Hombres:
The thing I forgot about working many hours in an office is the way you treasure your weekends. They become these perfect, condensed little moments you craft artfully into the brightly-wrapped package you get as a reward for being a good worker during the week. Unless your idea of relaxation is plopping on your ass in front of the TV, in which case you’ll have to just move along, because you won’t understand. The culmination of the weekend was when Heather and I dug a fire pit in the backyard, in the ideally-located spot recently vacated by that giant, hateful tree; the very same one we were rid of thanks to a windstorm of biblical proportions, and a vast outlay of cash. We laid on a blanket next to the fire, and grilled food on a grate over the flames: sweet potatoes, stone fruit, bananas, pineapple, corn, zucchini, and bread with chevre. We abandoned civility and threw each charred piece onto a big platter, chopped it up violently with whatever utensil was nearby, and ate. Twenty minutes into our meal, it was too dark to even identify the various items on the plate, but that didn’t matter. It was a big mess of cinnamon and lemon and salt and smoke, and it was incredible.H: I’m not much of a survivalist, but I could survive two, maybe three hours in the wilderness.
J: As long as you had your cell.
H: And my car.
J: Right.
Afterwards, Heather watched the fire and I watched the stars. I was surprised how visible they were this close to a city. I saw something crossing the sky at an altitude too high to be an airplane; Heather thought it was going the wrong direction for a satellite, so that leaves the only other viable option: an alien spacecraft. I’m willing to bet that even from that great a distance, they were able to detect the obscene level of satisfaction I was feeling at that moment.
Jenni
J: As long as you had your cell.
H: And my car.
J: Right.