PRETTY OBVIOUS AND SO WAS I

64. PRETTY OBVIOUS AND SO WAS I (Lydia Copeland):

Well I needed you to be my talk show host while holding a strand of your hair in my hand "pure protein" I said to the guy in the band and his tin-type hat and the scenes of the land - "I want tits and I wish to drink gasoline" - he said that while hunched over the metal table with two other people looking on all bunched together like a tribe of heads and though everyone laughed there was no one really listening and back and forth like this it went - the kite the fuhrer the talk of the rent the matrix the money and time well spent - but everyone knew there was a difference between style and time as the words people spin lose their power as dominance fades and some horoscope-reader with a libby for lenses came down from the mount wearing shades and proceeded to read what he thought were signs and portents but turned out to be the hands of the maid (her name was Clarita and she came by each morning) and History tells us that eventually nothing matters ice will melt and all glass shatters but so much of that was known already that nothing caused much of a start..."that's a sharp outfit" Henry said "you look like an asset to the DMV" and the girl with the make-up case had come over speaking back to Henry and she said (as I remember) "sometimes there were really bad things too like the time two Christmases ago when I slept with a guy named Arthur he was seventeen but he told me twenty-five but I knew the truth all along and he lived with his uncle in a houseboat and there were stick-figure men in karate poses on the shelves in the bedroom and Polaroids of teen-age girls at pool parties with wet limp pig-tails pulled back from their heads and he fucked like a sergeant-major - I mean I didn't mind a thing - but him and his uncle too were Civil War buffs and they had to leave the next day for an encampment somewhere and I said 'ain't you gonna' freeze your asses off?' and he smiled back and said 'not now but that's all part of the fun anyway' and I think he meant me with that 'not now' stuff but I never found out for sure and since then I haven't seen him again" and as she walked away everyone was checking her out (it was pretty obvious and so was I) but what is it anyway about girls who tell people about their sex life ? you know they must want the attention and so looking at their asses as they walk away all slithery and curved must all be part of what they want - otherwise why bother and who cares? - and then two skinny kids with sideburns came in asking for Martin Arnold (he was the guy who lived two doors away) and I said "not sure if he's here or not it's Oscar night you know and all he cares about is movie-stars" and they said "yeah we know that's why we're here he wanted us to fix his wall-sized TV" and I said "hmmm didn't know he had one is it a big wall?" and they laughed "it don't matter the size of the wall it's just something they call it" and only later did we find out he was not at home anyway having stayed two days over in Nantock waiting for the next lottery day to arrive and when he did get back I told him what had happened and he shrugged and said "no I was gonna' get one but them TV's ain't cheap and I had no winnings" and that was the end of that - the two kids having been long forgotten even though one had left his bike behind "what have they been eating?" Martin asked "Cornish game hens" I replied.