i am indisposed

I dropped my tire off at the shop in a place called Tonopah and walked to the bar where the kid told me to meet him. Along the way I noticed that almost all of the cars in town were from another state. The plates came from California, and Utah and Oregon, and those plates that were from Nevada were old pickups like the one I’d ridden in on. I walked down the street like I was one of them, though I wore Polarflece and street shoes not Wranglers and cowboy boots. Since I spent the morning at a ranch house with a rancher’s mother, or grandmother, compared to those out-of-staters heading to McDonalds and on to Reno or Vegas, if only in the near-term,, I belonged, in a slightly less transitory way.

I killed some time in a café in one of the casinos. Strange little place. It was the biggest building in town, it looked like, but inside it was tight and foggy like they’d meant it to feel vaguely uncomfortable unless you were moving around. When you’re standing you think things will thin out if you sit down. Least that’s what I thought. It didn’t. Only got closer and tighter like a dream where you can never get out.

I took a seat at a stool in the café. It was the only place that didn’t smell like smoke or puke-choked alcohol. The woman took my order, just coffee. Brought me back something in a starbux cup, but it still tasted blank and chalky like diner coffee should. Must not have given me the good stuff. I reached behind the counter and grabbed a mug from a stack and poured the coffee into it when the waitress left. Hid the starbux cup on the floor so it wouldn’t spoil the scene.

Very red, it was. A little yellow, but if you squint when your there, in real life, you can see what the memory will look like later, when the past is a far preferable place. Real life is always in the present. Things are toughest when they’re neither to be anticipated, nor recollected yet.

I sipped the coffee and looked at the wall and the sink behind the counter and the door with five large double hinges as the ashy busman pulled the cart back there. The trays of clean cups and the sink full of ice. A stack, pyramid, of syrup carafes, some menus, ketchup bottles. The particulate matter of the diner world spread about in a consistent layer like sand nicks in a windshield. Things you have to work to notice.

Either way, time is wasted, dead or alive. I strolled out of the café after a refill or two, barely an hour later, and walked down to the bar to meet the kid. What do you think about in a place like that. If you stop thinking about the immediate future, you end up caught in the distant past. If it’s the 90’s or the 60’s it hardly matters, the now is less important even than the time just ahead. And the truth behind useless observations is rarely seen until it’s too late, if at all.

The kid was there behind the bar. I nodded to him and took a seat in a booth. He followed and sat down across from me. I said I’d buy him dinner, “I owe you bro,” I said. And he took off his hat for the second time since I’d known him, which doesn’t mean much since it hadn’t been 12 hours yet, but that still sounds like a cool thing to say. He pinched the point and put his hands on the brim and then set it down.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Not at all.”

The waitress took our order. Burgers, rare. As if there was another option. Two girls came in and Horace got nervous. They watched us and played pool while we ate. The kid stole glances at them and didn’t ask me any questions. I didn’t ask him any either, just noticed the way he ate and kept track of those girls. Focusing on a task he knew well and one he barely understood. They laughed, and I wished I was somewhere else. And the place I usually wish for is a place I had left heading for somewhere else. Funny how shit works that way.

No, I’m not going to say any more about that.