“Vein and Artery Boy is a pet nickname. His real name is…”
“Wait,” implored Allen Y. to speaking Rock. “Lemme guess: Hitchcock.”
Rock Ramby and “Vein and Artery Boy” share a sly smile.
“No?” Allen Y. kept pushing. “Am I wrong?”
—–
“Did I ever tell you how Rock got his name?” VA Boy boomed a little later on. The Hitchcock appellation hadn’t been resolved.
“No. Not in the 15 minutes we’ve ever been talking to each other.”
“You haven’t been here before?” VA Boy looked over at Rock with this, who just shook his head back. “This isn’t… *Hitchcock*?”
—–
“*Anyway*, back to the dog.”
“Oooh. *This* story.” Rock settled back in his seat and crossed his hands behind his head. He seemed to be preparing himself for a long one; VA Boy was about as chatty as Rock, and almost as conceited, it appeared. But — strangely to Allen Y. — they *complemented* each other, as if Allen Y. understood now how each formed the way they did. In some couples it is done by balancing weaknesses with strengths. In this case, it was *accenting* those. They’d been so boastful to each other down through the years now, apparently, that it had become a kind of refined game or ritual. And now, Allen Y. sensed, they were stuck in these patterns, unable to really converse successfully to anyone else. It was an odd realization. But — he understood — there was a deeper mystery to it still which everything pivoted around. Hitchcock. A *game*, yes. He would soon learn the surface name for that game. And it wasn’t Hitchcock.
—–
Exactly where Santa Sven disappeared as a point in the sky, another came. Was this Hitchcock? We’ll see!
END OF “COLLAGESITY 2019 EARLY”!
Sunklands 