Fear And Loathing At The Dealership

I desperately needed a new car.

My Battle Wagon, my beat to hell, bloody-faced version of Mel Gibson from “Braveheart” was on it’s last leg. Like Sir William Wallace at the end of that film, it was on it’s back, having it’s guts ripped out for an audience.

To compound things further, I had to use it to haul my equally non operational/dependable motorcycle back to Maine. It’s here that I decided I should test the strength, not only of my vehicle’s suspension and chassis, but my relationship with The Lady as well.

We’d been meaning to get to Maine since June. Schedule conflicts, etc, kinda made that impossible. She works in an industry that, in the summer months, doesn’t give a lot of time to take off, whereas I, being military, only have a certain amount of time I can be gone for. Literally, things need to be scheduled well in advance if we want to do anything fun for an extended period of time.

So I asked her a week or so ago if she wanted to come with me to drop the bike and the truck off at my parent’s place, all under the assumption that I would be getting a new vehicle of some sort by the end of the few days we’d be up there. She agreed, obviously not knowing what she’d be getting into.

Because, how better to test your relationship with a woman than by taking an ill conceived road trip to your parents house in a vehicle that may or may not die on the three hour drive there?

The trip started off with drama, of course. She drops her car off at her mother’s, for fear that it’ll be towed if we leave it unattended at the parking lot for too long, and we ride over to our house. I want to be on the road no later than noon, because it’s a haul and especially in my little fucked up S-10, it takes a lot out of me when I drive for long extended periods. The science behind this is that the sooner we’re on the road, the sooner we’re off.

But, The Lady doesn’t want to go to Maine without any cash on her. I don’t blame her. Her boss, however, doesn’t have her pay check ready. Also, apparently, he’s too cheap to have direct deposit.

I mean, it’s only the second half of 2008.

But the situation is fine for now; I still have the business of loading my Triumph into the back of my truck. I head out to my truck and bike, take the ramps out, set up everything. When it’s all said and done, I realize that I’ve really only given myself about ten feet of space to work my bike up the 45 degree angled aluminum ramps, with only about six to seven feet of bed space in the back of the truck. I would literally have to gun the shit out of my bike to get it up the ramp (because worst case scenario would be me not getting enough speed, getting the front wheel up in the bed, but then the ramps kicking out, making me fall backwards and ultimately underneath the 500 lb bike, breaking my spine.). I back the bike as far back as it’ll go, which is on the edge of payment and a grassy area, and start to rev it. I keep working the throttle and clutch, goosing and feathering it, and when I feel the rear tire start to spin on it’s own, with my hand clutching hard down on the front brake, I give it as much gas as I can.

White smoke starts to spew from the tire, as she begins to screech on the pavement under me. I can feel the back end starting to swing a little to the left and I adjust my body weight to compensate. Come on, I think to myself, nice and easy, straight shot up the ramp.

This is the most nerve racking thing I can think of doing. The ramp is so light and the bike is so heavy. My tail gate could literally snap off at any moment and send the bike straight down at a high rate of speed, crashing it’s fairing and forks into the back of the bed and sending me over the handlebars and through the rear window of my cab. With the smoke and screeching building, I drop the brake and clutch at the same time and launch forward towards the ramp.

I hit the ramp, and for a very brief moment I’m fucking airborne. There isn’t even time for me to really register this thought before I crash back down into the bed, my front tire kicking a giant dent into the back of the cab, below the window. The tire’s still screeching and smoking, throttle’s stuck open, and the horrible sound of an engine trying to tear itself apart is filling the air.

I clutch in, kick her down to neutral and straight up before putting down my stand and shutting it down. I look back over my shoulder, breathing heavy, sweat in my eyes, as the ramp is flat on the ground, no longer attached to the back of my truck.

“Jesus Christ,” I pant. I dismount, and shakily put the tie-down ratchet straps into formation and compress my forks for the ride. Behind the truck is a littering of spent burnt rubber shavings from the tire.

I give myself a second to relax, breathe in and breathe out, calm my shaking hands. Just then, The Lady rounds the corner and I paste on a smile to try to hide the “Holy Shit” look that I’m sure I have anyway.

“Boss Man doesn’t have the checks,” she says. She’s pissed. If she gets on this ride with me, she’s going to be a total tyrant, if this is the attitude she’s going to start with. She’s already stressed out about an extended meeting of my parents (she previously met them for about five minutes when they came down earlier in the Spring) so with all that going on, I didn’t want an upset stomach from her belly aching, if you dig.

“Hey,” I start. “I don’t want you stressed out. This trip is going to be a lot of stress, and I don’t want you starting off this way.”

She gives me a look, and a sigh.

“I’m not stressed at you, it’s just Boss Man is a douchetard,” and she goes on for fifteen minutes explaining past experiences in how she’s been upended on pay checks and such. She ends with “I love the guy, he’s been great to me, but for all I do around there, all I’m asking is that he pays me on time.”

We go to her bank, and then hit up a Burger King, and we’re on the road.

Things mellow out after a little while. She’s reading one of my Palaniuks, curled up in the seat wearing only a string bikini top and a pair of sweats. I’m in shorts and flip flops, Calvin Klein t shirt, sunglasses, singing along with classic rock hits on the ipod, getting her exasperated looks from over the tops of her sunglasses.

We have to shout to talk to each other, the truck is that bad and loud. The whole body rattles and shimmies and humms when you get to highway speeds. What makes it worse is that with the weight of the bike in the back pressing down on the suspension and whatever else is up under there, the ball joints whistle.

“We’re gonna make it, right?” She asks after about forty minutes into the three hour drive.

“Yeah, of course,” I say confidently. In my heart though, I wonder if it will, and I worry about how the hell we’re going to get a tow with the bike on the back, should we need one. I smile, and this seems to put her at ease, so she nods off. The whole time, like a Buddhist meditating, I constantly chant “a few more miles, a few more miles, a few more miles” in my head.

Apparently the mantra worked, because we eventually pulled into my parent’s driveway that afternoon.

Dad was in the driveway, spraying off a motorcycle engine with a hose. Rain was due any second, and with his giant fox tail of a beard, he squeezed The Lady with one arm while battling me back with the hose in his other hand. We embraced as well, and got to catching up on things, as we all began cleaning up my Shit Wagon.

Time was of the essence, while on the road, I had called a local Honda dealership because I found a pair of Ridgeline pick up trucks on their website I was very interested in seeing. I thought that maybe calling in ahead of time and setting up an appointment would be the best way to go. Give them an idea of who I was, what I wanted, and how important time was to me. If I was the type of person who made appointments to see vehicles, I would obviously be treated as a person who took time as money.

Or so I thought.

We made our appointment on time, and checked in with the receptionist at the front desk. What amazed me the most about every dealership we’d go to from here on in, was how busy they were. Every where you go, you hear about car dealerships crying for help from the public. They’re basically giving cars away, because no one wants to spend money on a gas chugging SUV or pick up. I’m surprised that it hasn’t disintegrated into “buy one get one free” extravaganzas.

So, the place had more than enough people walking around both in the lots and inside the show room. We were told by the receptionist that the salesman we made the appointment with was with a customer, but was wrapping things up. We were allowed to take a seat in a small waiting area, and someone would be with us shortly.

From the jump, as soon as we walked into the place, The Lady was on edge. She glanced upward nervously, and when I finally asked her what the hell her problem was, she simply pointed to the balloons.

You see, at these dealerships, they want to present a festive and party atmosphere. They, those in charge, think that they, the customer, will not buy a vehicle if the scene is similar to a funeral home. They play up the celebratory, party vibe, thinking that if consumers think it’s a party, they’ll want to drop hard earned cash - and potentially fuck up their credit - with a new or certified pre-owned vehicle.

So it was the balloons that were making her nervous. I forgot to mention The Lady has a crippling allergy to latex. This has somewhat been the bane of our relationship, if you’d believe it. Most condoms are made of latex, and the non-latex varieties are extremely tight fitting. Imagine trying to stuff a week’s worth of clothes into a tiny gym bag, and you’ll get what it’s like for me to get myself into one of these specialized prophylactics.

Over our heads were giant-sized balloons in patriotic color schemes of reds, whites and blues. Over sized balloons hanging low over our heads had The Lady ducking and sinking nervously into her vinyl seat. I tried to distract her with some strategy talk:

“Ok, hey, listen,” I began. “When we get in there, and start haggling over price and payments… don’t like, hit me, or get shocked if I start acting like a total asshole towards the guy. I’m not saying I’m going to insult him or anything, but if I start to get a little weird, don’t show our hand by making it seem that that’s not how I am all the time, you know?” And she got it without me having to explain it at all.

“Oh I know,” she says, “I know how to act in public.” And I smile and she sinks a little more into the seat, looking skyward.

After about half an hour, the other side of the time-table I gave the salesman on the phone (when I called and made the appointment, I stated “between four and four-thirty,” and what I was told was “perfect.”.) we were both getting antsy. No one had even approached us, not another salesman, not the receptionist, and certainly not the guy I made the appointment with. I made a big deal out of looking down at my watch, and our conversation about how long we’d been waiting grew louder and louder.

All the guy had to do was come around from his office and say “hey gang, sorry, this is wrapping up here, thanks for waiting, why don’t you get a cup of coffee I’ll be right with you in ten minutes,” and we’d been fine. I was very much interested in looking at these Ridgelines, and possibly purchasing one on the spot, to hell with haggling over price. But no one, in this entire PRIME HONDA DEALERSHIP paid us any mind.

As we were considering just getting up and leaving, my cell phone rang and it was my mother, who was just getting off of work. I explained the situation to her, how we’d been sitting for so long without anyone even talking to us, and she couldn’t believe it.

“You wanna see them jump,” she said, “just stand up and head for the door.”

“I know, I know, but,” I glanced back down at my watch, “I’ll give them a few more minutes,” as the time closed in on the 45 minute mark.

The final straw came when, off the street, a pair of Somalis walked in and were seen immediately by a sales person, as two well dressed and respectable white persons sat in total disbelief!

“That’s it!” Started The Lady, “we’re out of here,” and we both stood, walking out the door. I let loose a pissed off tirade about how shitty a business PRIME HONDA, ON THE SACO AUTOMILE, US RT 1, SACO MAINE was. I was also crushed, because I had set my heart on those Ridgelines.

Being that there were about a hundred more dealerships within two miles of where we were, we simply climbed back into my sad and pathetic truck and started driving north bound. On the right hand side of the road a little ways down from the Honda dealership, was a Toyota dealership.

Before I go any further, I want to make clear I wasn’t solely in the market for a foreign car. It just so happens that the deals I saw online, and the things I heard about certain manufacturers made it easier for me to check out their inventories, say, than that of a domestic car maker. And besides, all the vehicles allegedly made in the US, by US car manufacturers, are actually manufactured in Canada and Mexico.

So we pull into the Toyota Dealership, which was also owned by the Prime Auto Group, and started to just mill about in the lot. They had a lot of 09 Tundras, V8, all-time four wheel drive that they were doing everything but just giving away to every swinging dick that stepped foot on the lot.

We were soon approached by a very rat-like in appearance man named Richard, or Rich, or Dick, however you want to slice it. He had a prominent uni-brow with one long hair sticking about half an inch from the center of his face. His eyes were dark and beady, teeth a horrible mash of stained ivory in his mouth, with a badly gelled comb-over, onion breath, and all the charm of bloated pig stomach. He asked me, as any salesman would, what I was interested in.

“Well, I’m looking for a full sized truck, 2006-08 maybe … it doesn’t have to have all the bells and whistles, you understand, but it has to have some of the basic modern conveniences, like, … power windows, doors, .. keyless entry, … oh and it has to be black. That’s important.” And he took this all in, nodding, and he started to immediately push the $31,000 2009 Tundra, as if what I just said floated out into the atmosphere and missed him completely.

“We have a great buyers allowance on these,” as he leads me over to a row of brand new OPEC supporting machines. “You can get up to 6,000 off the sticker, with 0 down and 4.9% APR financing, if you’re credit’s good.”

“Ah huh, but uh, that’s still pretty much out of my price range, Richard,” I say to him. He nods and invites us inside.

We sit for a while, hashing out what I want. I mention how we were at the Honda dealership just before hand, and how shoddily we were treated over there. I even show him the internet print-offs of the Ridgelines, saying that’s what I was most interested in seeing.

“Well, you know Jim,” he begins, leaning in smugly from his side of the desk, “being that this is a Prime dealership, I have access to those Ridgelines, it’s all just a matter of finding which lot their at…”

“Really?!” And the hook gets set. He gets up and says he’s going to have them located and we can go check them out. I feel renewed, thinking everything’s going to work out. I smile at The Lady, who’s psyched that I’m in line to get what I want. While the salesman is off dicking around, I get another call from my mom:

“Yeah, we bounced over to the Toyota Dealership up the road. Come by if you want,” I tell her. My whole plan is this: My mother is a tenacious negotiator when it comes to car buying. Her last three vehicles she purchased, she sent the salesmen away crushed and crying and unemployed in that order. She’s a heavy hitter who takes shit from no one. She’s my big gun, my secret weapon, my Ace in the hole. I’m calling her in to lay down heavy artillery while I get my captured comrades out of the POW camp.

The salesman, Richard comes back with some print offs, keys and a dealer plate. I let him know what he’s in for when my mother shows up.

“You don’t even understand,” I begin. “My mother is like the bad cop to my good cop. You thought I was bad… you’re gonna wish it was only me you were dealing with when she shows up,” and he thinks I’m joking. He laughs, and at the same time, an actual Saco cop walks through the show room, short, pointy face, Mediterranean skin tone.

“Hey,” the salesman calls after the cop, “which one are you, the good cop or the bad cop,” as he plays on the joke. The cops stops, completely unaware of the conversation we’re having without him, and shrugs.

“I’m usually the bad cop,” he says. Under my breath I add “He’s probably also the bottom, too.”

At about the same time we head outside, my mother shows up. She’s an unassuming, gray haired office drone, who smiles every time she sees me. We hug in the dealership lot and then she turns and hugs The Lady. We all collectively climb into a waiting Buick Skylark and go across the street to the Nissan dealership where the Ridgelines are waiting for us.

“Your mother hates me” says The Lady out of no where when we’re away from my mother’s hearing. I look at her stunned.

“What?! What makes you think that?”

“Body language. I also accidentally called her ‘Mary’ on the phone a little while ago. I think she’s holding that against me.” My mother, pleasant as she is, is very old school. I had told The Lady about this previously, that she should address my dad as ‘Charlie’ and my mom as ‘Mrs. N-’ until told otherwise. The Lady claims I never told her this, or told her something different entirely. I know for a fact I brought this up months ago. I glance back at my mother, smiling, staring off at different cars, holding her bag and walking around the lot somewhat pigeon-toed, with an oblivious smile on her face.

“Don’t be so damn neurotic,” I hiss at The Lady, “make nice with my mom!” And the asshole salesman comes back, as he’s located the Ridgeline I wanted to see.

It’s an ugly gun metal gray and looks nothing like the print off I got from the computer. The inside is plain, and although minimalist is what I go for, this was just … too… minimalist for me. There was just a lot of empty space on the inside. And for it being an 2007 model, it already had 67K miles on it.

I almost half expected lemonade to drip from the exhaust pipe.

“I can’t say that I’m all that impressed,” I tell Richard. Truth be told though, the center console was fun to play with for about a minute, because it morphed and transformed into different configurations. One was like a cd case rack. Then it donned on me, that no one keeps the thick cd cases in their vehicles anymore, let alone actually listens to cds. I was heartbroken again over the Ridgeline.

“That’s ok,” he starts. “Let’s just drive it over to our other dealership and we’ll see if there’s anything over there that catches your eye,” and we take off down the road some more.

He takes us to their Ford dealership and shows me again, the gas hungry V8s. One he shows us even comes with it’s own plow rig and blade. At this point I’m getting tired of his ineptitude.

We drive back to the Toyota dealership and I off-handedly mention something about a sedan, because I heard the Camry’s were good on fuel. This started a whole new … dialogue with this fucking greasy asshole. He tours me around his lot, showing me over priced Corollas and Camrys, one pair being three years old, dented and scratched and showing visible rust. I let him know in plain language that I’m not awed with what he’s showing me.

“Let’s just take this one for a ride,” he says as he pulls out the keys to the Camry without the massive driver’s side door dent in it. We all climb in, and I make it a special point to drive like a total asshole around the back roads that I used to patrol (the dealership bordered the town I used to be a cop in, and the little ‘test track’ lapsed into the outskirts of said town.).

We get back to the dealership and again, I yawn and complain that he’s not impressing me at all. I then go on to tell him that we’re getting tired, we three, and I’d been on the road for three hours and had just spent three hours dealing with him, so we were calling it a day.

This asshole. He gets this look on his face like I just broke up with him. As if, instead of “hey, we’re tired of your fucking miserable excuse for cars, and you’re epic failure as a salesman, so we’re going home to rest now,” we’re saying “hey, this isn’t working out, we can’t see each other anymore, we’re breaking up.”

I have never before seen such a lack of professionalism.

“Why?” He says to me, almost in half a whisper. I stare at him, wide eyed in disbelief.

“Because, you’re not showing me anything that I want.”

“Well, how do you know what you want?” He asks, as if he’s trying to get some psychological leg up on me.

“I know what I don’t want,” I say, “and you’re showing me a lot of that. I told you what I wanted: A full sized pick up, 2006 through 08, modern basic accoutrements, V6, and it had to be BLACK. You haven’t even shown me one black vehicle yet.” He nods absently.

“Ok, I got one last car to show you, just give me five more minutes of your time, and you can go.” And I look back at my family, the two most important women in my life, and I sigh and say ok, and walk over to a display with him., leaving them to wait and starve a little while longer.

He walks me over to a black Scion TC, the equivalent of Pampers Pull Ups for autobuyers. The Scions are Toyotas geared towards 18-21 year olds who love a lot of flash and don’t care about substance. We both stare down at it with different expressions on our faces; his is adoration or some form of it, and mine is general boredom.

He starts his pitch script “What do you think, rad right?” Rad?!

“Uh, sure.” I couldn’t sound any more uninterested.

“Now, here’s what I want you to do, what would be an ‘Awesome Deal’ on this vehicle” he pitches. I pause for drama, and give him my pitch.

“Awesome deal? …I’ll give you 9 for it.” It was stickered as a 2009 for 16900.

“Whoa, well, wait, I mean, let’s be realistic.”

“Ok, realistically, I’d give you…. Maybe… maybe, 9-5.” And he develops heart burn.

“Let me go talk to my guy in the office and see what he thinks,” and he starts to walk back inside.

“Look, let me save you the trouble, Rich: I’m not interested in this car. When I woke up this morning, my mind set was on a full sized pick up. In the very far reaches of my mind, I was thinking sedan, but that was like, the outer most limits of my thinking. I wasn’t even thinking Scion this morning. So don’t try to shoe-horn me into this car, I don’t want it.” And I get that look from him, as if I only just said “I’m not taking you to the prom.”

“Ok, well, I’m sorry then, but… you still have to talk to my manager. I won’t get paid if you don’t talk to him.”

When I was in high school, we had a substitute teacher named Mr. Finley. Mr. Finley worked at a car dealership full time and subbed part time, for a goof. On one day, when he was supposed to be handing out a test or something, he instead gave a lesson on car buying. What not to fall for, what a good deal looked like, what was bullshit, etc.

One thing Mr. Finley talked about was the “let me get my manager before you leave” trick; which is when they bring in their heavy hitter, their big gun, their bad cop. It’s not really a manager they bring out, but their high pressure salesman. The back breaker. The guy who’s going to make you feel like a total shitbird for wasting “his employee’s” time by not buying a car. When you have a tough nut to crack, you break out the big nut cracker.

I saw this coming a mile away.

“Ok, Rich, I’ll be right here,” I said. He gives me his most professional rat-faced smile and goes back into the show room. I turn and bolt for my truck.

The Lady is sitting with the passenger side door open, smoking one of her American Spirits, and she looks up at me through her giant round sunglasses.

“What’s the matter?” She asks with a look on her face that really wants to ask “did you just hold up a bank?” …That sort of panicked, catch-me-up look.

“We gotta go, get in,” I spit. She tosses out her butt and stamps it with a sandal, and we tear ass out of the dealer’s lot, presumably with Richard running after us, yelling for us to stop.

I wouldn’t know, I wasn’t looking back.

That night, feeling utterly disappointed in my lack of ownership in a new car, but feeling triumphant that I was able to stave off the advances of a dipshit salesman, we all sat around eating Chinese from a local restaurant. My mom and The Lady had a chance to talk, as did dad and I. And then we switched when The Lady needed a post dinner smoke and dad followed her outside (it might have been the low cut shirt and bra combination she was wearing…)

Feeling the tension from earlier still coming off The Lady, I straight up asked my mother what she thought of her.

I knew this was a dumb thing to ask my mother, because mom is in the business of making her only son happy and content, even if that means lying to his face. Unfortunately for my mother, I’ve become quite adept at picking up her tells when she’s lying and when she’s not.

I mean, I was a cop for Christsakes.

“So mom, really, what do you think of The Lady?”

“She’s wonderful,” and I squint, looking at her face. “What?”

“Nothing, go on,”

“Well, she’s beautiful, and smart,” still all very generic, nothing specific. “I like her aura, how she looks at you. She loves you James. You two have such a good chemistry together, it really shows through. I catch her looking at you when you’re not paying attention and she doesn’t realize it. She adores you. It’s all over her body language.”

My scans for deceitfulness in my mother’s face find none. I let the skepticism go from my face. At the same time, The Lady and my dad return from outside, and we do the dishes together. When that’s done, we both call it a night and retreat into my old bedroom, now my father’s room.

We watch a little tv and I offer her a backrub. We’re very at home with the door closed. I lean in for a kiss, she rolls on to her back and we start to do what couples do with the lights off.

“We have to be quiet,” she whispers up to me between kisses.

“No, I know,” I whisper back.

“I really don’t want your parents to hear us having sex,” she hisses, all seriousness in her voice.

“I. know.” I say back in the same seriousness. My cock poking her through her PJ pants. We kiss and disrobe each other.

We both agree over breakfast at a little Main Street Diner called Jonsey’s the next morning, that there is no way in hell my parent’s DIDN’T hear us going at it. Twice. In my father’s bed.

Hell has a special section for sons like me.

While at Jonsey’s we play a game of hangman on a sales flyer for a Ford Dealership up in Westbrook, about a twenty minute drive. While The Lady tries to decipher “I Like Big Butts And I Can Not Lie” I notice that this particular dealership has 2009 Ford F-150s for 200 bucks a month, as advertised. Fuck it, I think to myself, what’s the worst that could happen?

As if she read my mind and answered for the both of us, The Lady says “We’re so not going back to The Cape in your ratty S-10.” And I realize then, that we’d better check out this dealership, stat.

We arrived on scene a little after nine in the morning and wandered around the lot. We were met by an older grandpa type named Bob. When I showed him the flyer (discretely covering the hangman phrase with my hand) with the circled stuff I was interested in, he brought us over to where they kept them.

“They’re very bare bones,” he starts in a grandfatherly way, “no power anything, manual stick, no carpeting. They’re really designed for Government and Commercial use, you know?” I think back to my rotting S-10, and decide that there’s no way in hell I’m going back to a similar situation. Stick shift? No power anything?

So I lay it on Bob, the same way I laid it on Rich: “Well, I’m looking for a full sized pick up, 2006-2008ish, power doors, locks, keyless entry, that whole bit. I’d like it to be a V6, maybe an extended cab… you know? Oh, and it has to be Black. That’s important.” He nods along.

“Well, let’s see what we got out back,” he says. He gestures us to follow him down out back to where there’s a whole row of F-1- and 250s. My eyes immediately lock on to one in particular.

“That one.” And I point to it. “Tell me about that one.”

“Well,” Bob starts, “it’s a 2005, uh, only 24K on it, power everything, regular cab, flare side, all weather tires,” and he goes on. What’s got my attention the most is that it’s all black.
“That’s it, that’s the one,” and I look at The Lady. “That’s it.”

She’s happy for me again, and we go inside where I’m slapped in the face and stabbed through the heart at the same time. In the middle of their show room, inexplicably, there’s a Triumph Daytona 990, a 2009 model, just hanging out. My knees buckle a little and I drag myself over to the negotiation table.

We hash out some numbers, mostly what I’m looking for for payments, etc. He goes over to his boss and comes back with a slip of paper and slides it in front of me.

“Well ok Jim,” he begins, adjusting his glasses as he talks, “with 3000 down, and the 800 we’re giving you for your truck on the trade in (about 1000 more than they should’ve given me… figure it out…), you’re looking at this for a monthly payment, which is right where you want to be,” the only problem with that was I had nothing to put down.

That’s not entirely true. I had about 800 dollars in my savings that was exactly that, savings. I just didn’t want to touch it.

“Well, I wasn’t uh, you know, planning on putting anything down…” I say sheepishly. I start to feel a slightly tinge of panic, thinking I might be in over my head. Without hesitation, The Lady speaks up.

“He has 1600 to put down,” she says with confidence. I was about to turn to her and say ‘Bitch, you know I ain’t got no 1600 dollars!’ But it then dawns on me, that she’s going to float me the cash for the down payment right out of her pocket.

Looks like my mother was right after all.

I protest for a second, and she kicks me under the table, hard, right where the calf muscle and tibia meet. I wince and smile.

“Uh, I actually have 2200 I can put down,” I say, after I figure that if she’s going to put up 1600, I might as well put up 600 of my own. Bob goes back with the new figures and I shoot The Lady a look.

“You better know what you’re getting yourself into,” I say to her.

“I do. I’ll just make you sign a promissory note… say, you have to pay it back over the next two years? That way, I get to keep you around for the next two years.” She smiles.

I can’t help but be in love with her.

Bob comes back with the updated figures. We all agree that it looks good and we should get the financing started. I tell him that we’re going to need to hit up my bank to get the cash for the down payment, because she left her check book at home and needs to wire transfer the money up. Bob’s so cool that he lets me take the truck I’m going to buy with me to do these errands.

The Lady calls her bank and she’s told that she has to be present at the bank in order to make the wire transfer go through. I think this sounds a little odd, but I don’t say anything, and we happily drive down the highway back from Westbrook to Biddeford. We get to my bank, and she calls her bank back. Now she’s talking to someone else, and they’re saying she has to be present at HER bank, not mine. We’re left standing dumbfounded in the bank parking lot, looking at my new truck slipping away.

“You sure you don’t have your check book in your bag at my parent’s house?” I ask her.

“Yeah, no I know it’s in the apartment. I left it on the nightstand, or your desk.” I curse. I suggest we drive the truck over to my parent’s house to show it to my dad and see if he’s got any suggestions. And by “suggestions”, I mean “money.”

We get back over to my parent’s house and dad gives the truck a once over. He’s impressed, though being a Chevy man, he won’t admit to it.

“If I were a Transformer, this is what I’d transform into,” I tell him, about the truck. I then tell him about the story of the down payment and he nods solemnly.

My dad has a weird knack of being condescending at the wrong times and not knowing it. I probably do the same thing, but being that one’s unaware when doing it, it’s hard to tell if I do it at all.

“Well Jim, maybe it’s just not meant to be, you know?” He says this right in front of the truck. We all decide that I should call the dealership and let them know the situation, oppose to just stealing the truck outright.

“Hey,” I call Bob’s personal cell phone, “it’s Jim with the truck. Yeah…. Yeah… Yeah, well I just wanted you to know that we’re coming back, but that we couldn’t get the wire transfer from her bank on the Cape. She has to be there in person I guess? Yeah…. No yeah, I’m coming back with the truck. I am. Yeah, like right now. But could you tell the guy doing the financing that the numbers are going to be a little different? Also, tell him I’m coming back with the truck right now. Like, right now.”

When we get back to the dealership, Bob’s super understanding. These things happen, he says. It’s the finance guy who’s shitting a brick.

Apparently this isn’t the usual finance guy. He’s like an understudy, he’s short, slimy-looking like Richard was, highly caffeinated and likes to shake hands a lot, and all weird, with his hand cocked out to the side, which requires me to look at his hand to line up the shake, oppose to looking him in the eyes, like I’m used to. All of this makes me increasingly nervous.

When we finally get down to it, we’re crushing out numbers and it comes down to about fifteen dollars more a month than what I want to pay. But I suck it up and pick up the pen. I’m literally a breath away from owning this truck (or at least holding it while the bank owns it) when this shark starts talking about the Extended Warranty.

“It covers everything, from tire blow outs and towing, to broken glass and mechanical malfunctions. You can bring it back here for almost everything, all for what I like to call, the cup of coffee a day,”

“Well, what’s the price of a cup of coffee these days?” I ask.

“About 2.55,” he says. I laugh.

“That’s some cup of coffee. No wonder Starbucks is closing stores.” The humor is lost on him.

“When you add it up, your monthly payment, with the extended warranty, which covers your truck for the next three years, is going to be X” and “X” represented about 75 dollars more a month than the 15 dollars more than I wanted to pay, period.

“No, I can’t swing that. I still have to pay gas and insurance on this thing. That’s not do-able.” I tell him.

“But you’re protecting your investment,” he starts.

“But this is redundant. I have insurance for a reason, as well as AAA. And this dealership’s policy is a lifetime warranty anyway, as long as I bring it back here when something goes wrong. You’re basically asking me to spend money on nothing.”

He gets noticeably upset. “I don’t think you understand, Mr. N”

“No, I don’t think you understand. I Don’t Want It. How can I be more clear?” He swallows hard, shut down and then prints off a page with all the things the warranty would be covering. With a big green magic marker, he rights DENIED across the front of the page, then under it, he strikes a line with an X next to it for me to sign on. With a lot of strain in his voice, the midget says:

“This here is just for our records, to show that you were offered this program, but have denied it.” And I sign extra big.

There were a few last loose threads, like getting the car detailed and a window button looked at, but after 6 hours, I was done. The truck was in my name.

We left the dealership, exhausted by victorious. The truck got a professional detailing and I had a guilt free conscience. I was flying so high that I even let The Lady smoke inside the truck on the drive home.

Unfortunately, my mom had to work late so we didn’t get on the road til much later that night. She didn’t get a good look at the truck because it was dark out. So I made sure I had The Lady take a picture of me and the truck that afternoon after I got it home. I then took the picture and made it her computer’s desk top wall paper, and shut the computer down, so she would get a surprise when she turned it on.

Here’s the picture:

Also, The Lady hates that t shirt. Yet she was the one who packed it.

Epilogue: It turns out, her check book was in her bag the whole time too. Oh Well.

'Gonzo' Doc Trailer

Go see this. See it twice actually. And when it comes out on dvd, buy five copies of it.

Best Of: June 2007

This was one of Jim's first "Fear and Loathing" pieces, which is generously ripped off from Hunter Thompson, as far as style was concerned. He's argued that he's paying an homage to the late cultural icon, where as the rest of us on the editorial staff call it blatant plagiarism. Anyway, with Jim out of the office for the next week or so,(work related stuff at his OTHER job...) we thought it would be appropriate to run this old post this weekend because it is La Kermesse back in Maine through Sunday. Enjoy- Ed.

All names have been changed to protect the guilty.*

If you live in Southern Maine, passed through on your way some place else, or are vaguely aware that what some consider to be a suburb of Boston, is in fact a totally different state, you might've heard of the little shin-dig the locals up this way call "La Kermesse."

I don't know what the name means, but I can tell you it's a big French festival complete with rides for the kids, poutine for the people who know what the fuck that is, and a beer tent. The festival itself is preceded by a "block party" on Thursday night, followed by a parade that will open up the fair grounds come Friday afternoon.

Basically, it's an excuse for people to be drunk in public. Not that anyone who lives in the greater Biddeford area really needs an excuse to do so.

So over the last few years (aside from the fact I was living in New York) I've pretty much stayed away from the neon colored orgiastic culmination that is La Kermesse. I really have no desire to see people I went to high school with, whether they're doing better off than me or not, nor do I want to run into the citizens of Biddeford on the whole.

But last night, Thursday June 21st, I found myself smack-dab in the middle of the fray, on the York Street Bridge with some friends, most of whom I didn't even know two hours prior, standing and looking at fireworks through blurry bloodshot eyes, and surrounded by Parliment smoking, stroller pushing, tank-tops-with-skinny-arms having trash. How did I get here? Allow me to illustrate.

I get home from the office at about five, and my pocket buzzes just as I'm pulling off of 95 at the Biddeford exit. It's my friend *John*, a guy I went to high school with and is probably the most genuine guy I know, other than Hokie. He asks if I'd be interested in hanging out, and at first I'm thinking he's putting a card game together, and being broke, I say I'm going to pass.

Instead, however, he asks if I want to go to the fireworks "and shit" tonight. I totally forget that it's the La Kermesse weekend, only passing the giant fucking yellow billboard at the 95 on ramp everyday, twice, for the last two weeks. I say sure, and get a time, and proceed about my evening per usual.

I have dinner with mom which is just pizza out of the box. I manage to burn the roof of my mouth.

I get to John's house a little after 1930 and park in front. He calls from the window to come up stairs and I do so, only to find his drunk younger brother sprawled out across his bed, jabbering on about something. He's dressed head to toe in American Eagle and sports a frat-boy tan. I'm not exactly sure what's going on, because John's busy playing Counter Strike on his computer and his mom is yelling at his brother, who's managing to be at his most incoherent.

Apparently, John's little brother just got home from college for the summer. And he's totally shitfaced.

So that being said, I dig into my back pack and produce a can of PBR and sip on it as I wait to see what's going to happen for tonight. John escorts me out, and his mother calls out that she doesn't want his younger brother getting outside. Dumbly, I stand at the door, with it wide open, as like a cat, the little brother scampers out into the bright wilderness.

We go down into John's basement where he has a pool table, as well as other assortments of entertainment displayed about. It's like your grandparent's rumpus room, if this was the 1970s and people still had rumpus rooms. Or even put those two words together. You know what I mean.

Low ceilings, beer cans littered about, a used and tired looking punching bag propped up against a far wall. The door to get in is never locked and requires a leaned in shoulder to pop it open. We stand around, discussing his younger brother's lack of alcoholic tolerance.

"I told him not to come home. I sent him a text. 'You're shitfaced, mom's home, don't come home'" John says as he works some chalk on to a pool cue. I sip my beer and nod along, thinking back to my kidney destroying first year of higher education. At the time being, John's little brother is sitting, splayed out on the back yard, telling everyone who asks if he's ok that he's in fact, twenty-one years old.

"Dude, you gonna be good?"

"I'm twenty-one!"

"....Ok..."

This brings us to John's other two friends who show up at about this time. *Jerry* and *Dan* know John from college and I guess all play musical instruments together. Dan's a tall dark haired guy who still looks collegate and Jerry's built like a keg, and reminds me somewhat of a guy I went to high school with. Both of these guys are cool shits.

A game of billiards breaks out and John hooks his iPod into a stereo and we take turns talking about stupid shit that guys talk about when they play billiards. Who we've fucked, who we want to fuck, how fucked up we are, how fucking gay something is, how fucking gay you are, and how fucking gay we all are. It's a regular round table of fuck patois.

Suddenly, John's mom appears downstairs, visibly upset. She states that the younger brother has "taken off" up the street, with some female friends of his. She wants him back at the house, pronto.

Allegedly, according to John, his brother started drinking around four in the afternoon when he went to a friend's house, and came back stumbling. He's not much of a guy; he's probably 6' even and 150 lbs tops. Also, he's only eighteen, and although belongs in a fraternity, probably can only muster to hold down four Bud Lights at the most. Also, he probably likes to kiss men (John's words, not mine)

Like an crack army assault unit, myself, John, Jerry and Dan climb into John's Mazda and tear off down the street looking for his brother. It doesn't take us long to come up on him from behind, as he's leading a pack of about four high school aged girls down the hill towards the festivities below. He's weaving all over the side walk, hands out to his sides, head lolling from side to side.

John, who is also a former Law Enforcement Professional, expertly puts the car up on a sidewalk blocking his brother's path from furthering. We all step out of the car as if it was planned. We look like something out of a cheesey cop drama on syndicated television. One of the girls in the pack that was behind the little brother even exclaims to no one:

"Wow, you guys are like a SWAT team!"

You're fucking A right we are, missy.

John makes contact, and Jerry and Dan are quick to block the brother in like a wall of flesh. There's a little bit of a confrontation with a young girl who's obviously on something, but I take her aside and keep a perimeter. The girl says to me "I'm not scared of you guys, my dad's a cop."

"So are we."

"Oh."

With some explanation on my part and some coaxing on John's part, we snatch up his brother and pull off down a side street and get him back home. Where he will pass out sitting on a toilet ten minutes later.

Fast forward to later in the evening. The other gentlemen and I have been playing billiards, shooting the shit (shit patois), and throwing ping-pong balls at water filled cups on a ping-pong table. At some point in the evening, purely due to my inebriated state, I produce my scrotum and announce that I've seemed to have gotten gum on my shorts.

This psyches out Jerry, and leads Dan and I to take the title of Supreme Champions of Beruit, 2007.

John then receives a call from a girl he has some history with, and I encourage him to have her come over. My thoughts are that if she gets here, gets drunk enough, we could probably run a train on her.

Seriously.

*Celeste* shows up about forty-five minutes later, and she's your typical cute college girl. Nothing remarkable or unremarkable about her at all. Cute body, cute face, cute personality. John puts her on "myspace picture duty" as we continue to play Beruit.

Soon after, five strong, we make our way down the hill into the pit of sin, all while glittery explosives go off over our heads. The entire time the five-some is together, we're busting balls, laughing, clutching our stomaches, and weaving all over the road as we walk. People are lined up on both sides of the street, heads tilted skyward as they watch the pyrotechnics from their properties.

Almost as if, years ago it had been planned out, we pass by the sewage treatment plant as the entrance to the lower downtown area of Biddeford, where the "block party" is being held. All around us, carnivale-style games, people, food, etc surround us. The booms and sizzles of fireworks rain down on us from over head. The air is coated slickly with a haze of residual burning Marijuana, and it makes your skin feel greasy. Cheap looking, broken people shuffle their dirty-faced children past us. Each one of them clutching a plastic sword and swinging it expertly at crotch level.

We weave through the crowd and make our way to the bridge. Along the way we, inevitably, come across people we know- high school people, teachers, neighbors, etc. A guy I haven't seen since early on in college, comes up to John and I and puts us both in a head lock and squeezes. He goes on to tell us that the next day is the day he's signing his papers to be released from the Army. I tell him good luck with that.

We get offers to go drink at bars and parties and so on. But the collective mood of the five-some is to march back up the hill to John's, play a few more games of Beruit, and possibly clusterfuck.

Seriously.

We weave our way back through the crowd, heading back the way we've come. The fireworks are over now, with a substandard "grand finale" which lit up the sky like it was day time, and twice as loud, and suddenly I become aware of the increased police presence.

It seems all around us, cops in polos and standard uniforms, with ear pieces for their radios have materialized out of thin air. There's probably a ratio of every three people, one cop. It's startling.

Jerry is probably the most drunk out of everyone, and as we pass some carnivale-style games, the chatter starts to pick up.

One game involves a small inflatable pool filled with water containing rubber duckies. I'm not sure the premise of the game but that's exactly what it is. As we pass by, Dan says to Jerry, something like:

"I'll give you twenty bucks if you jump into that fucking pool,"

Of course, Jerry turns him down. It's going to take a considerably higher amount of money for him to engage in such baffoonery.

"Dude, back me up!" Dan slaps John on the chest and John grudgingly agrees to go in on twenty bucks as well. Now the dare's up to forty.

All eyes turn on to me. I look around, knowing that I don't have even ten dollars to my name, because I just paid all my bills today, I nod absently, and the crowd seems to go wild.

"Sixty bucks dude! Just jump in!" And Jerry still throws up the block.

This whole time, the only voice of sobriety and reason is Celeste's.

"You're so going to get arrested. There's cops all over the place," and this seems to hit home with Jerry immensely.

"Yeah dude, I don't want to get arrested on this dumb shit," He says and starts to balk, heading back towards John's house.

To be completely honest with you, gentle reader, I don't know why I chose the words to say at that particular moment, but maybe deep down, I wanted to see a little chubby guy jump into an inflatable pool filled with little rubber duckies. Maybe my dark side came out of me at that instant. Maybe I wanted to see if he'd get arrested, based purely on my deeply routed curiosity. Maybe I just wanted to call his bluff.

I lean over, touching Jerry's shoulder, placing my lips next to his ear lobe and say this:

"Do this, and you'll be the stuff of legends. People will talk about this for the rest of their lives. People you don't even know, but they're standing there, waiting for you to jump into that fucking pool. You'll be remembered forever. This is your legacy."

And with that, Jerry's eyes glazed over. A slow, goofy grin spread across his fat Donkey Lips lips and suddenly I glanced down and saw that he was standing in stocking feet, his shoes somehow coming off.

You see, men strive to leave a mark on this world, no matter how big or small. We want glory in all shapes and forms. To us we live for the conquest. This is why men climb Mt. Everest.

The psychological erection I gave him proved the jolt he needed. Much to the protest and physical strikes I was taking from Celeste, Jerry turned and started at a good trot towards the inflatable pool, some fifty yards back. We all stood watching in mixed disbelief, drunken grins pasted on to our faces, all of us chanting in unison "he's not really gonna..."

And then, he goes sideways in midair.

That's when I turned away, shocked, scared, knowing he was about to be swarmed upon by a mass of trigger happy Nazi, Nixon-esque Biddeford Cops.

What felt like an eternity passed as we four stood looking at each other. John starts to walk off, turning around only to say "I cant be caught up in this, I just applied to these guys like a week ago. Call me when you find out what his bail's going to be, and I'll come down and bail him. But I can't be here for this."

It's Dan who stands tall on behalf of his friend Jerry, stating "dude, we can't ditch him," and Celeste is quick to agree. Admittedly, my feelings were with John, and I teetered on the edge of staying or going, my vote being the decider.

But then, out of the crowd, as if it was the end of the film "Rudy" our pudgy counter part and La Kermesse Carnivale Terrorist remerges, soaked head to toe, jogging back to catch up with us. A roar goes out, as we collectively welcome him back, slaps on his back, hugs, and "holy shits" had all around.

Jerry ends up scraping his knees, and as he takes a seat by the sewage treatment plant, he retells of what happened:

"I fucking jumped in, and this guy, this guy grabs my collar on my shirt and goes 'you're not going anywhere' and I tried to run, but this cop comes up to me and goes 'do you have three hundred dollars for bail?' and I say 'no sir,' and he asks me my name and I tell him, and that was it." And for as simple of a story as it is, we're all huddled around our new hero in total awe.

"That was some pretty stupid shit," he finishes. He also makes it known that he wants his money ASAP.

We climb the hill back to John's house where things eventually wind down. Jerry and Dan decide to go out to Old Orchard to meet up with some other people to retell the tale of the night. Celeste, expertly deflecting my drunken horny advances, decides to go home ("I've gotta get home," she says "You can come back to my home," I come back with, "it's a home....") and I pick up my bag, wish everyone a good night, and manage to drive myself home without getting pulled over.

...And that's why I don't go to La Kermesse.

Fear and Loathing at The Poker Table

Last night I went to my first actual Poker Night in like, a while. Probably since I left Maine.

First off, let me say I'm not exactly God's Gift to poker. I can hold my own, I know some basics, I know the rules, I know what beats what and what hands to hold and what hands to fold, and considering the majority of the five people crowded around a tiny back-bar in Big Country's duplex last night had no clue how to play good poker, you'd think I would be in line to bring home the winnings.

I was not.

Let me break down the night for you: Around 8ish me and the roommate took off for the local supermarket to buy a 12 back of Miller High Lifes and hit up an ATM for the 20 dollar buy-in. Thing is about The Cape that no super market or convenience store sells alcohol, which is something that a Mainer would have to get used to. We first pull into the local Shaw's (cringe...) and wander around, up and down the aisles for a full ten minutes before tracking down a semi-retarded stock boy.

"Hey, do you guys even sell beer here?" I ask. He, the retarded stock boy, is walking directly at me. Have you ever had someone you weren't completely sure was retarded making a bee-line for you? The whole time you're thinking if this guy is retarded, he might not alter his course, but if I get out of his way and he turns out NOT to be retarded, then he's going to think that I THINK he IS retarded, and might resent that, and withhold valuable beer-purchasing information....

About three feet in front of us he stops, suddenly, and kinda stares through us.

"No. There's a store around the way though..." and this 'around the way' business is very helpful. We then spend another few minutes trying to figure out if this Shaw's has an ATM in it to get out our buy-in money. It doesn't (the one's in Maine do, however. Add this to my growing list of why Maine is superior to Massachusetts.)

We then try an Irving gas station down the road a little bit when we're hassled by hoodlum youths huddled hooded in the shadows of the rear of the building. Before me and the roommate are even half way out of my truck, I hear a voice trying too hard to be hard call out "hey man,"

The roommate turns half way around and I post up at the front driver's side quarter panel to my truck which would provide me with superior cover should a gun fight ensue. "Hey man," the voice says again, and a four-foot-tall Puerto Rican who dresses with the same sense of fashionable flair as my roommate emerges. "Do you think you could go inside and buy me some blunt wraps, yo?"

"Blunt wraps?" I chuckle through as I turn back to the store.

"I'm sorry bro, I'm not 18," my roommate says as he turns away. There's nothing more said from the diminutive Hyannis thug.

I found my roommate's response ironic and humorous; at the Station we tease him all the time about how young he looks. When we all got pulled over a few weeks ago, and the undercover officer wanted to see his ID, even he said that the roommate looked "like 13." So for him to use his youthful appearance to get out of buying "blunt wraps" for some juvenile delinquent got a chuckle out of me.

There's no beer at the Irving either, but there was an ATM. I took out my twenty dollars and did my best to keep an eye on my truck through the window, lest one of the street urchins outside should decide that my GPS must be worth something at the local pawn brokery.

When we get outside and back into the truck, I lean back to get my seatbelt when a yellow light catches my eye. I glance over at it and realize that it's a "discount liquor" store right directly across from us on Iyannough. I curse under my breath and pull the truck into it's tiny parking lot.

Once inside, by myself, I have a helluva time trying to find where the 'regular fucking beer' is. I put that in semi quotes because that's what I kept saying as I wandered around endless wine racks in this Portuguese-owned liquor purchasing establishment.

I finally find the "cheap beer" section, pick up a 12 pack of MHLs for 13-something dollars.

"Discount Liquors," pfft.

We're on the road, finally, to go play cards.

Big Country, who is the Marlboro Man animated - 21 years old, 6'2, skinny, dresses as if a damn rodeo is going to break out at any second, wears Ray-Ban Wayfarers 24/7, has been waiting for us over an hour, even going so far to call my phone twice while we've been driving. He lives in Orleans which is about a 20 minute drive from Hyannis, and since we had to make about forty stops between the apartment and his place out in the middle of no where, he was getting agitated.

We arrive and make ready the poker set. E-Money and his petite girlfriend is there as well. Money is my boss's boss at the Station, 25 years old, sharp dresser, very much like me in sarcastic-ness and competitiveness. I'm somewhat irked that he brought his girlfriend along, and even more so irked that they're splitting a buy-in.

Seriously, you brought not only a female, but your girlfriend to a poker night? Dude, really?

I take everyone's cash and make a pot of a hundred dollars and secure it in my poker set case. I divvy up the chips and deal out the first hand, announcing the game is Texas Hold'em. To this I get a lot of blank stares.

I look around the small bar which we're all seated around, stacks of multi-colored chips in front of us like siege towers before an epic medieval battle.

"What...?" I ask everyone.

"How... do you play?" Comes from E-Money. My jaw actually makes a noise when it unhinges.

I'm not a professional poker player by any means. I 'sorta' fell into that whole "Hold'em Craze" from back in like 2004, but to say that you have no idea how to play cards, especially hold'em, when for the last semi-odd years it's gotten more national coverage than Al Gore trying to save the planet, is baffling.

What baffles me more is that my roommate is from LAS FUCKING VEGAS and he needed me to draft up a cheat sheet which broke down the hands. I even labeled what was junk and what you'd want to stay with.

We play a few hands, small bets and pots are being made and I'm drinking beers faster and faster. Big Country hands me a fifth of Wild Turkey and I take a few pulls off of that, cursing in my mind that I'm getting total bullshit hands.

We play for about an hour and the roommate is betting somewhat recklessly, which makes it increasingly difficult to get a read on him. It doesn't help matters when he's betting before me each hand.

Big Country is fiddling with his laptop, which is strange to watch considering he's very anti-technology. Watching him select music on his iTunes is like watching two middle school kids slow dance for the first time. It's adorably awkward.

E-Money and his girlfriend are the easiest to read at the table. He's spending too much time before he bets glancing at his hole cards and the cards on the table. She's doing the same thing plus touching her face when he's got semi-good cards. I'm doing my best to fuck with him psychologically knowing that, like me, his ego is everything. To be called 'cheap' in any form would automatically cause him to overly compensate for it to disprove the claim.

"I'm starting to think we should raise the minimum bet," I say aloud as soon as he places one black chip (worth twenty-five cents) in the pot. He instantly increases his bet by two-fold.

After about an hour, Big Country has a commanding chips lead, and E-Money has been crushed out, his girlfriend is hanging on by a thread only because I wanted to be a gentleman and not put her all in, leaving her a dollar and twenty-five cents in her stacks. My roommate is also short stacking. I have the second most chips.

Fifteen minutes pass and E-Money and his girlfriend leave us amidst hanging Marlboro smoke, defeated. Money's bitching, obviously sore that he's the first to be taken out when I look at him in the eyes and tell him that he knew what he was getting into before we started playing.

"Don't be sore, you know what this," I say. He harumphs and leaves with his girlfriend, who was gracious and pleasant as she closed the door behind them.

My next objective is to smoke my roommate's short stack. I get dealt pocket kings and the table's showing a Five of Diamonds, Jack of Diamonds, Nine of Clubs, Three of Spades, and Ten of Diamonds. Still betting recklessly, my roommate bets high and I figure he's bluffing/has no idea what he's doing. This gets Big Country, who since extinguishing The E-Moneys has been playing tight, to fold. I raise roommate's bet and put him all in, leaving my stacks small, but thinking there's no way he can beat my cowboys.

He flips over an Ace and Two of Diamonds. He fucking flushed me out. Son of a bitch. It feels like I took a front kick square to my solar-plexus. And I'm suddenly very sober.

I'm now in panic mode, only having about four dollars left in front of me, mostly in small chips, watching my roommate stack up roughly half of the chips from the set in front of himself. With the blinds being raised to double what they were when we started with five people, I know I'm on the endangered species list.

It isn't long before Big Country puts me all in and I'm stuck with off-suit Eight of Clubs and Seven of Hearts. I manage to pull out a pair of Sevens from the table, but it's not enough to beat the pair of Jacks Country had. I resign myself to being permanent dealer.

The game goes on for another few minutes where it starts to look like a stalemate. I realize that the whole time Big Country was sizing everyone up and playing very quiet, good poker. He levels my roommate an ultimatum.

"What do you wanna do here? We can split the pot," he offers. That'd be about 50 bucks a piece. I glance at my naive roommate who's playing with his chips dumbly.

"I just want my 20 bucks back if that's ok with you," he says half distractedly. I explode.

"Are you kidding me, you're going to just give him thirty bucks! What the fuck!" He shrugs, and before I can convince him otherwise, Big Country agrees and the money is split up.

We leave the duplex and I'm cold staring my roommate the entire walk to the truck.

"Dude, all I wanted was my money back..." he tries to explain.

"You could've given me the thirty bucks if you didn't want it," I say back. I fumble for my keys and manage to get myself into the truck and start my GPS.

"You good to drive?" He asks. I do my finger test and barely pass it.

"You know how to drive stick?" I ask, already knowing the answer.

"No,"

"Then we'll be fine," and I back down the twisting sloping driveway in utter darkness.

(Editor's Note: We're all very proud of Jim for getting this article into us the next morning, despite being overly hungover and unresponsive to pokes in the side from a sharp stick we keep around the office. Kudos, and nice work Jim!)

New Short Fiction: Hitlerland

Nina was your typical American 17 year old girl: Blond, petite, loved rock music and history, did well in school, had a line of steady boyfriends and even attracted the attention of a few older men here and there, much to her own delight.

But unlike most typical American Girls, Nina had a sort of twisted sense of humor; she would giggle at inappropriate times, like during her history class's viewing of "Schindler's List" or two years ago when a classmate died in a car accident and she started the rumor that the accident was caused because the classmate was giving the driver head. It was later told to her that it had been her father driving the car, which only made her giggle harder.

So imagine Nina's rapture when Hitlerland announced it was finally going to open in nearby Huntersville, a short two hour drive from where she lived.

Hiterland was exactly what it sounded like: A theme park which, as it's creator and chief executive officer Don Marty was quick to dance around, celebrated World War Two and primarily the history of Adolf Hitler.

Of course there was a whole storm of controversy that followed the idea of Hitlerland, from Jewish Leagues, Veteran's Societies, People With Good Taste, etc. Don Marty pushed hard for three years before finally being able to sell the idea as a "historical" theme park. With some funding from less than upstanding groups, Hitlerland was set to open this weekend.

Nina could barely contain herself. The whole idea, even to this twisted young lady, seemed completely ludicrous. How could this thing ever be built? She wondered to herself as she thumbed through the park's webpage. She couldn't stop giggling when she would read the ride descriptions: Himmler's Science Lab, The Holy Grail Cup Ride, A Night in Eva's Bunker, and it went on and on. Most of what she saw in the pictures was typical of most theme parks she had been to. A few stock photos of roller coasters, smiling children with pink puffs of cotton candy on sticks, with the captions that no actual photos from Hitlerland were available yet. Ticket prices were modest, a day pass would cost her forty bucks. Nina picked up her little cell phone and started calling numbers.

To her surprise, no one, all eighty-seven contacts on her phone wanted to go with her this weekend. Some of her friends laughed and asked if she was serious, her other friend, a young lady by the last name of Goldstein hung up on her. She just thought her friends were stuck up and needed a laugh.

I mean, it's a theme park about Hitler! She thought, it can't be taken so seriously!


The next morning Nina got up and got dressed. She had a thin little body, with tiny breasts, her blond hair cropped just below her ears. She put on her usual amount of eye liner, which was way too much, but it's what the popular kids did these days, and put on a tight pair of low rider jeans and a white tank top. It was just getting close to summer and she had a feeling this wouldn't be her last trip to Hitlerland before school started up again in a few months.

She hadn't told her parents about her planned trip because deep down she knew they would object, and likely make her stay home and do chores. It was eight am, and the park would be opening at about eleven. She figured if she took her time, she would get there right before the gates opened.

She picked up her keys, her camera, her little bag and bopped out the door, her parents not even noticing her leave. She got into her older brother's old Camry and drove off towards Huntersville.

When she got to Huntersville, traffic snarled wickedly. She thought to herself, wow, a lot of people want to check this place out. As she inched her way through the coils of cars on Rt 9, she began to notice the crowds and cars. Some of the bumper stickers on the cars were downright filthy, messages of hate were the theme on a lot of them. She snickered at one that said "My Child Bombed Your Child's School" in relation to the honor roll student bumper sticker that had been around forever. Another one was slightly less pleasant "If you let niggers and jews into your town, you're letting in disease and strife." Well, there was nothing really funny about that one, was there? She frowned and turned up the music in her car.

The people in the cars were disturbing as well: Fat bald bearded men in white tank tops, kids with scruffy mullets, shaved heads, women looking tired and worn out, smoking cigarettes between long withered fingers. Everyone looked poor and cheap, cars were more than ten years old and kept in poor condition, cracked windshields, loud hate filled heavy metal being blasted out of the open windows where children and dogs leaned way too far out of to be safe. A few big black motorcycles roared up the sides of the breakdown lanes. The men on the bikes were big, dressed in all black, with big Swastikas on the backs of their jackets. Nina's stomach suddenly turned as she wished she hadn't come alone.

"They're probably working for the park," she said to herself, her mouth dry, the thought that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time worming it's way into her brain.

By 1230, she finally found a parking space for twenty dollars about a mile away from the park entrance. She had pulled off of Rt 9 and parked where someone had opened up their front lawn to motorists with a homemade sign on white clapboard and red paint.

Nina hadn't worn the most practical shoes for walking, so by the time she had made it to the ticket booth her feet were throbbing and blistered. Just outside the gate were a sea of protesters with their own home made signs. Most called owner Don Marty an anti-Semite, a monster, an opportunist, etc. Nina found it very difficult to wade her way through the crowd to get her all-day pass.

But she did, after being called a number of not-so-nice names, and she was through the big red and black wrought iron fence with barbed wire adorning the top. Her eyes were wide and a little wet as she was marched through the gates and into the park. Suddenly Nina didn't think this was all that much fun.

The interior of the park was littered with more people she saw in traffic, in jackboots, shaved heads, white suspenders off their shoulders, tight white tank tops eating ice cream and wandering about. Her all-day pass was a bracelet that was covered in stylized Swastikas and she desperately wanted to take it off. Around the park were loud speakers on poles that blasted period music, mostly slow crackly jazz, which intermittently was cut off by the sound of a needle being taken off of a vinyl record, and a loud heavily German-accented voice would bellow out the park rules. This happened about once every twenty minutes and soon was very grating.

"YOO VILL NOT TAKE UNTA PHOTOS IN ZEE PARK, YOO VILL ENJOY YOURSELVES, ACH, YOO VILL EAT SWEETENS, UND YOO VILL HAVE UNTA GOODEN TIMEN, ACH" The voice screamed out. Nina wandered over to a section of the park called "Ceremony Walk Way" where elaborate Nazi decorations hung from high pillars along a walk way which lead to a giant stage. On the stage, big projection screens displayed old film footage of Hitler giving speeches, which would subtitled for the layman's advantage. At center stage, a large plaster life-like statue of Hitler himself, in full dress stood, pointing out towards the small crowd of obvious white supremacists that had gathered to take in the media propaganda. Nina raised her digital camera to take a shot of the scene, when from behind her, a heavy gloved hand fell on her shoulder.

"Sorry Fraulein, no photographs," the voice, which was very midwestern sounding, said from behind her. She turned and looked up at a very tall and very blond looking young man, maybe a year or two older than her, dressed in a black Nazi SS uniform. Her lower lip quivered, utterly impressed with this sight before her. "I'm going to have to take that from you," he continued, and held out his gloved hand.

"But it's a Cannon, it's a 300 dollar camera..." she said weakly, knowing there was no way she was going to win this argument.

"I don't even know how you got it through the gate, but I gotta take it from you."

"Well, can I get it back?" She asked up to his square chin. He glanced around, about fifty yards away two more, she guessed they were security guards dressed up like Storm Troopers, were watching them.

"I don't know, give me your name, and I'll put it on a slip of paper and keep it in the office here," and she gave him her name and asked where the office was. The SS man pointed towards the giant gothic-looking church at the center of the park. "Go in there and tell them that your camera got taken when you're ready to leave." She nodded dumbly and he walked off.

She wandered around some, getting more and more sick at what she was seeing. It wasn't funny anymore, especially the "It's A Perfect World After All" which was a play on the Disneyland's "It's A Small World After All" where sing-song little Aryan dolls sang about the Third Reich and eradicating those who had less than pure blood. She was ready to go.

As she made her way to the big gothic-looking church to retrieve her camera, she came across something rather peculiar for a theme park themed on such an ugly aspect of world history:

Batting Cages.

She couldn't believe it, and she wandered over to it, where mostly little boys were lined up with helmets and baseball bats. It seemed so out of place in a theme park that celebrated the existence of hatred.

Nina loved baseball, she was a rabid Royals fan, even though they were perennial cellar-dwellers. She stood in line and when she came up to the rack of bats and helmets, she took one of each and waited for a stall to open. When one did, she walked over towards it, but was stopped short by a big sweaty palm across her small chest.

"Whoa, hold on there missy, where's your gold coin?" A slow drawl spoke over her. She wasn't sure what she was most offended by, the hand lingering across her small chest or the smell coming from it's owner. She looked up and tipped back her helmet and dropped her jaw. Standing over her was Mick Gilpatrick, long time Royals catcher. What was he doing here?

"What're you doing here, Gil?" He was known by fans affectionately as 'Gil' and he had a wad of chew in his cheek as he slowly withdrew his hand from his fan's chest.

"Aw hell, they made me a deal, that if I came down here and you know, stood around, signed a few autographs, shit like that, they'd give me a hunk of change here," he leaned back and spat a long jet of black. "Now where's your gold coin?" Nina felt all the eyes in the line behind her burning holes into her body, which didn't help the fact she felt dumb for not having this gold coin on her person so she could swing the bat. What made matters worse was that one of her childhood heroes was standing over her, clearly not impressed.

"I, uh, don't have one, I didn't know I needed one," she stammered. Gil slapped a sign overhead that read, in three inch gothic letters "One Gold Coin Per Round."

"Oh," she said, her voice felt numb leaving her mouth.

"You get them over at the booth there, you ask for a gold coin, but they give you these silver ones. These are just as good," Gil said.

"So why doesn't the sign say silver coins? Why does it say gold coins if there's only silver coins?" She asked up at her hero. He looked over at the booth and rubbed his chin.

"How about an autograph then, just so you don't walk away here empty handed?" And Nina beamed, and the major leaguer avoided answering the question. This was the first thing that made her even remotely happy since walking through the big scary gates. She nodded, her eyes bright. Gil produced a Sharpie from his back pocket, and without saying a word, simply leaned down and scribbled his signature across Nina's white tank top. He pressed in hard across her breasts, even slyly cupping one to get a better surface to write on. Nina stood in shock, and before she could protest, Gil stepped back admiring his work, a black streaky scribble across this jailbait's chest. "There you go little missy, now get out of the way so we can get s'more batters in here," and dumbly Nina stepped out of the way, amid the snickers of some of the adolescent skinheads in line.

She was on the verge of tears when she finally made it to the gothic church and pushed her way through the heavy doors. This was such a bad idea, she thought to herself as she approached a big dark wood desk, a sharp looking, very serious woman in female SS dress sat behind it. Nina, in her ruined tank top and eyeliner-streaked face stood shaking a little in front of the desk, feeling tiny. The woman on the opposite side of the desk looked up at her from over her rimless and cold eye glasses.

"Vat," she said more than asked.

"Um, I was told I could pick up my camera here by a ... guy. He took it from me, and I gave him my name and he said I could, could," she swallowed hard, "get it back here. It was a very expensive Cannon Digital." The woman made a show of shuffling around paper work on her desk and then looked up at Nina.

"No camera was turned in unto us, I'm sorry," she said quickly and coldly.

"It was a three hundred dollar camera! It was a birthday present from my mom and dad!" She was getting loud and whiny, making the woman behind the desk shoot a glance to someone behind her. Nina spun around and saw two men dressed in SS garb walked towards her. Their boots clicking loudly on the stone floor, and terror struck Nina hard in the stomach.

She puked a little and it ran down her shirt, over the Gilpatrick autograph.

Nina soon found herself in a jail cell somewhere beneath the church. She was crying hysterically, scared out of her mind. The cell was cold and drafty, wet and dank, where you'd expect political prisoners of the Nazi Party to be held as they waited to be dragged out to the woods kicking and screaming before being shot in the back of the head while standing over a shallow ditch hastily dug by some Nazi underling.

After she was alone for about ten minutes she heard a whisper from behind her, she stopped sniffling and turned her head towards the sound.

"Hey," came a sharp short whisper.

"Hello?" She said in reply. The whisper shushed her and she crawled on her hands and knees towards the far wall. "Hello?" She whispered.

"Hey," the whisper came back. "I'm in the other cell,"

"Why are you here?" She asked.

"I was handing out these," and a small white pill came rolling into her cell from between the wall that separated the captives. She ducked down and tried to peek through the crack where the pill came from. There was a little light but not enough to see. She picked up the pill and looked at it.

"What is this?"

"Try it and see," the voice came back.

"No! How do I know this isn't a drug!"

"It is a drug, but try it, you'll feel better," the voice was strangely soothing. She looked at the pill with a sense of dubiousness and blew the dirt particles from it. She slipped it into her mouth and dry swallowed, coughing a little. The voice came back from the other side of the wall.

"Prepare for lift off," and before she could ask what that meant, the wall to the cell melted right before her eyes, and on the other side stood a giant toad smoking a cigarette. Suddenly Nazis marched past her on the other side of the bars to her cell, goose stepping, rifles at right shoulder arms, each one staring at her with glowing yellow eyes. It was like she was watching a very real version of Pink Floyd's "The Wall," which she'd only seen parts of with her older brother when he was home from college last year.

She couldn't taste anything, but she could smell something burning, and instantly thought it was her brain. Her head was on fire she figured, that would explain the burning sensation in her scalp. She began to wither and she fell to the floor of her cell, and around her the floor rippled like a pond and she was a pebble. She let out a scream but it came out too deep to be her voice. She felt another charge of vomit working it's way up her throat but she couldn't seem to work it past her trachea, and she committed to the idea she was going to die on the floor of this wet cold cell, choked to death on her own drug-induced vomit that was handed off to her by some racist Nazi skinhead piece of white trash.

Why had she gotten herself into this mess?



Nina woke up in a hospital room with a tube in her nose and machines surrounding her. She jumped with a start and panicked but then settled down. It was night time, the lights were off in the hallway that made up the hospital. Her mother was asleep in the chair to her right, her dad was no where to be found. On a tiny table next to her was her Cannon Digital.

Her hand felt like a thousand pounds but she manages to reach the camera and put it on her chest. She opened up the little panel on the side and dug around for the memory stick, but couldn't find it. Well, she thought, at least I got the camera back. Just then, her mother stirred and came awake.

"Nina?" She called softly.

"Momma," she replied. Her voice was weak and throat sore. She glanced over to the table and a blue cup of water with a straw sticking out of it rested there. She motioned for the cup and her mother was on her feet in a second. She handed the cup to her daughter and patted her head.

"The police brought you here," she started. "They say you were passed out along the side of a road over in Huntersville? What happened?" Nina couldn't avoid her mother's eyes and at the same moment she loathed this woman for prying into her personal hell, she had never felt more secure in her life. "You didn't try to go to that... that.. park out there, did you?" What could she do, a lie would be obvious at this point. She looked out into the hallway from her bed, took another sip of water and looked back at her mother.

"Yes," she said softly. Her mother looked absolutely horrified, but not surprised. She sat back down in her chair, which she had pulled closer to the edge of the bed.

"But why?"

"I wanted to see what it was like, I guess," Her mother simply sat looking at her.

"We won't tell your father about this, you know how upset he'd get. He'd probably march down there and set the place on fire," and to Nina, that sounded like the best solution for Hitlerland. Burn it to the ground with everyone inside. Give them a taste of their own medicine. And make sure if Mick Gilpatrick or Don Marty ran out of the flames, trying to escape Hell itself, daddy takes them out with a rifle blast to their heads. She let a slow smile spread across her face but hid it quickly when she noticed her mother looking at her funny.

"I'm ok mom," she said softly.

Fear and Loathing at The Fryburg Fair

Nothing sits in the hearts of Americans, both your rural hayseed hick and your most jaded urbanite than the country fair. Something about the air, the animals, the crowds, the cotton candy and candy apples makes a collective of Americans jostle about with smiles pasted to faces as if we're all standing in the Free Hand Job Line behind the Denny's in Portland.

I wake up early and make myself breakfast, and then take to the road towards the hamlet of Fryeburg, Maine, it's only claim to fame is this fucking fair. But this isn't just a run of the mill, country-of-Maine-country fair, this is THE fair. This fair makes all other fairs in this state look like the cheap asbestos-stuffed stuffed animals hanging from the overhead displays of the crooked games that line the midway. The Fryeburg Fair is the gem of fairs in an otherwise mud puddle of competition.

Shortly after 930 Sunday morning I arrive in town, navigated by a Garmen computerized GPS device that I borrowed from a friend. I name the voice Meredith for some reason, and on my trip through rural backroads lined with red and orange foliage, the occassional wild turkey, banjo-plucking inbred, I'm instructed on distances before turns, direction of turns, all while a helpful orange citrus-colored display scrolls by, at center a red arrow indicating my presence in the all seeing eye that is the satellite looking down. I follow the directions as Meredith speaks them to me, and soon I'm paying five dollars to a rough-looking biker type in a leather vest and kahki-colored cargo shorts.

"Oh man," he starts in after we exchange early morning pleasantries. He smells like Parliment tobacco and after shave. "Yesterday was awful, what a mess. You picked a good day to come. People were getting pissed and trying to leave all at the same time. What a mess," he continues on. I watch his mouth move from behind my sunglasses and nod along in the right places. I turn my head to the side a little and fish-eye him, yet he still keeps talking. I wait for my change from the 20 dollar bill I gave him.

He guides me to a spot up front, right at the access point. I can't believe how great of a spot it is. No one blocking my egress, should I have to leave in a hurry.

I stash my pistol in the center console and shut down the GPS.

The walk to the fair grounds is short, five minutes tops. I find that traffic is snarled closer to the fair, obviously, as people are sacrificing a few extra dollars more for a spot two hundred yards closer, and five hours longer to get out of. I smirk, knowing the game ahead of the curve. Soon I'm in a parade of converging fair-goers, tourists, leafers, children in crocs with shiny plastic backpacks and juice boxes. Mothers pushing strollers, an inordinate amount of woodland camoflauge sweatshirts and Dale Jr. baseball caps. A man to my front and right spits a jet of black from his mouth into the woods.

Overhead comes the chopping of whirring blades. Jesus Christ! We're under attack! I think to myself. I look skyward and watch an old Sikorski Schweizer fly slow and lazy over head. A sign by the entrance advertizes "helicopter rides" with an arrow pointing to where to go. Throughout the day I would watch this helicopter encircle the fair grounds as if hunting VC amidst the tractor pulls and merry-go-rounds.

I pay my eight dollar entrance fee and instantly hand the ticket off to a sentry manning a gate. Literally the ticket stays in my hands for thirty-seven seconds, and brings to mind the point of even buying these tickets in the first place. Seems like an inefficient waste of money and time. I let it go when I see the gluttonous exhibition of hasheries circled literally like wagons defending an indian attack. Cotton Candy, Giant Turkey Legs, Blooming Onions, Soups in Bread Bowls, you name it, they have it. I approach a vendor, wallet in hand.

"What can I get you?" Says the man behind the glass. I look at the menu and exclaim aloud:

"Good god! Three dollars for a corn dog!" My shock is not wasted on the man behind the glass. He rolls his eyes a little and glances back.

"You want one?" I slowly step away, feeling eyes on me, burning holes into my back.

I spend the next few hours drifting from food vendors to animal exhibits. My mother gave me ten dollars to find a catnip pillow for her cats, but I find nothing that is worth spending the money on, so I pocket it for food later.

Nothing really excites me at the fair. There's a menagerie of wares and crafts that are extremely over priced. I can appriciate the artisanship and craftwork that went into a cabinet, but there's no way I can justify spending seventy-five dollars on a "knife caddy" painted in Hydromorphone-induced puke green. There's crystal balls that hang from leather teathers that spin to the slightest touch, intricate designs painted on them. There's wine bottles with Christmas lights in them. Vibrating pillows and super absorbant mops. Men with microphones affixed to their faces harken back to carnivale barkers, pitching their wares to the throngs that slowly shuffle by gawking like rubberneckers at a fatal car accident.

As I step out into the sun, a display catches my eye, and like that I become zombie-bitten like the rest of the horde in the craft house. A man is selling varying types of jerkies. Salted, marinated, sweetened, toughened, bits of chewy-dried meat displayed behind glass. It's in ropes and in sheets. I push my tongue into the corner of my mouth just as a salesperson approaches.

"Would you like to try a sample, sir?" He speaks to me. I pop an eyebrow over my sunglasses and I must grin because he's already got the tub of shredded sample pieces in hand, cover off. I dig in and take out a chip and chew. It tastes like the sole of a used boot fished out of a river. I manage a smile and tell him that it has a "kick," which makes me laugh inwardly, referencing the boot-like taste. He agrees, telling me it's blah-blah-blah marinated and that a rope would cost me three dollars.

"Man, three dollars gets me a whole corn dog," and he looks confused at my statement. I bid him farewell, still gnawing down on the chip of jerky and enter the sunlight.

The bit of jerky sparked my appetite and I find a wagon that sells french fries. A whole tub of fries with cheese costs eight dollars. I nearly choke the carney when I read that a medium soda is three dollars. I get nine dollars in change, take what I would believe would equate to five dollars in napkins and go enjoy my cheesey fries and coke.

After my snack I wander to the Alpaca section. Alpacas are not Llamas, as people often confuse them. There's a difference, and any Alpaca farmer will tell you what those are. But I am not an Alpaca farmer, so they basically look like Llamas, but you'll have to believe me when I tell you they were Alpacas and not Llamas.

I lean over and take a picture of one and a man approaches me.

"They sure are a precious beast," he says. He's about 40ish and in over alls. He picks at his teeth with, no joke, a toothpick that he has parked between his lip and gum.

"Are you the owner of these fine pack animals?" I ask.

"Sure as shit am," he responds with a nod. I nod along as well, feeling the fine Alpaca fur as the beast eats hay from a dispenser.

"How much," I say.

"How much for what? The wool? Well, a sweater's about 50-" he starts.

"No, no. How much for the Alpaca."

"The Alpaca?" He asks. I affirm. "Well, he's not... not for sale, sir" The man says somewhat bewilderedly.

"I know he's not for sale! How much does one cost!"

"Oh, well ok, um, a kid will cost between 1000 and 1500 depending on their genes and the quality of the mother's wool, you see-"

"Do they make good jerky?"

"What?"

"Alpaca jerky. I want to grow and sell Alpaca Jerky." He stares into my black sunglasses for a long time.

"You're a nutty shit, huh?" He says finally.

"Which way to the helicopter rides?" And I'm off on my way.

It's twenty-five dollars for what appears to be a five minute trip around the fair grounds from about five thousand feet. I wait my turn in line and watch as the Sikorski drops in low and fast, never shutting down it's rotors as it drops off and picks up new passengers. There's a minimal ground crew, and it seems to be a purely cash operation. While I wait in line I start to budget out the money made at the Fryeburg Fair for some of these people. This is what I come up with in a round about way of factoring:

If you charge some dickweed local three dollars for a corn dog that costs one dollar, you're making two dollars on every deep friend piece of styrofoam you sell. Plus you're selling soda at 1000% profit. Rental space is probably 1000 bucks for a week, costs for supplies are probably another two grand.

By my estimates these vendors have paid for their rental and supplies in the first day. More so if the weather cooperates.

But by now I've reached the front of the line and the chopper is coming in for a landing. The rotor wash is enough to rock me back in my tennis shoes and an attendant opens the gate and motions me through after taking my money. We duck walk over to the chopper as it sits running' the departing passengers egress from the opposite side, a very efficient operation indeed.

I sit in next to the pilot and put headphones on with a mic attatched.

"You it?" He says in a cowboy-twangy kinda way. I nod and he shuts the door. "We're gonna go up to about 7500, and I'ma swing around the whole grounds, let you see things from up above, ok?" The voice crackles in my ear. I give the thumbs up and we're off into the air.

It's jerky and you can feel the wind against the air-lite frame. Soon we're over trees and there's another jerk as we come out of the verticle climb and move forward. I lean over a bit and look through the glass floor down below.

"It's real nice up here, huh?" The crackle comes back. I nod.

"Good for hunting the VC?" I say back. The pilot is facing forward, stock still. His aviator sunglasses reflecting sunlight in a sunburst against my own dark sunglasses.

"Yeah" comes the delayed response, and suddenly my asshole clenches because I think he's flipped some switch and gone back to the jungle. The rest of the ride is very quiet and full of tension.

We land and I decide to call it a day. I have a turkey dinner and a piece of a friend dough before walking back to my truck. Meredith greets me and I ride home conversing with the robot steering my car.