the middle of the story
(elsemore in)
"Turn that off!" Dan says to Flo behind the bar. "I can't stand to watch a man cry."
"Whaddya think he meant?" says Marv. While God spoke, he'd given his foot and the cigarette machine a break, but now he's winding up for another go.
Bob is back too, hoping the poetry threat is over, and wondering how the latest development will affect his chances of getting with Flo.
God looks up from his weeping, wipes some snot and tears with the sleeve of his robe, and says, "Bob, it'll be cold day in hell." Then there's static for a few seconds and when the picture comes back its Dan Rather in the newsroom. Flo turns it off quick.
"What was that last thing he said?" Bob asks.
"Don't fucking kill eachother." says Flo.
"No, right after that, just before the picture went out?"
"That was it, don't fucking kill eachother. Don't you get it?" She tops off his bourbon, and he stumbles trying to say never mind and thank you at the same time.
Dan says, "Dju notice there ain't been no shark attacks since September 11th?"
Dan is used to being ignored.
A man wedges himself between Bob and Dan to reach into the counter jar of pickled eggs. His hand is large, stained through to the bone with various automotive fluids. Bob watches, fascinated, as the man applies the squeeze test to several eggs before he selects one and then winces as he pulls his hand and the egg out through the tight
opening of the jar with an obscene squishing pop noise. Bob notices that the hand that was in the jar is slightly cleaner than the other one, which is used to toss 50 cents on Flo's counter.
Flo says, to no one in particular, "I didn't sleep well last night, strange dreams."
"I dreamed that I was at picnic, or it might have been a cookout. My friends were there. Lots of them. We're having a really good time. Dancing, eating, singing. Just being together. Then someone says, look up in the sky, oh my god. We all look up, and this big eagle is flying over. Flying slowly over."
"Sounds cool," says Bob, who usually avoids dream talk, but hasn't had much else to go on with Flo.
"But this eagle had something in its talons. It was a BABY! A human baby! In a diaper, crying for its momma. A boy, I think it was."
"They'll do that," says Dan.
"And we all felt so helpless, was the thing. Nobody could think of anything to do that might save that baby. Horribly, terribly, helpless. All of us."
Dan says, "Yeah, the best that baby could hope for is that eagle would take it home and try to raise it as one of its own. Even then, it would be pretty much fucked the first time it tried to fly."
"It was all so real," says Flo.
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(lunaboca in)
Pickled egg man, silent til now, looks up expectantly at Flo. "Whaddaya think happens next?"
He wipes a piece of yolk off his chin and waits for her response. She stares at him. "No, really, you woke up, right? But if ya hadn't, whaddaya think happens, to the baby, to the people at the picnic?"
Flo continues making the same useless circles with the counter-rag, looks up at the sky, as if the eagle might still be circling there. "I dunno. It wasn't going to be good. No one could enjoy the picnic anymore. We knew
things were out of our control, and we didn't know what was coming, but we knew things were different now." She reaches for the Pall Malls, taps the box against the counter, extracts one, lights it. She leans over, so close to the Egg Man she could lick the piece of yolk he missed right off his chin. "What do you think happens?"
"Beats me. But I used to always dream I was flying. Not like that baby, no eagle. Once, twice a month I would come home so tired I couldn't remember my name, stumble into bed, and have these dreams. Where I'd be walking along and remember I didn't need to walk, because I could fly. So I'd sort of will myself off the ground. Everybody was always real surprised to see me do it. Thinking like I didn't have it in me. I wasn't smug about it. I always felt real calm, real right up there in the air. Give me another of them eggs, will ya?"
Flo looked interested. She gave him the egg, never breaking eye contact. Bob thinks: Shit, why didn't I think to tell a flying dream. Never had one, one good reason. She probably wouldn't want to hear about my recurring tax audit nightmare. Marv, seeing Flo's distraction, grabs her Pall Malls and lights up. He's a Camel man himself, but difficult times call for difficult sacrifice. He wanders over to the jukebox, which has grown silent, and plugs in the cigarette money. "This Magic Moment" leaks into the bar. Dan, at a loss for how to add to the vignette, picks up the "Portland Hilton" ballpoint pen and begins to write a poem on a napkin.
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