Guns On Layaway

Been listening to a lot of stories about love gone wrong this week, got plenty of material for stories for the new year. My friend Hank's sister Robin is a font of such tales -- she even loaned me a pen to write down notes. That's one of the great things about her having Hank as a brother -- she's used to us writer types and doesn't fear being used as material. You use that one, she said about the time she held her boyfriend hostage while finding out whether or not he had secretly been firing her granddaddy's pistol (I'm not stupid. I can smell the gunpowder and I told him after sticking the gun under his noise, yes, asshole, it's loaded), confronting him on his return to nicotine, and the probability that he was getting some on the side from a coworker who'd had a double mastectomy (Guess you won't have to pay for her boob job, Robin commented, with the same wry sense of humor her brother had). She informed me that said jerk had several guns on layaway and kept purchasing pistols and whatnot even when they couldn't afford them. You know me, I love a good gun, but when you can't pay rent . . . God, I love Texas girls!

So I'm picking at the last bit of Mexican food I'm likely to have in a very long time (Detroit, while being the most wonderful place on earth in many ways, does not fare well in this area) and thinking about how much Robin reminds me of Hank at times, certain turns of phrase and whatnot. Old age and treachery, she said of showing up late for supper after falling asleep for what was supposed to be a much shorter nap. I had to laugh. Her brother would have said the same thing. She handed me a bag at the end of the night her mother had filled with some of Hank's things, including a copy of The Big Sleep, some t-shirts, and a pair of his shoes that I bought him for a job interview in Detroit. The shoes are very Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, dad shoes, interview shoes, nothing anyone would wear except for work or weddings and funerals. I don't know what I'll do with the shoes, but it seems fitting that they'll be returning to Detroit, their first home, a place where it's often cold and hard, where a person can use a good pair of sturdy, if not completely fashionable, pair of shoes.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Looked at where I was and where I wanted to be. The gap was big." Larry Brown

Cocktail Hour
Drinking movie suggestion: The Big Sleep

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Sunday!