“God I hate that itchy thing,” O*laka* Majo complains about his doctor’s outfit he’s shedding as fast as possible now that Tony B. and Shelley J., the newly minted Silvers, are out of eyeshot and earshot and heading back to their motel kind of on the opposite side of town. Him: heading sort of the opposite way to the Dairy Queen next door to the Burger King for an actual shake in an actual proper food establishment. “Done!” he shouts with some satisfaction as he discards the last of it while sitting down, stuffing it under his table so it’ll be out of sight and hopefully out of his mind too. Return to his normal self before and between and after the crazy. He takes a deep breath.
“Fool some other dumb ass tourist with your tales about the Pill?” Dairy Queen attendant Ruby Twistytwirl calls from the counter. “Reason for the doctor’s outfit again?” she again guesses correctly.
“You bet!”
“Are they headed to the motel? *Your* motel?”
“Right,” he answers. “Swallowed the pizza story too. Swallowed it whole, exotic topping and all. They’ll be here for a while.”
“What about your *brother*? An accomplice I assume. Per usual again.”
“Oh he’s really dead this time,” he says, surprising Ruby T.
“Dead? Can’t be. He’s immortal!”
On and on this went. At one point, Olaka approached the counter, extending a hand toward 15 1/2 year old Ruby not for another shake this time but to propose marriage himself, sugar high cranked to the max. “Run away with me to the icy hills of North South Dakota Montana,” he begged, grasping the appendage tightly and on his knee now as well. She could barely keep hold of him over the counter still separating them, if just for play and giggles. The counter that represented her job, her ties to town. She could no longer run away to a glacial paradise than he. And both knew it. Instead: wedded to the town itself, this Bandanaboro of the upper east west central plains of Omega in the virtual world of Our Second Lyfe that has also become Their Second Lyfe through osmosis and also a bit because of the line of eating establishments starting with King running through Queen and ending not at Jack as one might suppose — say, visiting musicians from an exotic foreign land — but at Pizza. Plus she was a bit too young still, 16 being the minimum marrying age if not working age here in this borough of not just bananas but getting there. Only play keeps them alive.
Better move to the last of them now. tbc
