On a bright sunny day in the middle of
July two men stood apart, watching the sky.
Separated by a two lane highway Jared
and John anxiously studied the composition of the clouds, while
secretly eyeing each other. Behind Jared rose a construction, cotton
candy pink in complexion, billowing with inflatable rafts, colorful
towels, and decorated Ts. Of equal extravagance arose the building
behind John, though of brilliant egg-yolk yellow instead.
Their similar inviting palaces of
beach-side splendor beckoned to early morning tourists, of which
there were only a few.
“You check the weather today John?”
said Jared from his side of the street. He did not yell, almost as
if he did not wish to be heard, but the lack of engines on the
pavement created a stillness so complete the swish of fabric and
inflated plastic seemed a hurricane.
“Looked clear when I checked last
night,” said John. His foot twitched once or twice, as if he
intended to cross the empty road, but restrained himself.
“Ah,” said Jared. “Ah.”
He seemed content with his observation,
but John wasn't.
“Ah... what?”
Jared just looked up and down the road.
There wasn't much point in looking down it though. All the traffic
came from the west, which in Jared's opinion made it up. He tapped
his shoe agitatedly against the curb, but still didn't speak.
“I said, ah... what? Hello! I know
you can hear me, and I'm going to keep talking until...” and John
continued in ever more outrageous and obnoxious manner.
Jared could have ignored his opposite,
or if he didn't have the constitution to do so in the open, gone
inside. But he couldn't and he didn't desire to.
He looked out from under the brim of
his blue baseball cap with a grin on his face and a glint in his eye,
“I might a seen something this morning.”
A car came into view, and as it passed
John saw Jared raise his voice in an exaggerated yell, with hands
raised and head back, but the sound, if not the act, was lost in the
noise.
“What did you say?” said John
across the renewed calm, but he saw in response Jared turn away and
begin to walk back to his building. Looking carefully both ways, as
his mother had taught him, John sprinted over the patchily grassed
sand embankment, crossed the white line, dashed yellow, and then its
mirror image.
Jared was so close to the building,
John could see his eyes in the window, and how they widened as he
recognized the flying tackle already in progress.
Slamming together, scrabbling in the
sand and a row of T-shirts which had fallen over them, John and Jared
finally lay exhausted on their backs, watching the silent road.
“What did you know?” said John, his
hair falling across his face.
“Nothing,” said Jared, “Not a
thing, but you had to...” He picked himself off, turned and
entered Jared's Joyland. He thought to himself, it was still early.
There was time to have his revenge.
The first time John noticed something
odd, was when he was walking the perimeter. It was 8:30am, two
customers had already come and gone, and he wanted stroll before the
carloads of screaming fathers, mothers, and children constrained him
to his register. But he stopped when he saw a deflated flamingo
raft, its once proud plastic facsimile of feathers limp and without
luster. He bent down to inspect it, and a series of Got Sun?
T-shirts fell from the sky like a shimmering rainbow. Aggravated, he
rushed over to see the line that held them up had failed, but this
seemed impossible. He turned back to see an increasing amount of
beach memorabilia imploding, as if they were all undergoing
spontaneous combustion.
Without knowing what to do, he ran
screaming inside, and ducked behind a counter. You see, he did
understand what he was doing. Acting. And slowly, oh so slowly, he
raised his head, and tilted it just so, as to allow him to see over
the top of the counter without showing his forehead. He waited, and
waited.
And finally, he saw, sneaking,
suspicious Jared look out from a clump of bushes across the road,
holding a BB gun.
“Why that...” though John. But he
didn't move. He waited, and saw Jared take a few more shots. John
cried as his favorite smiling sun inflatable shone no more. Splat it
went onto the pavement from where he had precariously placed it upon
the roof. John waited 'til Jared became bored. No agitated John, no
enjoyment. Jared crawled from the bushes to the back of Joyland, and
John became busy.
A few hours later when Jared went back
outside, curious about the lack of customers, he saw a congregation
at John's July Special. Yet it was small for the time of day, even
if it was significantly larger than his own.
Then he saw why. His whole parking lot
was no longer a sandy oasis off the main road. It was an aquarium
full of his own deflated giant ocean animals: sharks, crabs,
starfish, and sea horses. The mass of them blocked access to the
store. Jared collapsed into a beach chair conveniently located by
the door, and then sprawled into the edge of the pond. The screws in
the chair had been loosened, and had fallen out when Jared sat in it.
The same was true of a number of other chairs, (and from John's
perspective across the street) Jared's brain.
But John wasn't happy. The customers
weren't coming today, and then he was positively frightened. Jared
was coming.
They stood as they had that morning
outside, facing each other across the empty street. All the
customers had been shooed out by John, and to an observer (which
there were none), the two men appeared to be flamboyant cowboys at a
standoff.
“You ruined my parking lot,” said
Jared, one hand grasping a sodden great white shark, while the other
clutched a complex water gun.
“You destroyed my merchandise,”
said John as he fingered an inflatable red boom stick, and kicked a
deflated multicolored surfboard.
In a burst of vibrant color the two
flew at each other, with tank tops, Frisbees, volley balls, and
inflatable objects of every shape and hue.
They fought without injury, in a scrum,
until they were wet with their own perspiration.
“Wait,” said John stepping back
from the melee. His octopus had only two arms with air left in them,
and the blue color was stained with black from a bag of charcoal.
“What?” said Jared, float-able beer
cozy still raised to strike.
“I'm wet, but because it's raining.”
Both men looked at the sky for the
second time that day. Then sheepishly they put down their improvised
weapons, shook hands, and returned to their stores.
Just as John was about to enter, he
turned around and yelled to Jared.
“Same time tomorrow?”
The reply,
“You bet!”
Comments
Post a Comment