Which Is Where We Are Now

In a mall, shopping with Brian. We walk into a store that only uses half its space. I’m looking for a globe. There is a 10 diameter one and an 8 inch. Those are too big and I don’t want the bulk of a stand. I had three globes a year ago, but I through them all out.

We walk into a fast food restaurant. Too bad that pudgy woman in canary yellow isn’t here. Then a few moments later, I see this woman and her two fat black woman friends.

I walk the dogs to pizza hut. No one is there; it’s closed for bad weather. It must have just been closed; there are some pizzas in the oven: a last order. I cut one of the pizzas. It seems to disappear on the table. It shrinks to a small size: I salvage the bits into half of a personal pizza.

What to do? I know: I’ll just put in a new pizza, what with the store closed and all this extra dough, and then I’ll take that little half one for myself.

No hand-tossed in the main refrigerator. None under the make table either. Did they stop doing hand-tossed?

Back to the cut table to cut more pizzas. I cut a large, placing it in top of the small. It completely eclipses it.

A driver comes in, returning from a deliver. He apologizes for an argument he had with another driver before he left. I don’t really care and tell him so.

Gill comes in and sits down in the back office and gets on the phone. I go to him. I’m leaving soon, he tells me, and then talks on the phone some more.

Well I can’t stay and work: I have the dogs, besides didn’t I already call in and say I’m not working? The remaining order burns in my mind.

I try to interrupt Gill, but he keeps talking.

“Gill,” I tell him with desperation as he finally acknowledges me, “you have to tell me where we keep the hand-tossed.” Phones ring indicating new orders. This isn’t the crisis situation I tolerate. I intentionally stop the dream.

Took a dog down elevator to second floor. There was a dog there. We stood facing it for a long time. I’m surprised no one has come to use the elevator during this time.

A woman with a dog gets tired of waiting, and she takes the steps. Another women comes out, waits, and takes the steps. I go back up with elevator instead of down. Who is going to take care of that dog?

At the ground floor there are a group of gentlemen. We play a kind of soccer with a small ball like a heavy ping-pong ball with dust pans as goals. We all know how to play very well, each know each others weaknesses, only one side has one’s politics, the other another. This annoys me because something like we wouldn’t be having to play footies here if we joined forces.

I’m on an annual bus trip for the third year. It’s so kinda tour bus. I’m an employee of sorts. It’s festive. We are just about to complete the tour. People remenice about a concert that I wasn’t a part of: Gene Wilder, Luke Wilson, and Richard Prior. I’m surprised I wasn’t part of that concert.

Everyone has shot glasses, the circular kind with a truncated stem with a sweet whiskey liquor. I’m encouraged to drink. I give in and drink.

It’s so jovial and festive, in a corny way. I spill some liquor as the bus winds its way around. Suddenly, I have a giant shot glass, bigger than my head: too much joviality and “Tonight the Streets are Ours” cues as exit music. I have a hard time keeping the drink straight and people laugh as the sticky substance laps over my hands. I drink from the giant glass and the bus goes up a hill, now in day light, and the scene freeze frames with the liquid pouring out onto my cheeks and the music turned up like the punchline to a movie.