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This is how it begins: me and Laura sitting on a picnic bench, laughing over lukewarm coffee and seeing, out of our separate eyes, this boy in a leather jacket with black hair flamed skyward. I fixed the boy in the angle of my gaze. I don’t know his name. I know nothing about him. He pulls out a cigarette – a slight boy, seventeen or eighteen. He half-waves at Laura and nods at me. Off to his left, the fountain is dry. The trees have died. The broken concrete underfoot yields up the dust and coolness of an afternoon whose temperature dips to twenty. Laura leaned over to me and whispered “I told you!” and then sprung to her feet to hug him.
“Thank you so much for coming. Donny, this is Chris. Chris, Donny.”
I smile, “Nice to meet you.”
“Yeah. Nice umbrella.”
I wince. This boy has thin arms, liquid black hair that shoots up in all directions. He throws his cigarette to the ground. There are five billion people in the world. Nobody matters very much. He wears jeans, a white T-shirt, black paratrooper boots and a leather jacket. His profile is perfect.
We go to Trolley’s, a quiet café on Main Street that serves food with too much sugar. Donny suggested we go there.
“Oh God, Donny, I am so glad you’re here,” Laura tells him, “otherwise I wouldn’t have known what to order.”
I shift around in the booth.
“I’m majoring in Chemical Engineering, so that. And my girlfriend, Janet.”
“Ooooh how is Janet?” Laura cooed.
My heart sunk. I bit my lip and stared out the window.
to say, He doesn’t understand these things, but we couldn’t really think he would.
known each other Since When
Just then there was another flash of light, a blast of thunder, and I looked at Donny. It was the oddest thing—at the instant of the thunderbolt it seemed as if I were looking at an angel who’d just flashed into being, black hair slicked down by the rain, soaked through to the skin.
“God’s not such a great shot.” I laughed nervously.
“You wait.” Donny grinned. “He’s got a lot of ammunition.”
Incandescence wrote:He wears jeans, a white T-shirt, black paratrooper boots and a leather jacket.
“I wouldn’t stand so close to me,” Donny said. “God’s got too many things against me for it to be safe.”
Just then there was another flash of light, a blast of thunder, and I looked at Donny. It was the oddest thing—at the instant of the thunderbolt it seemed as if I were looking at an angel who’d just flashed into being, black hair slicked down by the rain, soaked through to the skin.
“God’s not such a great shot.” I laughed nervously.
“You wait.” Donny grinned. “He’s got a lot of ammunition.”
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