Leap

As the car swerved toward him he leapt out of his shoes to avoid it. Spinning in midair, he thought about breakfast for the next several days, and the email he should have written to Sinclair Dremis. He came down.

On bent knee he rose from the ground where he landed, quite firmly, with a dancer's grace. Light on his feet he had always been, and it came in handy as the deep red auto assassin sped off into the moist, dense, wooded area behind the small outdoor shopping mall. Ooh his eyes burned as he strained to see through the dust, the swirling dust that suddenly kicked up from the careening vehicular exit.

His phone started screaming out a tinny bad metal arrangement of Ravel's Bolero, and he wrenched it out of his hip pocket.

"Hallo," he barked into the glass-faced device.

The voice on the other end was raspy and almost unintelligable.

"Where was Marvin last night? The skylight is leaking again and I can't make sandwiches on the butcher-block until it's fixed."

Inquisition twisted his face into one big wrinkle. One big pink, ruddy wrinkle. He looked at the incoming number screen. Unknown Dialer. One big green question mark.

Poke went his finger on the End Call button. The fresh smile on his face painted his cheek creases white. He turned and walked toward a small red and white service station down the street. The thought of a cold drink washing the afternoon down sure sounded good. He looked into the soda machine perched on the concrete stoop in front of the windows heavily painted with semi-prehistoric canned oil prices.

Did they have Diet Rozzo? No. Of course not. Did that piss him off? Yes. Of course it did.

"Damn," he yelled at the glass-faced machine.

He looked around but couldn't find anyone even though the garage doors were wide open, and an old radio was playing Elvin Bishop somewhere in back. Humming, he walked out a back door and shaded his eyes to see what he could see. Two cats were tussling over by a pile of tires and he could hear the clank of train rails in the distance.

The cirrus sunset clouds started to pile in from the north and that made him think of his childhood and eating dinners on the patio. Walking around the front of the station he started down the street in hope of finding a bite to eat.


2 ------------------


Marvin closed the book he was reading, an old leather-bound fifth edition of "Pacific Waves," and turned on the tv. "Nothing but bad news," he muttered, flipping through the channels. Cooly, he stood up and stretched and went into the bathroom to brush his teeth.