A Motel Minus Neon Cowboys
Waitress. Out of uniform. Construction contractor. In uniform. Packed boxes in apartment.
"So I got 'round to gettin' your message. Faxed it, I guess?"
"Yup, sug'. I faxed it."
"Packed it in earlier than usual. Still pretty late as normal."
"It's 9 P.M."
"Figur' that."
"Figures."
"So I heard a song in the 88's FM… From '88 AD. En route here. Made me think of you."
"That so."
"Driving down the strip. I had nothin' to do in this world. Just drove down it."
"So you heard a song, sug', that made you think of me? Kinda thoughtful."
"First made me think of my mid-life crisis."
"But you're in ya low 20's."
"Apparently, that it is. Yet more apparently, that my elder soul not is."
"Go on, then."
"So I thought first about how the song came on. Cause back then, I figur', singers didn't start their singin' til' some instrumental ran its course."
"'Cept them ballads. They're singin' too much then."
"So I thought FM… AD… fuck me, I'm an adult. Then I thought of you."
"Hm."
"Kinda funny, at least?"
"Seemed like a long way, sug', for getting to something with no pay off."
"So I thought of you though an' the song was a ballad, like it or not."
"So whatever. You're thinkin' of me."
"Yeah… An', yeah. An' why the hell you got to leave this hour, this day?"
"Doesn't make much sense for me to stay here."
"Somehow, I knew that. I'm happy you' leavin'. Just why?"
"Gettin' tired of looking at that neon cowboy out the window."
"Very funny."
"That's just it. It illuminates. It shifts around merficually like a gosh-damned rainbow in a ziploc bag. It's such a lie to everywhere, sug'."
"A lie to everywhere?"
"Yeah. Remember when I told you 'bout my life away from here. Him, another him, and it?"
"I remember. I remember well. I remember."
"I foun' out that's what mattered more to me. I can do what I'm doin' here… There."
"Lucky gal. Hard lucky gal."
"Course what you doin' here is good. You just gon' be out later than me."
"Good enough. More about the lie to everywhere."
"Places jus' the same, sug'. Some with more flashy sign than others."
"To the empty soul, them signs may fill the void."
"But you just fillin' a void with something created by a void. 'Aint nothing else that means much to you?"
"No, Benedict."
"Watch it, sug'. I don't know you well enough to take that as a joke."
"So I'm jokin'. But them lights are a romantic feeling like the violet on hot desert, an' shit. The casino on a camaro or the saxophone on a cell phone."
"Never be a writer, sug'."
"Truth be told, there 'aint much that means to me. Only reason I made such a substantial contract in this here city of dead souls and flickering cowboys. Whatever news I get… And by get I mean happen to me… Its fron' page highlights. That includes you, hon."
"Makes sense. Figures."
"If I'd be any a bigger walker, or a cowboy up ' them lights, this'd be smaller."
"Figures."
"Like nothing."
"So something of an absence of the fast'ness between places, an' what not."
"So somethin'… Like that."
"What you gon' be waitin' on while I'm gone? What you gon' be waitin' on while you waitin'?"
"Some truth in the lie to everywhere."
"What, by you listenin' to the 88's?"
"Which 88's?"
"The 88's!"
"Oh, rite. You confus' me."
"You confused me too. That or you just plain stupid, sug."
"I give it fif'ty-fif'ty chance. I'll wait on a song. A song to remind me to things."
"What things? Things that happen' back then?"
"Nothin' else for songs to remind me to do."
"You gotta start makin' futures. Like me."
"But that'll be past."
"Am I past now, sug?"
"You will be in ten minutes. When you leave that door."
"So you gon' help me with my bags or not? Unless you afraid of remembering things that aren't no past."
"Hard when the past actually happens."
"Neon cowboys 'aint lookin' too bright now, huh sug?"
"Based my whole life on them. 'Aint gonna turn 'round now."
"That's what I never did. An' I'm turnin'."
"An' you just turned a perfectly good song into you. For the rest of my life."
"No I didn't, sug."
"Yes you did."
"No I didn't, s-… No I didn't."
"…Good point."
