- Polite Fictions

He rolled over and listened to the floor show taking place on the other side of the wall. The players- one resigned, the other raised - and their fine-tuned routine were respectable, but he could imagine how it might quickly grow old. Oh, this was a long-running show, of that he was sure, but sooner or later, one of the players was going to want top billing and the other would be a footnote in the archives. "Don't you know you fool, you never can win..." The classics. Don't let my surroundings fool you, he thought, burrowing in a bit deeper. I do have an appreciation for such things. He also appreciated quiet, and it had been a long time since he'd had that.

What was it they were fighting about this time? Yesterday it was something about a bridesmaid's dress, and today? What? Today's first act set the stage nicely when he heard the word whore waft through to his box seat. If that doesn't bring drama! The thing about mothers and daughters was they never really learn to just separate, and he figured that every time one of them told the other to fuck off, it was really their way of saying they weren't giving up on each other. He'd heard that somewhere. Maybe he'd read it. Doesn't matter. Love gets itself worked up and takes a stab at whatever was closest.

Not literally, he thought, though that might be pretty awesome. And he smiled.

The three-beat rhythm on the door dropped him back into time. Just as well. He could use the intermission. The door cracked open and the man's head poked around the edge, disembodied and floating like the money shot from some bizarre magic trick. Ta da! He lifted his gaze slightly to meet that of the man's and waited for the small talk. "Hey there. Whatcha readin,' Slick'?" the man asked. "Some kind of comic book?"

He hated when his father called him Slick. Who does that? Fictional gangsters and annoying men trying to act cool in front of their kid, apparently. For the millionth time, he reminded the man, it's not a comic book. It's a graphic novel.

"Any good?" the man asked.

"Meh..." he said, tossing it over the edge of his bed where it landed among a pile of like-minded reading. "It's alright, but this last chapter kinda sucks. The chick's kinda hot, though. Hey, can we swing by and get a donut on the way to school?"