyes brush across the slender young woman waiting patiently underneath. With every light, rapid glance I attempt, the more exceedingly nervous I become. She's outfitted in a tight goldenrod Pittsburgh Pirates t-shirt and ass-hugging blue jeans. Her face is framed by oddly clean-looking black dreadlocks and a nose piercing. Aside from the jewelry, her face is immaculate, as though that one flaw magnifies every other strength through awesome contrast; I have never seen a prettier human being.
Don't be a shit head, I think as my friends advance towards the counter. Just order your ice cream and leave; escape with as much dignity as you can carry.
Greg is the first to order. "Hi, yeah, uh... I would like... Two scoops of cookies and cream-- please," he says, his eyes still squinting and fixed on the menu text.
What is that music-- I've heard this like a thousand times.
As Larry wraps up his order and Andrew begins his, I realize that the beautiful young woman is pumping to Built To Spill-- a moderately obscure indie band-- through the black speaker boxes parked in the ceiling corners above. I. Love. Built to Spill; I'm shallow enough for this to boost her even higher in my esteem. Now she has gallivanted out of my most lucid fantasies; she is Aphrodite manifest; she is steaming raw love; she is OT8; she is so overwhelmingly pleasant with her dark eyebrows raised.
"And for you?"
I stammer, "Um... Yeah I'd um I'd-d like a cunt of mint choc--, I meanImean aacup-- Aca-ca-cupofmint--"
I am warm; all my exposed skin is redding to pink; I want to jump into a snowbank. She's fast to interrupt:
"What did you say?"
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