Hey, What the hell are you doing?!!
What the hell is that loser doing?
Get off my property!
Hey – He’s got a knife. Said the guy as he jumped down the 4 concrete stairs to get Joe.
Joe, scared shitless, dropped the bulging scab of fragrant sap he was cutting off the trunk of a gnarly blue spruce tree on these guys front lawn. Joe bolted from underneath the comforting skirt of the blue tree. Sprinting he glanced at his car parked across the street. After 4 blocks Joe stopped running, bent over heaving for breath and sweating in the cool November dusk. The sticky of the sap on his hand stuck the knife to his hand. In the panic of being hunted down he hadn’t dropped his knife.
—
Laura closes the door to their apartment after her shift at the restaurant.
Hi babe, um I need you to get my car; pick up my car. I had to leave it on McIntosh Street.
Joe didn’t even give her time to take her coat off.
You know I don’t have a license.’ Laura rattles her head.
You know I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t important
You know you have a brother you can ask to do this.’ Laura reminds him
You know I can’t
You know I have no idea what is going on.’ Laura deflates.
Joe explained his suburban sap stealing catastrophe.
You know you totally could have just asked those guys to…, to harvest their sap for your fabulous incense collection. Just fuckin knock on their door. Right? Laura bristles.
You know I know that.
You know…’ Laura stopped herself as she could feel the rock hard tension in her shoulders and sense the futility of generating a modicum of conversation. Laura’s instinct kicked in and said to her – You know if you don’t leave this moron right now you are a bigger moron than he is.’
Laura redid up the same three buttons she had undone on her coat while Joe was ordering her to get his car.
Her last ‘you know’ still hanging in the air like a silent fart in an elevator.
With her coat now done up she texted her brother Sam right then and there, ‘I’m done with this clown.’
Three weeks ago Sam was dropping Laura off at her and Joe’s basement apartment downtown.
‘Listen Laura, it’s your life and I respect that they are, basically, your emotions. And, and I am not going to even attempt to control you or anything. But with that said.‘That guy is a fucking clown.’ He was so infuriated he included the ‘g’ on fucking which not many people do. ‘He’s an angry, angry clown.’
Laura loved the protection love of her older brother for his sister as compared to some random boyfriend love jacked up on lust and of anti-loneliness.
Sam is awesome. Laura wants a boyfriend like Sam. His wife Bernadette obviously is awesome because she married Sam. Joe got wasted at Sam and Bernadette’s wedding. It was a classic, long August day and dusk and night. The wedding was at a lakeside resort where Sam had done some renovations so he knew the owners. They had wooden cabins painted white with green trim in a three season resort.
With Laura now staying at his place Sam knocked on the door to Joe and Laura’s (former) apartment and realized there was no point so he walked right in.
‘Dude – it’s over. Laura’s not coming back. Sam emptied Laura’s drawers with Black Friday abandon. ‘I Will be back on the weekend for her furniture. We both know most of it belongs to Laura.
Sam left the now bare drawers of Laura’s dresser sagging open and took 2 large suitcases without even offering a ‘later loser’ or anything to Joe.
Joe, unable to process the moment using his smartass outlook, stood in the abyss of a lonely minute, turned around to face nobody, then he got high. Joe had a unibrow you could see from space but only an emerging moustache so soft you could have used it as a dust brush for your Lp records back in the day. He had jet black hair and grey eyes that everyone commented how they seemed to change in the light. That was what had won over Laura 11 months ago.
The Wild Coach 