Hive Ave Fall2024 - Flipbook - Page 13
Hive Avenue Literary Journal
mind to 昀氀y out to Seattle and tell corporate where they can
stick their fucking supply chain issues!”
A smaller but con昀椀dent voice answers, “Can I make you
something else?”
“You can tell em’ Rafael’s coming for em’.” The driver’s
loud engine roars even louder, followed by the screech of tires.
“Welcome to Starbucks,” the intercom says.
he checks the time. “Seven-昀椀fteen and the sun’s up.” He shakes
his head.
“Having second thoughts?” I ask.
“Nah. My legs are just a little sore from the 昀椀ve I did
yesterday.”
“I thought you said you were only walking twos and
threes.”
“What was that about?” Max asks the barista.
“Don’t worry about it,” the barista says, “I get it all the
time.”
Fiction
Max makes a sheepish noise, almost-but-not-quite a
laugh.
“These pounds aren’t going to lose themselves, Chutz.”
We drive thru suburbia, yawning and sighing, past farmsturned-Big-Box-stores and middle-class housing developments with naked trees lining their properties, large co昀昀ees
steaming in our hands.
“Ready to get it in?” Max asks, as we bounce into the
ironically generous Silver Springs parking lot, whose twenty
spaces are almost never used.
“To the Max!” I tell him.
“Ooooo right you fucking are,” he replies, and throws
the vehicle in park. “Right you fucking are.” He reaches into
the center console and produces two pill bottles. “Ibuprofen.
Adderall. The co昀昀ee in my hand makes three. The Anderman
Cocktail.” He elbows me in the solar plexus. Then, he reaches
across the center console, rummaging for something: a DVD
case, which he uses to snort the Adderall.
Lion King will never be the same.
I get out of the car before things get any weirder, but
there’s no one around to see the felony happening in the driver
seat. The only car in the parking lot is empty. A Mini Cooper
with a white racing stripe and out-of-state-plates. Even in the
growing daylight, I can’t make out the lettering.
“Look what I have,” I tell him, still squinting to read the
license number. I pull out his vape pen and take the morning’s
昀椀rst drag.
“Business as usual,” Max says, with a smile.
I rustle through the big pocket of my vest pack as I hop
out of the car, looking for the piece de resistance: my brand new
JBL speaker.
“Got it for Christmas,” I tell him. The pill-shaped device
boots up with a chicka--whooooomp. “Now we have tunes for
weeks.”
Max high-昀椀ves me.
“I like where your head’s at,” he says, and 昀椀shes for his
own vest pack out of the trunk. “What do we listen to?”
“Well, seeing as how we’re literally scraping morning, let’s
listen to something appropriate. I was thinking Pink Floyd’s ‘A
Piper at the Gates of Dawn’.”
He clears his throat, nods his head, and looks to the
east, where the sun is now an actual artifact in the sky. Then,
“I wouldn’t worry too much about that. The el-bees are
going to 昀氀y right o昀昀 with the state your stomach is in.”
“I guess,” he says. “You know where we’re going?”
“Indeed, I do!” I tell him. “It’s a straight shot all the way to
Brandywine. Macie agreed to pick us up at the end, right?”
“Brandywine Falls,” he says, absently, and then, more
lucid: “She’ll be there in about three hours.”
“You think it’ll take us three hours to go ten miles?”
“I honestly have no idea, Chutz. Six months ago, I weighed
500lbs.”
“You didn’t weigh 昀椀ve-hundred pounds,” I tell him, “you
weighed four-sixty-昀椀ve, and you have nothing to worry about.
Like you said, you’ve been walking three days a week, with a long
walk thrown in for good measure.”
He considers what I’ve said as a biker rolls into the parking lot and dismounts next to the Mini Cooper.
“Beautiful morning to be outside!” Max shouts across
the lot.
The bicyclist, a pepper-bearded man in a sleek, black
jersey, nods and waves.
“I just 昀椀nished thirty,” he says. “The trail was practically
mine. How far are you two going? Looks like you’re in for a nice
little walk.”
And he’s right. Max has a cotton long-sleeve shirt on
under a cotton short-sleeve, and a beat-up hat bearing the
logo of a college he never went to. I have on jeans, a nylon windbreaker, a cotton short-sleeve shirt, and a hat from a brewery I
went to once on a vacation.
Max and I shoot each other knowing glances.
Looks can be deceiving, these glances say.
“We’re hiking to Brandywine Falls,” Max tells the man.
The man whistles.
“That’s a solid hike,” he replies, then he racks his bike on
the back of his Mini Cooper, hops in his car, rolls his window
down, rolls in reverse, tells us to “have a good one,” and then
takes o昀昀 as if he’d never been there.
Max looks at me, as if searching for an answer, but I have
no answer, and stare back blankly, lost in my own thoughts.
“I missed this,” I say, and inhale deeply — the smell of
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