How Many in One Day?

Tuesday morning everyone was prepunctual, including Limes. I had to smoke the sidewalks to fit in all the miles and still be at the office as early as I knew they all would be. It was an unspoken early arrival day - everyone knew, though it was never discussed. I pulled in and was assisted upstairs with my bags of stuff I'm always carrying. Everyone had hot coffee in hand. One of us had stopped at Starbucks ;} and home dudes had stopped at the places where the clerks give them a free cup o' Joe for who knows what reason. Maybe some people are still kind to pleasant young men who give them lots of business.

Matt led the parade up the stairs, giving the blow-by-blow, hour-by-hour details. He pointed, gestured, imitated, pantomimed and acted out everything he had taken in so deeply from the deck Monday. The others listened, once in awhile asking, "Is that right, Limes? Is that how it went down?" I replied, without variation, "Matt has it, homes. He watched it all very carefully, informing me of what was going on as it happened." We crowded into that little space on the deck between building and barn, peering that short distance north, shoulder to shoulder, packed in close, coffee cups steaming.

When we went inside for our sales huddle, Cesar had a story to tell. Cesar graciously volunteered on Monday to take a day off because we were slow at work. He visited a friend and at some point in the day, decided to go to Arby's for a meal. After placing his order at the drive-thru microphone, he pulled up behind a car. Soon a car pulled in behind him, and his life became a surreal sandwich.


Although the Arby's worker had his food bag extended through the pick-up window, the driver in front of Cesar would not move forward to collect his meal. When a few minutes passed, all the drivers in the long line began to get twitchy. Horns were honked and citizens stuck their heads out their windows to holler words of encouragement to the driver in the front car.

Soon enough, Cesar decided he'd never wanted an Arby's sandwich badly enough to wait as long as this was taking, but he couldn't move his car forward or backward. He decided to step out of the car and have words with the driver ahead of him. As he approached the door of the car, he got a little hinky. The man was slumped toward the door, his head resting on the window, eyes closed. What? Another dead body in an unexpected place? Not that Cesar has ever experienced that line of thinking before, but just the same morning . . . . perhaps the man was sick or injured, and Cesar is a good human being. He opened the car door and the man's body slumped out toward him. Cesar's heart kind of sank and he noticed other drivers beginning to step out of their cars to come and see what was happening.

The man's body gave a mighty shake. "Oh, man! I fell asleep. I just worked a double shift and I'm beat. I fell asleep right here in my car." He put his car into drive and roared off, not even collecting his Arby's meal he'd paid for. Cesar picked up his own and the other man's lunch and drove off, thinking, "I can't wait to tell this tomorrow."

In my ears right now: Lucinda Williams - the dark, the hip-hop, the sentimental, the passionate love ones and the suicidal. I don't believe I'd care to sleep on a bed of nails. Someone got me going on her music again. I'd forgotten how much I am drawn to her even when the particular song might be repelling.

Something that charmed me: The Las Vegas skies as I came to work this morning. Usually we have solid, light blue with nothing for visual relief or solid, dark gray with nothing for visual relief. But the California storms have sent us a skyfull of widely scattered stratus clouds. At sunrise, there were colors ranging from peach to fiery orange, from blue to black. Some areas where completely dark and cloudy, but up in Red Rock, the sun shone on Turtlehead Peak where I nearly expired on a hike one time and on the caramel and brick colored faces of the rock formations. And the wind howled on.